Integrating sustainability into corporate DNA

Abstract

The term sustainability covers a broad set of issues. As a result, each organization has to identify specific issues that it can effectively address and that are relevant to its industries, markets, geographic locations, and stakeholders. But if an organization fails to focus on a reasonable number of organization‐wide commitments, resources will be scattered and fail to yield significant value to the company. This article provides advice on how to deploy sustainability using change management techniques and examples from industry. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Conceptualizing the Limiting Issues Inhibiting Sustainability Embeddedness

“…The current methods of discourse may have established a shared knowledge amongst members that the company is committed to integrating sustainability, but nonetheless failed to improve practitioners' understanding of the concept (Green Distraction); or help them see the connection between sustainability and their jobs (Not my Job); or to convey how practitioners should manage sustainability (Firefighter). Strategy Discourse should ignite the necessary changes in order to achieve the desired sustainability-embeddedness outcome, and when failing to do so, we suggest it be considered an inhibitor to embeddedness [46,52,62,93,94].…”

“…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]. Sustainable leaders are committed to transforming organizations into sustainable organizations by embedding sustainability into the culture through sustainable leadership practices [17,45,46]. Their principles and attitudes differ significantly from the traditional "locust" leadership which focuses on getting the most profit out of business and serving shareholders first [1].…”

“…However, it appears that the current methods and means of strategy discourse and communication are not adequate to effectively change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors about sustainability, towards a sustainability-embedded orientation [20,46,52,62]. The current methods of discourse may have established a shared knowledge amongst members that the company is committed to integrating sustainability, but nonetheless failed to improve practitioners' understanding of the concept (Green Distraction); or help them see the connection between sustainability and their jobs (Not my Job); or to convey how practitioners should manage sustainability (Firefighter).…”

“…Top management should look to engage middle managers in conveying the strategy message of sustainability throughout the organization. Middle managers are considered crucial role players in sustainability embeddedness and are able to enhance discourse through actions such as translating, mediating, negotiating and monitoring of the strategy message [10,46,62,76,77].…”

Research on Impact of Listed Companies Sustainable Development on Company’s Value

“…Same as Seay (2015) which paper is dedicated to the analyses how the integration of sustainability into business processes and products creates value for all of a company's stakeholders, many authors acknowledge the relevance and linkages between company's sustainable development and company's value. Bell et al (2012) are determining how to increase companies' economic value through the adoption of sustainability initiatives and state that companies, which have embraced sustainability as part of their corporate culture have gone further and used a "sustainability" framework to look for ways not only to do well by all stakeholders, but to add economic value to the company through entrepreneurial thinking about their processes. Slater and Gilbert (2004) emphasize that sustainable development directly drives (or limits) value creation within a company.…”