Table of Contents Guest Collaborative Editorial
Our Professions, Organizations, and Societies Are Addressing Sustainability Management: A "Retro-Prospective" Collaborative Editorial on Why We Need "More-Better, Soon"
Mark Starik and Denis Collins
Organization & Environment September 2014 27: 207-214
Welcome to our third Organization & Environment (O&E) collaborative editorial. In this issue, in addition to six excellent sustainability management scholarly contributions, we are pleased to feature authors from all the articles in a volume published about 20 years ago related to that sustainability management O&E theme, titled Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy (referred to in this editorial as RCSPP) and subtitled "Sustaining the Natural Environment: Empirical Studies on the Interface Between Nature and Organizations." The volume, published by JAI Press in 1995, was coedited by Denis Collins (now at Edgewood College in Madison, WI, USA) and one of this journal's coeditors, Mark Starik. Our intention in this O&E collaborative editorial is to highlight sustainability management research conducted both by some newer authors and by those who helped pioneer these efforts. Hopefully, we are providing a glimpse of how the latter topics have developed and where they are headed, with the intent of informing today's researchers on how sustainability management can be advanced in some potentially effective ways in the future.
http://oae.sagepub.com/content/27/3/207.full.pdf+html
Essay
Organizing Sustainability and the Problem of Scale: Local, Global, or Fractal?
Robert Perey
Organization & Environment September 2014 27: 215-222
Organizing for sustainability seeks systems change at a global level. This objective is captured in the phrase "Think global, act local"; the assumption is that global change will happen through summative local action. This article argues that local action will not necessarily produce systems change and that a new scale-independent categorization for interacting with systems is needed. I introduce the concept of fractal as a useful tool for engaging with problems of scale
in organizational settings and argue that change for sustainability needs to be framed as a fractal narrative in order to facilitate implementation success.
http://oae.sagepub.com/content/27/3/215.full.pdf+html
Articles
The New Heretics: Hybrid Organizations and the Challenges They Present to Corporate Sustainability
Nardia Haigh and Andrew J. Hoffman
Organization & Environment September 2014 27: 223-241
Corporate sustainability has become mainstream; reaching into all areas of business management. Yet despite this progress, large-scale social and ecological issues continue to worsen. In this article, we examine how corporate sustainability has been enacted as a concept that supports the dominant beliefs of strategic management rather than challenging them to shift business beyond the unsustainable status quo. Against this backdrop, we consider how hybrid organizations
(organizations at the interface between for-profit and nonprofit sectors that address social and ecological issues) are operating at odds with beliefs embedded in strategic management and corporate sustainability literatures. We offer six propositions that define hybrid organizations based on challenges they present to the beliefs embedded in these literatures and position them as new heretics of strategic management and corporate sustainability orthodoxy. We conclude
with the implications of this heretical force for theory and suggest directions for future research.
http://oae.sagepub.com/content/27/3/223.full.pdf+html
Past, Present, or Future? Managers' Temporal Orientations and Corporate Climate Action in the Swedish Electricity Sector
Steven Sarasini and Merle Jacob
Organization & Environment September 2014 27: 242-262
Existing research shows that corporate climate actions are the result of public policies and a limited range of other factors that can influence business strategy. Managers are depicted as lacking agency in that they passively adhere to "drivers" of climate actions, with little room for autonomy. This study takes issue with such a view by examining agency vis-à-vis managers' temporal orientations. In particular, we seek to examine why managers adopt certain temporal
orientations and not others in the context of the climate issue and Swedish electricity production. We find that whilst managers are predominantly focused on future policy developments, they also deliberate over, reconstruct, and in some cases actively refute other pressures for climate action that were borne in the past, feature in the present, and which relate to alternative future projections. We further examine reasons for such behavior.
http://oae.sagepub.com/content/27/3/242.full.pdf+html
Reducing the Environmental Bootprint? Competition and Regulation in the Greening of Europe's Defense Sector
Daniel Fiott
Organization & Environment September 2014 27: 263-278
As part of the European Union's (EU) renewable energy and climate targets and its drive for sustainability, energy efficiency, and environmental protection, various elements of the defensesector in Europe are undertaking their own green initiatives. This is particularly important as the defense sector is one of the biggest public consumers of energy in the EU. This article asks to what extent, how, and why elements of the defense sector in Europe have engaged in greening. By examining four categories in a relevant typology of greening-ceremonial greening, holistic greening, regulatory greening, and competitive greening-this article argues that the defense sector in Europe is far from being a holistic green actor. Rather, Europe's militaries, defense institutions, and defense firms exhibit a strong sense of self-interest in greening-embodied in defense market competition and regulation-and tend toward delegating green innovation to the market within an increasingly regulated context.
http://oae.sagepub.com/content/27/3/263.full.pdf+html
Ride On! Mobility Business Models for the Sharing Economy
Boyd Cohen and Jan Kietzmann
Organization & Environment September 2014 27: 279-296
The public perception of shared goods has changed substantially in the past few years. While co-owning properties has been widely accepted for a while (e.g., timeshares), the notion of sharing bikes, cars, or even rides on an on-demand basis is just now starting to gain widespread popularity. The emerging "sharing economy" is particularly interesting in the context of cities that struggle with population growth and increasing density. While sharing vehicles promises to reduce inner-city traffic, congestion, and pollution problems, the associated business models are not without problems themselves. Using agency theory, in this article we discuss existing shared mobility business models in an effort to unveil the optimal relationship between service providers (agents) and the local governments (principals) to achieve the common objective of sustainable mobility. Our findings show private or public models are fraught with conflicts, and point to a merit model as the most promising alignment of the strengths of agents and principals.
http://oae.sagepub.com/content/27/3/279.full.pdf+html
Restorative Counter-Spacing for Academic Sustainability
David R. Jones
Organization & Environment September 2014 27: 297-314
By combining pertinent theoriesfrom environmental psychology and human geography, this article proposes a socio-spatial framework of principles, which could be used by academic actors, to reflexively embody and critically enact a bio-cultural connection. It contributes to an emerging line of research, which explores the importance of deepening attachments to local natural settings. By reflecting on an auto-ethnographic, personal account of a "Whale Watching"
experience and indicative international university initiatives such as the "Oberlin Project" in the United States and the "University in a Garden" in Malaysia, the article illustrates these principles as both an institutional and an individual signpost for academic sustainability.
http://oae.sagepub.com/content/27/3/297.full.pdf+html