/pdf/research-design-qualitative-quantitative-and-mixed-methods-1m92m1x5gg.pdf

Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches

Historically, management theory has ignored the constraints imposed by the biophysical (natural) environment. Building upon resource-based theory, this article attempts to fill this void by proposing a natural-resource-based view of the firm—a theory of competitive advantage based upon the firm's relationship to the natural environment. It is composed of three interconnected strategies: pollution prevention, product stewardship, and sustainable development. Propositions are advanced for each of these strategies regarding key resource requirements and their contributions to sustained competitive advantage.

A natural resource-based view of the firm

Prosperity without Growth is a 107-plus page report by Prof. Tim Jackson, Univ. of Surrey, England, and published in March 2009 by the Sustainable Development Commission, an executive non-departmental body wholly owned by the British Government. The full report is available on-line at Sustainable Development Commission, Prosperity without Growth, as is an 8-page summary. What follows is my 4-page summary in which I have numbered the main points for reference purposes. John R. Bermingham, 7/12/09. Please send reactions to berm-j@nilenet.com.

For a Prosperity without Growth

Nowadays, the buzzwords for organizations to be prepared for the competitive environment’s challenges are sustainability, digitalization, resilience and agility. However, despite the fact that these concepts have come into common use at the level of both scholars and practitioners, the nature of the relation between sustainability and resilience has not yet been sufficiently clarified. Above all, there is still no evidence of what factors determine greater resilience to change in an organization that also wants to be more sustainable, especially in times of crisis and discontinuity. This research aims to explore from a theoretical point of view, through the construction of a conceptual model, how these dimensions interact to help the business to become strategically resilient by leveraging digitization and agility as enablers. A new view of resilience arises from the study, which goes beyond the well-known ability to absorb or adapt to adversity, to also include a strategic attribute that could help companies capture change-related opportunities to design new ways of doing business under stress. A key set of strategically agile processes, enabled by digitalization, creates strategic resilience that also includes a proactive, opportunity-focused attitude in the face of change. Strategic resilience to lead to organizational sustainability must be understood as a multi-domain concept quite similar to the holistic view of sustainability: environment, economy and society. Finally, the research offers a set of propositions and a theoretical framework that can be empirically validated.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/2052/pdf

Thriving, Not Just Surviving in Changing Times: How Sustainability, Agility and Digitalization Intertwine with Organizational Resilience

The purpose of this paper is to analyze circular business models of Brazilian companies.,The authors analyzed 105 business models of adopting companies from the perspective of the circularity of resources. These were classified as analytical sector category, business model design aligned with sustainability, sustainable practices adopted, level of maturity of business models and determinants of the circularity of resources.,The results show that companies belonging to the service sector predominate, which, above all, offer the virtualization of processes, sharing, ecological products, socially responsible and emphasis on recycling. Of these, 92.38 percent were already aligned with the sustainability assumptions, which contribute decisively to the operationalization in a circular perspective. Therefore, the materialization of the circular economy (CE) in Brazil is occurring, although there is potential for a stronger engagement with the determinants of the CE, especially in the perspective of the biological cycle and in the short cycles of technical levels.,In addition, the authors promote advances in the maturity levels of business models to optimize the optimal level, where processes are predictable, critically analyzed and continuously improved.

Circular business models: level of maturity

Purpose
– Businesses are always seeking resilient strategies so they can weather unpredictable competitive environments. One source of unpredictability is the unsustainability of commerce's environmental, economic or social impacts and the limitations this places on businesses. Another is poor resilience causing erroneous and unexpected outputs. Companies prospering long-term must have both resilience and sustainability, existing in a symbiotic state. The purpose of this paper is to explore the two concepts and their relationship, their combined benefits and propose an approach for supporting decision makers to proactively build both characteristics.

Design/methodology/approach
– The paper looks at businesses as complex adaptive systems, how their resilience and sustainability can be defined and how these might be exhibited. It then explores how they can be combined in practice.

Findings
– The two qualities are related but have different purposes, moreover resilience has two major forms related to timescales. Both kinds of resilience are identified as key for delivering sustainability, yet the reverse is also found to be true. Both are needed to deliver either and to let businesses flourish.

Practical implications
– Although the ideal state of resilient sustainability is difficult to define or achieve, pragmatic ways exist to deliver the right direction of change in organisational decisions. A novel approach to this is explored based on transition engineering and robustness engineering.

Originality/value
– This paper links resilience and sustainability explicitly and develops a holistic pragmatic approach for working through their implications in strategic decision making.

Surviving or Flourishing? Integrating business resilience and sustainability

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report the results of testing a new approach to strategic sustainability and resilience – Sustainable Resilient Strategic Decision-Support (SuReSDS™). 

Design/methodology/approach
 The approach was developed and tested using action-research case studies at industrial companies. It successfully allowed the participants to capture different types of value affected by their choices, optimise each strategy’s resilience against different future scenarios and compare the results to find a “best” option. 

Findings
 SuReSDS™ enabled a novel integration of environmental and social sustainability into strategy by considering significant risks or opportunities for an enhanced group of stakeholders. It assisted users to identify and manage risks from different kinds of sustainability-related uncertainty by applying resilience techniques. Users incorporated insights into real-world strategies. 
Research limitations/implications
 Since the case studies and test organisations are limited in number, generalisation from the results is difficult and requires further research. 

Practical implications
 The approach enables companies to utilise in-house and external experts more effectively to develop sustainable and resilient strategies. 

Originality/value
 The research described develops theories linking sustainability and resilience for organisations, particularly for strategy, to provide a new consistent, rigorous and flexible approach for applying these theories. The approach has been tested successfully and benefited real-world strategy decisions.

Putting resilient sustainability into strategy decisions – case studies

Whilst some pioneer businesses have integrated sustainability into their fundamental strategic decisions this can be a difficult task. Our recent review indicates a blend of both sustainability and resilience is needed, to ensure the reliable synergy of reduced impacts and improved performance which make up sustainable business. This is supported by recent evidence that organisations which do implement such Resilient Sustainability flourish compared to their peers, by benefiting from better risk awareness and avoidance, reduced costs, maintained access to investment, flexible solutions and improved ability to exploit opportunities. However not much detailed help is available for less well-resourced firms on how to implement such an integration and access those benefits. The paper reports on the development and testing of a new generic flexible approach to decision-support which aims to integrate sustainability and resilience into strategic processes. It is based on techniques from complex systems engineering and influenced by best business practice such as Porter and Kramer’s Creating Shared Value. This allows decision-makers and their teams to approach commercial and technology strategy formation in a new structured way, to identify gaps in their knowledge and create more resilient options which better balance people, planet and profit. The research uses case studies to test the approach, within Ford Motor Company and other organisational strategy contexts. The paper summarises the findings to date, including user feedback and evidence for how the approach can deliver increased capability for managing risks and uncertainties and thus improve an organisation’s strategic performance.

Julie Winnard

Papers

Surviving or Flourishing? Integrating business resilience and sustainability

Putting resilient sustainability into strategy decisions – case studies

Finding Balanced Synergies - Putting Resilient Sustainability into Business and Technical Strategy