Developing a Framework for Understanding the Personal Motivations of Sustainability Leaders

This study explores the initial and sustaining motivations that drive leaders to pursue sustainability as a profession or vocation. Exploratory interviews were conducted with 16 sustainability leaders in the Philippines working in sectors ranging from corporate to social enterprise, NGO, and academia. Findings from thematic analysis reveal significant life experiences that drive initial motivation, how feedback sustains motivation, and the importance of self-awareness and positive psychological factors in starting and sustaining their work or advocacy. A framework for understanding motivations is developed therein, drawing on themes extracted from the interviews, Stern’s Value-Belief-Norm Theory, and Authentic and Transformational Leadership theories. Recommendations are given on how motivation can be instigated and sustained, namely, by cultivating hope and other positive psychological factors, integrating experiential learning to develop awareness, connectedness, and empathy, and creating social support and enabling environments. Further research to develop an instrument for measuring sustainability leadership motivation, one that can inform sustainability education facilitators of the effectiveness of their programs in inspiring participants to take action, is also recommended

Industrial constructions of publics and public knowledge: a qualitative investigation of practice in the UK chemicals industry

This is a post print version of the article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below - © 2007 by SAGE PublicationsWhile the rhetoric of public engagement is increasingly commonplace within industry, there has been little research that examines how lay knowledge is conceptualized and whether it is really used within companies. Using the chemicals sector as an example, this paper explores how companies conceive of publics and "public knowledge," and how this relates to modes of engagement/communication with them. Drawing on qualitative empirical research in four companies, we demonstrate that the public for industry are primarily conceived as "consumers" and "neighbours," having concerns that should be allayed rather than as groups with knowledge meriting engagement. We conclude by highlighting the dissonance between current advocacy of engagement and the discourses and practices prevalent within industry, and highlight the need for more realistic strategies for industry/public engagement.Funding was received from the ESRC Science in Society Programme

An emerging template of CSR in Switzerland

This paper investigates current Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices of Swiss Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) with the aim to aggregate an underlying SME business model as value driver of Swiss CSR. To analyse these patterns this study conducted 30 interviews. A two-step Delphi process challenged the results and enabled the aggregation and visualisation of – L’EPOQuE – as emerging template of CSR. Overall, there is a strong emphasis on ownership, or to be precise, ownership-within-tradition. Family/middle class capitalism and the political/historical background of Switzerland are deciding as well, whereas size and capacities astonishingly seem to matter less. This generated some testable hypothesis, e.g., on how the Swiss SME model will be received in particular settings to which it is “exported”. Further, Swiss SMEs turned out to be genuine “social enterprises” so that the relevance of “social business planning” needs to be questioned, certainly as a novel idea in Switzerland. Overall, this study challenges the primacy of formal management systems to support CSR in companies, especially SMEs, and addresses critical moments at which the nexus between small businesses, Swiss society, and the state might be adjusted

CSR MAPPING: Swiss stakeholder salience, concerns, and ethics

Previous research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Switzerland has made few attempts to identify actual and potential stakeholders and their diverging contributions to this topic. Using stakeholder map methodology, showing power, urgency, legitimacy, and concerns of different actors, the paper investigates the current state of Swiss CSR. To derive this map, publicly available documents were explored, augmented by 27 interviews with key stakeholders (consumers, media, government, trade unions, Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs), banks, certifiers, and consultants) and management of different companies (Multinational Enterprises (MNEs), Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), and large national companies). Using MAXQDA, the quantified codes given for power, legitimacy, and urgency were transferred into stakeholder priorities or, in other words, into positions in the map. Further, the codes given in the interviews for different CSR interests and the results from the document analysis were linked between stakeholders. The identified concerns and priorities were quantitatively analysed in regard to centrality and salience using VennMaker.The paper found SMEs, MNEs, and cooperating NPOs as being the most significant stakeholders. Swiss CSR is therefore not primarily driven by regulators, market pressure, or customers. Further network parameters substantiated the importance of SMEs while following an unconventionally informal, but innovative, vibrant, and practical CSR approach, emerging for reasons alter than conventional agendas are supposed to evolve. In fact, the findings may point at a very different and highly sophisticated role businesses have adopted in Switzerland, manifesting in democratic decisions and abolished hierarchies, handshakes instead of formal contracts, and transparency in all respects (e.g. performance indicators, salaries, and bonuses). Hence, as a new stance and argument within CSR related research, this paper concludes that “informal” does not mean “weak”

Success in integrating conservation and development? A study from Zambia

Over the past decade, Zambia, like several other Southern African countries, has introduced community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) projects in several rural areas. These initiatives attempt to combine both conservation and development initiatives into an integrated approach, aimed at promoting rural development-based on natural resources as well as encouraging conservation awareness. This critical review examines the impact of the Luangwa Integrated Resource Development Project (LIRDP) at the community level. The research suggests that LIRDP has generally failed to achieve its conservation and development objectives and that the program has achieved few community benefits. The underlying causes of the project's shortcomings are discussed and corrective policy is suggested. By placing the survey findings into the wider debate about community-based conservation, the research has implications for rural development as well as community-based natural resource management

Varieties of capitalism and small business CSR: a comparative overview

Given the limited research on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises’ (SMEs) contribution to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and even scarcer research on Swiss SMEs, this paper helps to fill these gaps by enabling the identification of supra-national SME parameters. Thus, the paper investigates the current state of SME practices in Switzerland and across 15 other countries. Combining the degree to which SMEs demonstrate an explicit (or business case) approach or see CSR as an implicit moral activity with the assessment of their attributes for “variety of capitalism” defines the framework of this comparative analysis. To outline Swiss small business CSR patterns in particular, 40 SME owner-managers were interviewed. A secondary data analysis of studies from different countries laid groundwork for this comparative overview of small business CSR. The paper identifies Swiss small business CSR as driven by norms, values, and by the aspiration to contribute to society, thus, as an implicit part of the day-to-day business. Similar to most Central European, Mediterranean, Nordic, and Asian countries, explicit CSR is still very rare in Swiss SMEs. Astonishingly, also British and American SMEs follow this pattern in spite of their strong and distinctly liberal market economies. Though other findings show that nationality matters this research concludes that SME culture and an informal CSR agenda are strongly formative and superseding even forces of market economies, nationally cultural patterns, and language. Hence, classifications of countries by their market system, as found in the comparative capitalism literature, do not match the CSR practices in SMEs as they do not mirror the peculiarities of their business. This raises questions on the universality and generalisability of unmediated, explicit management concepts, especially in the context of small firms