Embedding corporate responsibility and sustainability – everybody's business

Abstract

Purpose -This paper aims to deal with the significance of leadership as driver of corporate responsibility and complementary, dynamic organizational change. It seeks to focus on the continuous attention required by competitiveness, and the cultural complexity of renewing business processes in a global environment.Design/methodology/approach -The paper opens by adopting the insecurity context that is clearly reflected in a range of contemporary management and non-management discourses. Among the negative attributes of advanced globalization the authors trace the erosion of trust between society and institutions to perceptions of impropriety by managers in large firms. Reflecting on their extensive joint experience of the corporate responsibility vanguard from the early 1990s, they suggest some interesting themes that will be familiar to governance and CSR academics and practitioners alike. Strands of social, political, economic, cultural and environmental complexity are evident in the narratives.Findings -Perhaps reflecting this decline in trust, the chorus of stakeholders calling for CSR two decades ago has now segued into a demand for sustainable enterprise. But are the dimensions of sustainability any more distinct and measurable than its conceptual antecedent: what is it for a firm to be responsible, accountable, sustainable and transparent? While aspiration can be seen to be running well ahead of capability on such a score in many businesses there are some showing clear leadership in the challenge to be more sustainable.Originality/value -The paper offers an insight on the responses to this challenge at telecoms multinational BT. It articulates a comprehensive approach to what is a highly socialized (human-focused) approach to managing the multiplicity of risks inherent in the opening context.

Conceptualizing the Limiting Issues Inhibiting Sustainability Embeddedness

“…We found that practitioners believed that performance in their job, and sustainability were separate ideas with separate responsibilities-which inhibits the transition to sustainability embeddedness [20,43,62].…”

“…There are limited studies that have departed from the proactive orientation towards the adoption of a sustainability-embedded orientation [15,20,23,26,40]. Studies have also tended to focus on the operational changes required by organizations-such as strategies for reducing waste-often neglecting to examine organizations holistically in terms of both the operational and transformational changes required to shift to embeddedness [17,20,26,28,43,62].…”

“…The idea of an organization fully embedding sustainability is criticized for its heavy reliance on organizational leaders as "culture creators" tasked with fostering shared sustainability beliefs, commitment and values amongst practitioners [15,17]. Literature refers to these leaders as sustainable or responsible leaders [1,10,42,43]. Sustainable leaders are those that seek to instill behaviors, practices and systems that create enduring value for all stakeholders of organizations including investors, the environment, other species, future generations and the community [44].…”

Embedding Corporate Social Responsibility in Corporate Governance: A Stakeholder Systems Approach

“…The model represents a holistic approach to corporate governance and CSR that integrates company, shareholder, and wider stakeholder concerns. It recognises the paradox that society is demanding more of business while simultaneously trusting it less (Rake and Grayson 2009). The implication is that responsible CSR is no longer about individual projects or programmes, but rather how the totality of business activity impacts on organisation stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, employees, communities, government, and the environment (Rake and Grayson 2009).…”

The Inter Business Index Developing a Tool for Measurement and Comparability of Holistic Sustainability in Businesses

“…Sustainability in most businesses is acknowledged as something important not only for competitive advantages, but something even indispensable for future survival of businesses. Yet their efforts and impact have not been creating the necessary improvements on a larger, global scale and most fail to provide for social and environmental needs (Metcalf & Benn, 2012;Rake & Grayson, 2009). This causes a significant disconnection between, on the one hand, what a company says that it should and wants to do, and on the other hand, its actual actions and their subsequent impacts (Dyllick & Muff, 2016).…”