How do small businesses pursue sustainability? The role of collective agency for integrating planned and emergent strategy making

Abstract

Research on sustainability strategy in large corporations has shown that carefully planned strategies can address environmental and social concerns. However, we still lack clarity on how small businesses form sustainability strategies. Assuming that small businesses can-or should-carefully plan strategies is inappropriate considering that such organizations often lack the needed resources, foresight, and formalized decision-making structures. Building on the study of two craft breweries in Canada and Germany, we detail how a combination of planned and emergent actions enables owners, employees, and external stakeholders to jointly form strategic sustainability orientation. Developing these findings into an integrated activity-based model, we show the need to move beyond the dichotomy between planned and emergent strategizing. We contribute a human-centered perspective to the sustainability strategy literature and suggest that research should take the role of people in small businesses more seriously as here interpersonal relationships and collective agency are central in forming strategic sustainability orientation.

Craft beer – a systematic literature review and research agenda

“…Gatrell et al (2018) also analyzed examples promoting communities’ overall sustainability, where sharing the socio-spatial landscape through a connection to the place and region promotes sustainability. Luederitz et al (2021) study evidence that organizations can engage in sustainability through adaptive processes that should be open to change by adapting to the new sustainability priorities. Finally, Kubule et al (2016) set out from the assumption that this industry is intensive in energy consumption and analyzed the potential of improved energy efficiency, considered a barrier.…”

“…As the CB industry is characterized mainly by micro-producers with limited resources and investment capacity, the aim is to communicate and convey the message through stories, myths, journalists' opinions, brewers, bloggers and consumers, creating an own identity (Hede and Watne, 2013;Rice, 2016). Unlike industrial beer, which spends heavily on national campaigns, it is common for CB brands to make contact with the market through trade fairs and festivals, social networks, word-of-mouth, specialists' websites and specialized forums (Clemons et al, 2006;Mac an Bhaird et al, 2019;Toro-Gonz alez et al, 2014). In this sense, the study conducted by Järviniemi et al (2020) used data extracted from Twitter to gather market knowledge of CB internationalization.…”

“…At this point, Hoskins et al (2020) emphasize that brand "localness" generates performance advantages over national brands. Thus, intangible cultural heritage is reinforced with an innovative product, through a sense of place and its traditions, with a positive impact on the society and its sustainable development, using some local raw material (Alfeo et al, 2020;Feeney, 2017;Fletchall, 2016;Gatrell et al, 2018;Kraus et al, 2018;Mac an Bhaird et al, 2019).…”

“…CB is a product that has managed to gain its own identity (Verhaal et al, 2017) based on tradition, creativity, authenticity and local community support (Fletchall, 2016;Kraus et al, 2018;Mac an Bhaird et al, 2019;Feeney, 2017). It responds to consumers' desires for hyperdifferentiation (Dodd et al, 2018).…”

“…The reasons for its success are related to authenticity, taste experience, avoiding the mainstream (G omez-Corona et al, 2016a(G omez-Corona et al, , 2016b, the preference for quality natural products (Malone and Lusk, 2017a;Santisi and Sciacca, 2018), the need for seeking knowledge (Koch and Sauerbronn, 2019), curiosity, and the consumption context (Regis et al, 2017). CB firms also opt for alternative communication channels, above all low-cost ones (Hede and Watne, 2013;Mac an Bhaird et al, 2019;Rice, 2016), directed to a target with great potential, formed of younger consumers with higher education and greater purchasing power (Carvalho et al, 2018;Murray and O'Neill, 2012).…”