strong notion of sustainability may be especially challenging for leaders working within industries that favor an instrumental CSR approach or that are used to adapting to institutional pressures rather than proactively making change. Lastly, since the findings are indicating how internal motivation can be a key driver towards a strong sustainability approach, leaders in organizations without a higher meaning connected to their purpose may find it challenging to get internal support for their sustainability initiatives, since there may be a latent preference for business-as-usual.
Hypothesizing about potential benefits and challenges connected with the regenerative leadership approach helps understand the complexity of aligning an organizational with a stronger notion of sustainability.
understanding of a field, that in its essence is extremely complex (Metcalf & Benn, 2013; Reinecke
& Ansari, 2016). Secondly, it may help generate the foundation needed to move towards stronger notions of sustainability, by giving business professionals and leaders a way to identify potential shortcomings in their organizational approach to sustainability, as well as identify areas for improvement. Thirdly, it may help avoid the exhaustion of the concept which seems to prevail both amongst the research participants (Appendix C, D, I) and scholars (Metcalf & Benn, 2013; Montiel
& Delgado-Ceballos, 2014; Sjåfjell, 2018).
Reflecting on this, I will attempt to synthesize the contemporary view of sustainability explored in the literature review with the research participants views on sustainability, to propose a new tentative framework for the assessment of organizational sustainability. The tentative model consists of five distinct elements that should be considered when leaders determine the organizational degree of sustainability: a) Embeddedness, b) Strength, c) Perspective, d) Stakeholder Participation and e) Scope. As advocated for in the literature review (e.g., Landrum, 2018; Mang & Reed, 2012), the elements are not static but contain a continuum that represents how an organization can move from a weak to a strong sustainability approach. As the components of each element move towards a stronger understanding, the chances of overcoming TBD is expected to increase (Dyllick & Muff, 2016). Rather than producing an either-or result pertaining to the organizational sustainability, the model is intended to assist leaders and business practitioners identify and discuss potential areas where the organizational approach to sustainability may be improved, leading to a more nuanced understanding of sustainability. Below I will briefly explain each element, as well as argue for their inclusion and relevance in the model.
Figure 5: tentative model for assessment of organizational sustainability.
Embeddedness represents to what extend sustainability is an integrated or peripheral aspect within the organization. By integrating sustainability issues within the core operations, organizations go beyond social responsiveness, to proactively creating value for society at large. This is evident in the empirical data, as integrating sustainability within the organizational core rather than having sustainability considerations in an isolated silo, is seen as a vital condition amongst research participants. This also corresponds to the review of the literature on contemporary sustainability perspectives that indicated how integrating sustainability into multiple aspects of an organization is perceived as a condition for an ambitious strategy (Landrum, 2018; Sjåfjell, 2018). Treating sustainability as a peripheral add-on may likely result in an instrumental CSR approach, where organizational engagement becomes responsive to external pressures and driven by compliance (Pless et al., 2012). An example of an instrumental approach would be organizations that engage in organizational environmental citizen behavior (OECB), rather than integrating sustainability concerns in the main organizational operations.
Scope refers to how broadly an organization deals with sustainability, e.g., if it only includes the environmental perspective or if takes a more holistic approach. To assist in determining the scope of the organizational sustainability the triple bottom line may be useful. However, as the findings
suggest, the scope should also take personal prosperity considerations into account, a component that often seems to be overlooked. Another way of assessing the scope of an organizations sustainable practices could be by utilizing the Tripe Top Line (TTL), which is about enhancing the well-being of nature and culture while generating economic value (McDonough & Braungart, 2010). The TTL thus represents the kind of sensemaking which the research participants expressed, where they perceive money as a tool for tackling societal problems, rather than an end goal.
Stakeholder participation concerns the degree of inclusion that decision-makers seek when making organizational decisions. Ceremonial involvement means that only a handful of stakeholders are included, and that the purpose primarily is to increase the social license to operate through the illusion of collaboration and joint decision-making. Co-creation on the other hand refers to taking in more perspectives by giving multiple relevant stakeholders the chance to be heard and the opportunity to participate in the decision-making. The importance of this element emerged in the data analysis and is supported by authors who advocate for a more stakeholder oriented approach (Freeman, 2015;
Fuller, 2010). While this thesis primarily is focusing on internal stakeholder participation, ideally all relevant stakeholders inside and outside the organization would be considered (Pless et al., 2012).
The element of Perspective seems unavoidable when assessing organizations sustainability approach, as it concerns to what extend the global macro-level conditions are included. A weak perspective entails that organizations deal with sustainability in an inside-out manner, meaning that their decisions are based on what is good for the organization and not on the actual state of their surrounding environment (du Plessis, 2012). A strong perspective on the other hand means realizing TBD and the global conditions and attempting to align the organizational practices with these considerations. The data analysis suggests that having a long-term perspective, searching for the newest knowledge and constantly re-evaluating organizational practices against this knowledge may help organizations move towards a stronger perspective. Assisting the evaluation of the organizational sustainability perspective, it may be relevant to include Du Plessis (2012) three key assumptions.
The last element of the model is Strength, which can help evaluate if organizational practices and initiatives focus on harm reduction, e.g., treating symptoms, or if they proactively seek to repair existing damage to systems. As global temperatures are expected to rise until 2033 even if most of the worlds CO2-emissions stopped today (Samset et al., 2020; Sim, 2020), the need to regenerate natural systems (e.g., Du Plessis & Brandon, 2015; Raworth, 2017) and avoiding triggering the earths tipping points (Mcsweeney, 2020) are essential considerations for organizations seeking to transition towards a strong sustainability approach. Therefore, organizations with an ambitious approach to
sustainability need align with a regenerative notion of sustainability by becoming increasingly proactive.
By evaluating these elements together, the model presents a new way for leaders to assess and communicate about organizational sustainability. Rather than a static notion of an organization as either sustainable or unsustainable, it accommodates the call for a dynamic understanding (du Plessis, 2012, 2012; Van Marrewijk & Werre, 2003), by presenting a continuum across five elements that can give a nuanced indication of the overall sustainability approach. Noting that dealing with sustainability is extremely complex and may present wicked problems for even committed organizations (Batie, 2008; Reinecke & Ansari, 2016), it must be noted that this model does not take potential adverse consequences between the elements into consideration. Nonetheless, by combining theoretical ideas with empirical findings, the model may help move sustainability away from being a floating signifier and create a strong starting point for future researchers to bring a valuable nuance to the conversation on organizational sustainability.