Designing for sustainable work during industrial startups—the case of a high-growth entrepreneurial firm

Abstract

New firms face challenges regarding pace, time, scalability, and societal changes, requiring increased attention to sustainable work prerequisites. However, this dimension of social sustainability is less studied than economic and ecological sustainability. This paper addresses how sustainable work is considered in an entrepreneurial startup carrying out a greenfield project within a new industrial domain. Data were collected for 30 months in a longitudinal case study. The study shows that (i) working condition challenges were drivers for innovative solution-oriented approaches with potential for rapid decision-making, flexibility, and to attract, recruit, retain, and develop talented people; (ii) a strategic focus on sustainability and collective contribution to a purpose-driven vision were important enablers for taking steps of operationalising sustainable work dimensions during the startup; and (iii) the firm's early stakeholder collaboration addressing working conditions was an important means for design for sustainable work and their role as agents of sustainable work. Research implications are how sustainable work can be considered during startups and through stakeholder collaboration. Furthermore, the case contributes to increased knowledge of how the three pillars of sustainability-economic, ecological, and social sustainability-are interrelated and are suggested to be continuously considered over time, specifically during rapid major changes.

The psychological concept of social sustainability in the workplace from the perspective of sustainable goals: A systematic review

“…Although improving working conditions was rarely the main motivation for farmers to adopt agri-environmental practices, they played an important role in improving the quality of working conditions. Sustainable work encompasses all three dimensions of sustainability: economic, environmental, and social (Harlin and Berglund, 2021 ). Harlin and Berglund conducted a longitudinal study of how new (start-up) companies address the challenges of work and ensuring SS.…”

“…All these elements of decent work represent sources of personal resilience to possible factors of the labor market and social systems over which the individual has no control (Mushfiqur et al, 2018;Conigliaro, 2021), thus making a lasting contribution to an individual's positive career. Meaningful work, on the other hand, is a concept associated in the reviewed literature with the characteristics of work and organizational context that convey to 2021), Harlin and Berglund (2021) the worker that the goals and effects of the individual's work and the functioning of the organization are aligned with the overall social good (Sun et al, 2019). The construct of sustainable work is linked to the construct of decent and meaningful work.…”

“…(2016),Barin Cruz et al (2016),Jitmaneeroj (2016),Vanderstukken et al (2016),Carmeli et al (2017),Ciocirlan (2017),Lima and de Oliveira (2017),Richardson et al (2017),Wahid and Mustamil (2017),Gupta and Racherla (2018),Huang (2018),Mushfiqur et al (2018),Paillé et al (2018),Salminen et al (2018),Khan et al (2019), Sun et al (2019), Alexander et al (2020), DeMatthews and Izquierdo (2020), Gamble et al (2020), Loor Alcívar et al (2020), Sajjad and Shahbaz (2020), Wynne-Jones et al (2020), Harlin and Berglund (2021), Pankaj and Seetharaman (2021), Raniga (2021), . (2016), Vanderstukken et al (2016), Carmeli et al (2017), Ciocirlan (2017), Jansson et al (2017), Kim et al (2017), Mehta and Gorski (2017), Wahid and Mustamil (2017), Grimes et al (2018), Mushfiqur et al (2018), Paillé et al (2018), Salminen et al (2018), Williams (2018), Ashby et al (2019), da Rosa et al (2019), Guerci et al (2019), Khan et al (2019), McDermott et al (2019), Röös et al (2019), Bojner Horwitz et al (2020), Charni (2020), DeMatthews and Izquierdo (2020), Ellinger et al (2020), Farooq et al (2020), Mariappanadar (2020), Sajjad and Shahbaz (2020), Wynne-Jones et al (2020), Duval et al (2021),Harlin and Berglund (2021),Raniga (2021),Yin and Jamali (2021),Devkota et al (2022)…”

Stakeholder collaboration inspired by the Nordic model – Towards sustainable work and competitiveness during an industrial startup

“…Data collection also included five open interviews carried out with the union stakeholders, as well as studies of firm documents, primarily PowerPoint presentations and internal meeting minutes. This case study was part of a larger research project with a mission to follow-up learnings from a start-up in early phases, hence, a new firm´s major greenfield project within a new industrial domain, as reported in Harlin and Berglund (2020).…”

“…Crucial elements for achieving sustainable change processes are three-party collaboration between the government, companies, and unions, as identified in a Scandinavian context (Brulin & Svensson, 2016). However, there is a gap in the literature on stakeholder collaboration that is focussed on sustainable work during industrial start-ups (Harlin & Berglund, 2020). Some obstacles for operationalisation of sustainable work dimensions (as part of social sustainability) during industrial development phases are that these dimensions are fuzzy and not clearly defined (Vallance et al, 2011).…”