Reactivity to Sustainability Metrics: A Configurational Study of Motivation and Capacity

Abstract

Previous research on reactivity—defined as changing organizational behaviour to better conform to the criteria of measurement in response to being measured—has found significant variation in company responses toward sustainability metrics. We propose that reactivity is driven by dialogue, motivation, and capacity in a configurational way. Empirically, we use fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to analyze company responses to the sustainability index FTSE4Good. We find evidence of complementary and substitute effects between motivation and capacity. Based on these effects, we develop a typology of reactivity to sustainability metrics, which also theorizes the use of metrics as tools for performance feedback and the building of calculative capacity. We show that when reactivity is studied configurationally, we can identify previously underacknowledged types of responses. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications for studying and using sustainability metrics as governance tools for responsible behaviour.

New trends in codes of ethics: Czech business ethics preferences by the dawn of COVID-19

“…To put it differently, the global society appears to be increasingly concerned with ethics (Sroka & Szántó, 2018). European businesses follow this trend and demonstrate a strong reactivity to objective measurements (Slager et al, 2021) as well as subjective perceptions of a business by stakeholders and update their Codes accordingly (Balcerzak & MacGregor Pelikánová, 2020). However, this does not mean at all that Codes of European businesses have to be homogenous or similar, especially since the perception of moral responsibility varies considerably across industries (Balcerzak & MacGregor Pelikánová, 2020), as well as jurisdictions (Fura et al, 2017).…”

“…Their violation may lead to certain sanctions and other negative consequences, perhaps a lack of personal appraisal or negative publicity (Kaptein, 2011;Oladinrin & Ho, 2016). After all, a Code should both inform the public about proper behavior and incentivize the pertinent business towards such a proper behavior (Slager et al, 2021). Consequently, Codes have a genuine potential to model good behavior for the business and others by self-regulation, thus reducing undesirable demands for external legislative regulation of businesses (Babri et al, 2019).…”

“…Further, they consider extrinsic factors, perhaps the need to communicate with the outside universe and convey to outsiders the message regarding inside business values (Cerchia & Piccolo, 2019). After all, the partnership and collaboration should be integral phenomena of businesses in the 21st century (Van Tulder, 2017;Van Tulder et al, 2016) and, similarly to other documents, Codes should be the outcome of an ongoing multi-stakeholder discussion, including the reaction to metrics aka metrics reactivity, and the general opinion (Slager et al, 2021).…”

Business strategies of companies with a longevity of 300 years or longer in Japan: A concept model

“…Moreover, the developed framework is based on the data of owners' perceptions of ten long-established companies, which should be verified with some more detailed analyses such as co-occurrence analysis with Jaccard indexes as well as a hierarchical cluster analysis, which will help develop more robust implications for the relevant business stakeholders. Applying a quantitative approach for the survey data can also contribute to the designing of practical measurements with scales (Slager et al, 2020).…”

Assessment of the Results and Methodology of the Sustainable Development Index for Spanish Cities

“…Solid metrics and indicators are a practical sustainability measurement tool to assess progress and ensure achievement [5,6]. In 2017, the UN adopted a global framework of 247 indicators to assess progress in meeting the SDGs [7].…”