Navigating the Paradoxes of Sustainability

Abstract

“Sustainability” is a domain of theory and practice in which people seek “win–win” opportunities for business and society, short- and long-term prosperity, humans and the natural environment. Lurking within the concept are some challenging paradoxes surrounding these parts and wholes of social systems that lead to tragedies of the commons. These paradoxes become salient when natural and organizational resources become scarce, when diverse societal stakeholders give voice to their interests and perspectives, and when efforts at organizational change bring these latent concerns to light. As people navigate these paradoxes of sustainability, they can manage them defensively, or actively engage paradox toward two positive outcomes. One is trade-off-breaking innovation that achieves win–win solutions. The other is flourishing of people who realize their contradictory sets of cares and motivations. Achieving the goals of the sustainability paradigm may therefore require “champions of ambivalence” who foster paradoxical thinking and action in organizations.

From Paradoxical Thinking to Practicing Sustainable Business: The Role of a Business Collective Organization in Supporting Entrepreneurs

“…Paradoxes of sustainability manifest in different ways. One set of tensions exists around triple bottom line goals: conflict between economic, environmental, and social outcomes may mean a solution to one goal could be detrimental to another (Jay, Soderstrom, & Grant, 2017). For instance, entrepreneurs might question whether to increase employee salaries or wages, hire additional employees, or save profits when facing trade-offs between social goals around living wage and community impact, and economic goals around financial stability.…”

“…Additionally, paradoxes of sustainability emerge due to part–whole relationships (Smith & Berg, 1987). Individual entrepreneurs have a limited perspective on the larger system in which their food businesses are situated, and their self-interests may conflict with the health of the whole system (Jay et al, 2017; Smith & Berg, 1987; Vandermeer et al, 2018). Finally, sustainability often involves engagement with demands from multiple stakeholders, who are themselves making potentially conflicting demands (Hahn et al, 2014).…”

Corporate Sustainability Paradox Management: A Systematic Review and Future Agenda

“…Specifically, plurality has been manifested in the pursuit of the triple bottom line (Elkington, 1997), multiple institutional logics (Dahlmann and Grosvold, 2017), and multiple stakeholder demands (Smith et al, 2013). Any excessive concern about any goal may be detrimental to sustainability outcomes (Jay et al, 2017;Soderstrom and Heinze, 2020); thus, tensions appear. These kinds of tensions would directly reflect on firms' mission statements that combine economic pursuits and social or environmental visions.…”

Navigating tensions in a cross‐sector social partnership: How a convener drives change for sustainability

“…For example, in sustainability research, paradox theory has been used to explain how seemingly contradictory demands of economic, social, and environmental performance could be integrated (Hahn, Figge, Pinkse, & Preuss, 2018) or how companies can continue to grow while safeguarding the natural environment (part-vs.-whole paradox) (Jay, Soderstrom, & Grant, 2017). For example, in sustainability research, paradox theory has been used to explain how seemingly contradictory demands of economic, social, and environmental performance could be integrated (Hahn, Figge, Pinkse, & Preuss, 2018) or how companies can continue to grow while safeguarding the natural environment (part-vs.-whole paradox) (Jay, Soderstrom, & Grant, 2017).…”

“…Paradox theory has become a popular approach that is broadly applied to multiple organizational domains, providing novel insights on a broad range of organizational phenomena. For example, in sustainability research, paradox theory has been used to explain how seemingly contradictory demands of economic, social, and environmental performance could be integrated (Hahn, Figge, Pinkse, & Preuss, 2018) or how companies can continue to grow while safeguarding the natural environment (part-vs.-whole paradox) (Jay, Soderstrom, & Grant, 2017). Another example is the study of coopetition, that is, the simultaneous acts of competing and collaborating between (for profit) organizations.…”