Strategic Decisions between Short-Term Profit and Sustainability

Abstract

Sustainability has evolved into one of the key topics for organizations and organizational researchers alike. To meet changing societal demands, organizations have to adapt their long-term strategies and incorporate environmental and social aspects into their product offerings and decision-making. However, at the same time companies must satisfy short-term profitability interests and demands from shareholders. An organization’s sustainability commitment, strategy, or view is impacted by several influential factors, e.g., by the top management commitment or stakeholder integration. These factors have largely been studied individually without linking them. As such, the following study aims at creating a holistic view and framework for organizational influences and on sustainability. The framework is validated by a comparison to industrial practice in interviews with sustainability managers from the chemical and automobile industry, which are both highly relevant in the context of sustainability. Interview results suggest that the identified influential factors attributed to the four framework layers organization, top management, project team and project are relevant for industrial representatives. The view on and impact of specific influential factors can vary between companies and industries. The study further gives insights into the actual status and future direction of the management of corporate sustainability (CS) in practice.

Do independent, female and specialist directors promote eco‐innovation and eco‐design in agri‐food firms?

“…In this scenario, managers may show an aversion to carrying out these projects due to the volume of resources they require and the limited effect on income generation as a result of the increase in the price of new products (Haessler, 2020). In addition, eco‐innovation and eco‐design require a differentiation policy that may not fit into the current corporate strategy.…”

Management Styles and Decision-Making: Pro-Ecological Strategy Approach

“…When management is considered through an entrepreneurial and managerial decision logic [4], its practical aspects are more visible [5,72]. At the present, environmental protection is an important topic for a business practice, which needs to formulate a pro-ecological strategy and decision-making [73].…”

“…Researchers indicate many factors initiating environmental initiatives, resulting from external pressures [110] and internal conditions [111]. Most often, decision-makers in an organization make choices about environmental strategy [4] influenced by factors such as risk management and assessment of market opportunities, resistance to change, corporate reputation, market growth, product design and development, operational efficiency, capital budgeting, costing, human resource management, and the possibility of implementing an environmental strategy [25,69,111,112]. Technological progress and inventions (eco-innovations) are also key factors for the green performance of organizations [104,105].…”

“…Modern organizations have to survive in a rapidly changing, competitive business environment, protect the natural environment [1] and act responsibly in society [2]. They also create, through decisions, their pro-ecological strategies [3][4][5][6]. This research considers the following definition of pro-ecological strategy-a "structural strategy aimed at changing the circumstances in which behavioral decisions are made to protect the natural environment, such as the provision of recycling facilities" [7].…”

“…In this literature review article, we set future research assumptions by focusing on the analysis of explicit components of the decision-making process [24]-i.e., the choices [8] and the key green decision-makers [4]. Therefore, this paper is an overview of some of the most common management styles [18,23] combined with the decision-making factors from a sustainable development and greening business approach [25].…”