Responsible management of sustainability tensions: a paradoxical approach to grand challenges

Byl, Connie Van der; Slawinski, Natalie; Hahn, Tobias

doi:10.4337/9781788971966.00038

Cited by 14 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…Many firms are also including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) in their sustainability reports. These 17 goals were developed in 2015 and envelop the grand challenges of our time including climate change, poverty, diversity, energy, consumption, Indigenous rights and more [17]. The UN SDGs provide an opportunity for the private sector, especially large multinational corporations (MNCs), to engage in global social issues [18].…”

Section: Stakeholders May Have Challenges Comparing Reported Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Green Gaps: Firm ESG Disclosure and Financial Institutions’ Reporting Requirements

Dye¹,

McKinnon²,

Byl³

2021

J Sustain Res

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Background: Globally, governments are responding to climate change. The financial industry has followed, integrating climate risk to their investment decisions via Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations. Firms in environmentally sensitive industries, like oil and gas, are notably scrutinized for their ESG performance especially regarding climate change. Methods: Two samples were selected for a content analysis and comparison of environmental disclosure and investor requirements. The first sample is comprised of the sustainability reports for 30 oil and gas firms operating within Alberta. The second sample includes the ESG reports of 19 financial institutions with investment in the oil and gas industry. This data was triangulated via fieldnotes from conferences and informal discussions with oil and gas and financial industry representatives. Results: We find that both ESG investor requirements and firm disclosures suffer from a lack of standardization. Consequently, the financial industry is moving toward the adoption of the TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures) recommendations and the SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board) framework in firm evaluations. European financial institutions have been leading the way in requiring firms to define their climate risk, set targets, measure performance, show improvement, and connect to strategy. Alberta oil and gas companies are responding with more robust ESG disclosure, though SASB and TCFD reporting is not yet widespread. Conclusions: Industry failure to respond to evolving disclosure requirements can lead to divestment. We contend that oil and gas companies that do not acknowledge climate risk and outline energy transition strategies tied to their business models and reputations potentially sacrifice access to capital. We expect firm ESG disclosure, especially radical transparency on environment, to increase as financial institutions execute on climate change risk evaluations. We contribute to the sustainability reporting and ESG literature by showing the impact of

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Section: Stakeholders May Have Challenges Comparing Reported Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Green Gaps: Firm ESG Disclosure and Financial Institutions’ Reporting Requirements

Dye¹,

McKinnon²,

Byl³

2021

J Sustain Res

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“…Practitioner organizations involved in grand challenge activities often have an explicit 'theory of change' ( Van der Byl, Slawinski, & Hahn, 2020). Such theories outline a series of causal linkages between the 'inputs' on the part of the organization and the subsequent 'outputs', 'outcomes' and 'impacts' they anticipated when they originally designed each of intervention.…”

Section: Stage 1: Assemble Current Knowledge Base (Induction)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Research on Grand Challenges: Adopting an Abductive Experimentation Methodology

Kistruck

Shantz

2021

Organization Studies

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There has been a growing interest amongst management scholars in conducting research on Grand Challenges. Despite recognizing that studying such highly complex and uncertain phenomena likely requires more unconventional approaches, there has been very little methodological guidance provided to interested scholars. Drawing upon our own Grand Challenge projects undertaken over the past decade, we put forward a methodological approach we term ‘abductive experimentation’. Such an approach is an action-oriented process of inquiry that cycles between generating ‘doubt’ and generating ‘belief’. More specifically, abductive experimentation iterates between induction, abduction, and deduction to both generate and reconcile ‘surprising’ findings and causal mechanisms. While we submit abductive experimentation as a methodological approach particularly well suited to the study of Grand Challenges, we believe that the process depicted also provides a general roadmap for scholars seeking to dismantle the artificial dualism between theory and practice.

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“…Business management can and should play a crucial role in addressing these grand challenges (Antonacopoulou, 2022;Ferraro et al, 2015;Markman et al, 2019;Marti, 2018). This requires responsible managers who are competent to build, run, and maintain an ethical, responsible, and sustainable economy (Laasch, 2021;PRME, 2007;Van der Byl et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Interdisciplinary Responsible Management Competence Framework: An Integrative Review of Ethics, Responsibility, and Sustainability Competences

2022

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At the centre of responsible management (RM) learning is the development of managerial competence for ethics, responsibility, and sustainability (ERS). Important contributions have been made from each: the ethics, responsibility, and sustainability disciplines. However, we are yet to integrate these disciplinary contributions into a comprehensive interdisciplinary RM competence framework that corresponds to the interdisciplinary nature of RM challenges. We address this priority in this paper and report on the findings of an integrative structured literature review of 224 management competence articles across the ERS disciplines. Our thematic template analysis has produced an interdisciplinary RM competence framework of three layers of personal, behavioural, and intellectual competences and independent and interdependent competence dimensions. The resulting 3 × 2 competence matrix framework accommodates 33 interdisciplinary ERS competence themes and 90 subthemes in the six competence domains of being and becoming, acting and interacting, knowing and thinking. To the RM discussion, we contribute an interdisciplinary competence framework that enables the development of responsible managers who tackle the inherently interdisciplinary issues of RM. To the competence discussion, we contribute the interdependent competence dimension and future research directions through the lens of response-ability.JBE Section: Business Ethics Learning and Education

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Responsible management of sustainability tensions: a paradoxical approach to grand challenges

Cited by 14 publications

References 0 publications

Green Gaps: Firm ESG Disclosure and Financial Institutions’ Reporting Requirements

Green Gaps: Firm ESG Disclosure and Financial Institutions’ Reporting Requirements

Research on Grand Challenges: Adopting an Abductive Experimentation Methodology

The Interdisciplinary Responsible Management Competence Framework: An Integrative Review of Ethics, Responsibility, and Sustainability Competences

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