What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Corporate sustainability confronts managers with tensions between complex economic, environmental, and social issues. Drawing on the literature on managerial cognition, corporate sustainability, and strategic paradoxes, we develop a cognitive framing perspective on corporate sustainability. We propose two cognitive frames—a business case frame and a paradoxical frame—and explore how differences between them in cognitive content and structure influence the three stages of the sensemaking process—that is, managerial scanning, interpreting, and responding with regard to sustainability issues. We explain how the two frames lead to differences in the breadth and depth of scanning, differences in issue interpretations in terms of sense of control and issue valence, and different types of responses that managers consider with regard to sustainability issues. By considering alternative cognitive frames, our argument contributes to a better understanding of managerial decision making regarding ambiguous sustainability issues, and it develops the underlying cognitive determinants of the stance that managers adopt on sustainability issues. This argument offers a cognitive explanation for why managers rarely push for radical change when faced with complex and ambiguous issues, such as sustainability, that are characterized by conflicting yet interrelated aspects.

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Cognitive Frames in Corporate Sustainability: Managerial Sensemaking with Paradoxical and Business Case Frames

The mainstream of the literature on corporate sustainability follows the win-win paradigm, according to which economic, environmental and social sustainability aspects can be achieved simultaneously; indeed, corporate sustainability has often been defined by the intersection of these three areas. However, given the multi-faceted and complex nature of sustainable development, we argue that trade-offs and conflicts in corporate sustainability are the rule rather than the exception. Turning a blind eye to trade-offs thus results in a limited perspective on corporate contributions to sustainable development. In order to overcome this situation, we propose an initial framework for the analysis of trade-offs in corporate sustainability. By doing so, we pursue two aims. First, the framework serves as a starting point for a more systematic analysis of trade-offs in corporate sustainability, as it identifies different levels and dimensions to characterize such trade-offs. Second, it serves to contextualize the contributions to this special issue on trade-offs in corporate sustainability. Based on the framework, we finally point to some promising avenues for future research on trade-offs in, and a more inclusive notion of, corporate sustainability.

Trade-offs in corporate sustainability: you can't have your cake and eat it

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate theoretical perspectives in sustainable supply
chain management (SSCM) and contributes to understanding the current state of research in the field
and its future development.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper conducts a structured literature review and aims at
mapping the use of theories in the field. The authors assess the current state of research, looking in
more details at popular theories, and propose possible future avenues for the field to develop.
Findings – Theory-building efforts in SSCM remain scarce, with the predominance of a few popular
imported macro theories (resource-based view (RBV), stakeholder theory and institutional theory)
having implications on the conceptualisation of SSCM and the topics researched to date. More
theoretical contributions can potentially emerge from the adoption of original methodologies, the
investigation of under-explored aspects of SSCM and the testing of recently developed frameworks.
Research limitations/implications – Drawing on the analysis the authors propose an overarching
map of popular theories in SSCM and define potential avenues towards the maturation of the discipline.
A number of propositions are offered to guide future research. This study constitutes a first step
towards understanding how theories in SSCM are developing and how SSCM has been conceptualised.
Originality/value – The originality of this paper lies in its analytical focus on theories in SSCM,
which have not been mapped to date.

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Theories in sustainable supply chain management: a structured literature review

This article aims to consolidate the psychological microfoundations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by taking stock and evaluating the recent surge of person-focused CSR research. With a systematic review, the authors identify, synthesize, and organize three streams of micro-CSR studies—focused on (i) individual drivers of CSR engagement, (ii) individual processes of CSR evaluations, and (iii) individual reactions to CSR initiatives—into a coherent behavioral framework. This review highlights significant gaps, methodological issues, and imbalances in the treatment of the three components in prior micro-CSR research. It uncovers the need to conceptualize how multiple drivers of CSR interact and how the plurality of mechanisms and boundary conditions that can explain individual reactions to CSR might be integrated theoretically. By organizing micro-CSR studies into a coherent framework, this review also reveals the lack of connections within and between substreams of micro-CSR research; to tackle them, this article proposes an agenda for further research, focused on six key challenges.

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The psychological microfoundations of corporate social responsibility: A person-centric systematic review

This article examines the explicit and implicit corporate social responsibility (CSR) framework and its implications for leadership style, in a major banking institution. Evidence for existence of the framework’s key concepts in relation to leadership styles was explored through the self-reported sensemaking of leaders charged with CSR programme introduction. Qualitative data analysis indicated that explicit CSR is linked to an autocratic leadership style, whereas implicit CSR is more closely aligned with emergent and authentic styles. Although our results reinforced key aspects of the explicit and implicit CSR framework, they demonstrated conflicting systems of both CSR and leadership within our case organisation and highlighted the difficulty in categorising such a complex concept as CSR according to specific frameworks. Overall, our data suggest that the leadership styles, needed to successfully implement explicit and implicit CSR programmes, are in conflict. Given our finding that these CSR systems can coincide within one organisation, we suggest that the debating style of transformational leadership may be the required linchpin.

Leadership Styles and CSR Practice: An Examination of Sensemaking, Institutional Drivers and CSR Leadership

This paper considers the complex relationships between the human and ecological elements of sustainability that exist in the minds of stakeholders and argues that a sensemaking approach allows these to be better understood and compared. This is supported by the results of a study, set in a fi nancial institution, exploring the relationships between these non-fi nancial elements of corporate sustainability. The viewpoints of middle management, branch and contact centre employees, executives, a community consultative council, suppliers and a community partner of a large Australian bank obtained in in-depth interviews are analysed and compared utilizing an innovative methodology of semantic analysis. We fi nd that these stakeholders’ perceptions of the human–ecological relationship differ by group, containing different mixes of trade-offs and synergies between the non-fi nancial elements of corporate sustainability. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

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A Sensemaking Approach to Trade-Offs and Synergies Between Human and Ecological Elements of Corporate Sustainability

This article aims to explore factors that influence organizational learning around sustainability. For our theoretical framework, we take a sensemaking approach to the multilevel 4I model of organizational learning. Through our pilot study of the case of the higher education sector in Australia, we explore the particular challenges that sustainability poses in terms of integrating new ideas at the group and organizational levels. Our findings suggest that the use of knowledge sharing and generation tools in the form of selected boundary objects can promote the development of communities of practice and hence those integration and institutionalization processes described by the 4I framework when it is applied to sustainability. In specifically allowing for knowledge development and transfer across knowledge and disciplinary boundaries, our revised version of the 4I model has wide relevance to learning around sustainability in any organizational context.

Organizational Learning and the Sustainability Community of Practice: The Role of Boundary Objects

Leadership styles and CSR practice: an examination of sensemaking, institutional drivers and CSR leadership

Most research on ethical consumerism has attempted to describe the ethical consumer but not to understand the ethical purchasing process. The ethical purchasing process is of particular interest to marketers as it is characterised by a significant words/deeds inconsistency. In this paper we explore the reasons for the low translation of intention? to behaviour and propose modifications to existing conceptual models of ethical purchasing that could result in better prediction of ethical purchasing behaviour. In particular, we draw on models developed by Davies et al. (2002), Osterhus (1997), and the Schwartz (1977) norm activation model.

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Tamsin Angus-Leppan

Papers

Leadership Styles and CSR Practice: An Examination of Sensemaking, Institutional Drivers and CSR Leadership

A Sensemaking Approach to Trade-Offs and Synergies Between Human and Ecological Elements of Corporate Sustainability

Organizational Learning and the Sustainability Community of Practice: The Role of Boundary Objects

Leadership styles and CSR practice: an examination of sensemaking, institutional drivers and CSR leadership

A conceptual model of ethical purchasing