Colleagues: We are pleased to announce the availability of the September 2016 issue of Organization & Environment is now available at:
Below is the Table of Contents with article abstracts. We encourage you to communicate with the authors of any papers in which you may be interested.
J. Alberto Aragon-Correa
Organization & Environment
Volume 29 Number 3
Collaborative Guest Editorial
Envisioning, Enacting, and Enjoying Sustainability: Three Unique Sustainability Academic/Practitioner Perspectives, One Emerging Reality?
By Amy K. Townsend, Ralph Meima, and Mark Starik
Organization & Environment September 2016 29: 255-263, doi:10.1177/1086026616664183
Articles
Business Models for Sustainability: A Co-Evolutionary Analysis of Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Transformation
By Stefan Schaltegger, Florian Lüdeke-Freund, and Erik G. Hansen
Organization& Environment September 2016 29: 264-289, first published on February 25, 2016 doi:10.1177/1086026616633272
The relevance of business models for corporate performance in general and corporate sustainability in particular has been widely acknowledged in the literature while sustainable entrepreneurship research has started to explore contributions to the sustainability transformation of markets and society. Particularities of the business models of sustainable niche market pioneers have been identified in earlier research, but little is known about the dynamic role of business models for sustainable entrepreneurship processes aiming at upscaling ecologically and socially beneficial niche models or sustainability upgrading of conventional mass market players. Informed by evolutionary economics, we develop a theoretical framework to analyze co-evolutionary business model development for sustainable niche pioneers and conventional mass market players aiming at the sustainability transformation of markets. Core evolutionary processes of business model variation, selection and retention, and evolutionary pathways are identified to support structured analyses of the dynamics between business model innovation and sustainability transformation of markets.
How Firm Responses to Natural Disasters Strengthen Community Resilience: A Stakeholder-Based Perspective
By Brent McKnight and Martina K. Linnenluecke
Organization& Environment September 2016 29: 290-307, first published on February 8, 2016 doi:10.1177/1086026616629794
Natural disasters challenge a community's resilience. Prior community resilience research has focused on the responses of public entities, such as emergency services and government agencies. However, for-profit firms are also engaged in responding to natural disasters. This article explores two aspects of how firms participate in building community resilience to natural disasters: First, the article synthesizes research on business continuity management, corporate philanthropy, and emerging evidence that firms engage in the business of disaster response into a coherent typology of for-profit firm responses to natural disasters. Second, the article draws on stakeholder theory to distinguish between firms adopting firm-centric postures (focused inwardly on firm outcomes) versus firms adopting community-centric postures (focused outwardly on stakeholders), with respect to responding to natural disasters. We theorize relationships between firm- versus community-centric postures and different community resilience outcomes. The article concludes by discussing contributions to stakeholder theory and outlines future research directions.
Third-Party Certifications and the Role of Auditing Policies in Sustainability: The Time and Space of Materiality Within Combined Audits
By Armelle Mazé, Myriam Aït-Aïssa, Sophie Mayer, and Nathalie Verjux
Organization& Environment September 2016 29: 308-331, first published on February 2, 2016 doi:10.1177/1086026615628034
In the European context, the proliferation of private agrienvironmental certifications leads many farmers to become subject to increasing controls by either independent, private third-party certifying bodies or public authorities. The aim of this study is thus to explore the potential benefits of and the organizational limits to the use of combined audits when farmers are involved in multiple private certifications. Our analysis especially emphasizes the role of time structuring during the audit process, the transition from checklist toward risk-based auditing and the role of knowledge artefacts for the reliability of the audit process and the certification. Our study offers insights on the possible transformative role of auditing policies in the governance of agrienvironmental certified schemes toward more sustainability in agriculture
Strategy Textbooks and the Environment Construct: Are the Texts Enabling Strategists to Realize Sustainable Outcomes?
By Nick Barter
Organization& Environment September 2016 29: 332-366, first published on March 18, 2016 doi:10.1177/1086026616638130
A central claim within the sustainable development literature is that realizing sustainable outcomes requires a move away from a conceptualization of the environment as a separate, bounded, independently given entity. In this article, the conceptualization of the environment within best-selling strategy textbooks in the United Kingdom and Australia in 2011 is reviewed. The article focuses on strategy textbooks as it is argued that corporate strategists are key actors in the realization of sustainable outcomes, and that the constructs those individuals may learn from texts are potentially key to the realization of sustainable outcomes. The findings show that the constructs in the textbooks offer a sclerotic, dehumanized view of the environment that is partitioned into external and internal categories by an organizational boundary-a limitation, it is argued, that will not foster sustainable outcomes.
Lack of Stakeholder Influence on Pollution Prevention: A Developing Country Perspective
By Asadul Hoque, Amelia Clarke, and Lei Huang
Organization& Environment September 2016 29: 367-385, first published on January 4, 2016 doi:10.1177/1086026615623057
In a developing country context, this study explores environmental awareness, stakeholder influence strategies, and pollution prevention roles among 11 local, civil society groups (e.g., environmental nongovernmental organizations [NGOs] is one grouping; media and press is another grouping). A theoretical framework that builds on the social movement literature and is more inclusive of a developing country context is offered. In essence, awareness-raising is also considered a stakeholder influence strategy. Based on surveys conducted in Chittagong, Bangladesh, the results of this empirical study show that 10 of the 11 groups were environmentally aware; however, only the environmental NGOs were willing to influence the other groups. The environmental NGOs were actively raising awareness, but they were not directly influencing firms or the federal government on pollution prevention. These findings challenge the generalization of current stakeholder influence theory to a developing country context and raise concerns about the capacity of local civil society to encourage pollution prevention.