Achieving sustainability requires systemic business transformation

Waddock, Sandra

doi:10.1017/sus.2020.9

Cited by 35 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 66 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…By interacting with systems' social‐ecological components, like the SDGs, companies influence the resilience of systems and thus their sustainable development pathways. While it is acknowledged that it is very difficult for individual companies to change entire systems by themselves (Loorbach et al, 2010; Waddock, 2020), companies do have adaptive capacity. This means that companies can manage their interactions with an SES's components to influence the system's adaptive cycle and thereby its resilience (e.g., Williams et al, 2019).…”

Section: A Social‐ecological Systems Perspective On Sustainable Development and Corporate Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving companies' impacts on sustainable development: A nexus approach to the SDGS

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Companies play a decisive role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, most of the world's sustainable development challenges are interconnected and systemic in their nature. How can companies ensure that their strategies effectively contribute to sustainable development? This interdisciplinary paper draws from the social‐ecological systems, corporate sustainability, and sustainability sciences literatures, in order to introduce a nexus approach to corporate sustainability. A nexus approach induces companies to assess and manage their positive and negative interactions with the SDGs—which may arise directly and indirectly—in an integrated manner. Instead of treating SDGs as isolated silos, a nexus approach aims to advance multiple SDGs simultaneously (creating “co‐benefits”) while reducing the risk that contributions to one SDG undermine progress on another (avoiding “trade‐offs”). Through managing the interactions between the SDGs, a nexus approach to corporate sustainability enables companies to improve their societal and environmental impacts. This nexus approach is a step towards developing a theory of sustainability management that helps companies improve their impacts on sustainable development. Such systemic corporate sustainability strategies are sorely needed to drive progress towards achieving the SDGs and to safeguard companies from “SDG‐washing.”

show abstract

Section: A Social‐ecological Systems Perspective On Sustainable Development and Corporate Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving companies' impacts on sustainable development: A nexus approach to the SDGS

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Despite pressures to reestablish legitimacy and meet the challenges of sustainability and inequality the power of today's metanarrative remains entrenched [1,[9][10][11]. For these institutions to truly meet today's grand challenges requires significant transformation of the stories that shape the paradigms or perspectives that guide their purposes, performance metrics, power relations, and practices [12]. At the moment, however, it does not look much like any sort of real transformation is taking place in either businesses or b-schools.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Before the pandemic, "transforming business" mainly emphasized doing more and better at what was already being done or adopting new technologies that could make businesses more efficient [12]. Mostly, such changes just focus on doing more of and being better at what is already being done.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Will Businesses and Business Schools Meet the Grand Challenges of the Era?

Waddock

2020

Sustainability

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Meeting today’s grand challenges means changing the economics paradigm that informs both business practice and business/management education. This paper asks whether business schools meet the challenges of the 21st century and argues not without shifting away from the core—neoliberal—paradigm of economics. This essay makes the following argument. Paradigms shape narratives. Changing core narratives is a powerful lever for transformation. Narratives are constructed of core ideas (memes) that replicate readily from mind to mind. Neoliberalism’s memes are pervasive and highly resonant in business schools. To move towards sustainability, the fundamentals taught in business school need to shift away from neoliberalism’s tenets towards what gives life to economic systems. From a theory perspective, neoliberalism’s lack of attention to social and ecological consequences of economic activity plays a large part in shaping today’s crises, including the pandemic, climate change, and biodiversity loss. A new/next economics paradigm is needed that shifts away from an emphasis on only financial wealth and constant economic growth on a finite plant towards life-centered economies that foster wellbeing and flourishing for all, creating what scholars call collective value. The result of this analysis is a conceptualization supporting new memes that include collaboration and competition, stewardship of the whole system, a cosmopolitan to local sensibility, and recognition of humanity’s deep embeddedness and connection with other people, other beings, and nature. The article concludes that business schools need to meet this challenge head on, changing the fundamentals of what is taught and why.

show abstract

“…Working in Latina/Latin American women's health and rights, she began to read transdisciplinary Organizational Studies connecting individuals to social movements in achieving change, especially in women's health and in education (Shapiro, 2014(Shapiro, , 2018. Reading on multi-systemic approaches to workplace gender equity for this chapter, she discovered critical engaged Organizational research emphasizing holistic systems thinking consistent with integrative life course health equity, in publications as varied as the Journal of Supply Chain Management (Touboulic, McCarthy, & Matthews, 2020) and Global Sustainability (Waddock, 2020). Whatever our own lines of work, we have learned how "just in time" manufacturing driven solely by policies enhancing profit without considering other valued outcomes has become highly, tragically visible during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

Section: Complexity Transdisciplinarity and The Gendered Life Coursementioning

confidence: 99%

Unfinished Business: Advancing Workplace Gender Equity Through Complex Systems Strategies Supporting Work/Family Dynamics

Kato

2021

Exploring Gender at Work

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The whole world endorses women’s equal rights in workplace, family, and society (Pew Global 2020). Researchers find gender inclusion benefits workers and companies through enhanced worker and customer satisfaction, increased profits, and worker well-being. Why does gender workplace equity remain a “stalled revolution”? We suggest work/family dynamics supporting challenges of care for the most vulnerable—children, elders, the disabled, adults experiencing ill health—need to be “re-visioned” as “wicked problems” within applied complexity/developmental systems sciences. Complexity sciences argue gendered inequalities maintain stability through entangled forces at multiple levels yet can be transformed through problem-and-setting specific ecological analysis, identifying leverage points for maximum impact toward achieving valued outcomes. We apply transdisciplinary cultural/developmental systems perspectives on the gendered, interdependent life course, highlighting shared individual, family/kin, business, and public responsibilities toward supporting work and caretaking (Brandth, Halrynjo, & Kvande, 2017). These approaches help map multi-systemic factors offering impactful leverage points catalyzing measurable change. Global comparative literatures identify three transformative leverage points: (1) Gender-neutral paid family/kinship care leave when meeting life course challenges of childbearing/adoption and infant care; (2) Public/private partnerships providing flexible, predictable employment and institutional supports for early childhood care, schooling, and dependent caretaking needs for workers at all income levels (Thébaud & Halcomb, 2018); (3) Systems-minded organizational interventions addressing gender stereotyping of work/family decisions in Human Resources administration and in leadership training for both managers and workers.

show abstract

Achieving sustainability requires systemic business transformation

Cited by 35 publications

References 66 publications

Improving companies' impacts on sustainable development: A nexus approach to the SDGS

Improving companies' impacts on sustainable development: A nexus approach to the SDGS

Will Businesses and Business Schools Meet the Grand Challenges of the Era?

Unfinished Business: Advancing Workplace Gender Equity Through Complex Systems Strategies Supporting Work/Family Dynamics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About