KEDGE Business School

About: KEDGE Business School is a education organization based out in Talence, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supply chain & Sustainability. The organization has 275 authors who have published 1328 publications receiving 22209 citations. The organization is also known as: KBS & KEDGE BS.

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

Abstract: 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.

Tensions in Corporate Sustainability: Towards an Integrative Framework

Abstract: This paper proposes a systematic framework for the analysis of tensions in corporate sustainability. The framework is based on the emerging integrative view on corporate sustainability, which stresses the need for a simultaneous integration of economic, environmental and social dimensions without, a priori, emphasising one over any other. The integrative view presupposes that firms need to accept tensions in corporate sustainability and pursue different sustainability aspects simultaneously even if they seem to contradict each other. The framework proposed in this paper goes beyond the traditional triad of economic, environmental and social dimensions and argues that tensions in corporate sustainability occur between different levels, in change processes and within a temporal and spatial context. The framework provides vital groundwork for managing tensions in corporate sustainability based on paradox strategies. The paper then applies the framework to identify and characterise four selected tensions and illustrates how key approaches from the literature on strategic contradictions, tensions and paradoxes—i.e., acceptance and resolution strategies—can be used to manage these tensions. Thereby, it refines the emerging literature on the integrative view for the management of tensions in corporate sustainability. The framework also provides managers with a better understanding of tensions in corporate sustainability and enables them to embrace these tensions in their decision making.

Sustainable Value Added - Measuring Corporate Contributions to Sustainability Beyond Eco-Efficiency

Abstract: This paper proposes a new approach to measure corporate contributions to sustainability called Sustainable Value Added. Value is created whenever benefits exceed costs. Current approaches to measure corporate sustainable performance take into account external costs caused by environmental and social damage or focus on the ratio between value creation and resource consumption. As this paper will show, it is more promising to develop sustainable measures based on opportunity costs. Sustainable Value Added is such a measure. It shows how much more value is created because a company is more efficient than a benchmark and because the resources are allocated to the company and not to benchmark companies. The concept of strong sustainability requires that each form of capital is kept constant. As Sustainable Value Added is inspired by strong sustainability, it measures whether a company creates extra value while ensuring that every environmental and social impact is in total constant. Therefore, it takes into account both, corporate eco- and social efficiency as well as the absolute level of environmental and social resource consumption (eco- and social effectiveness). As a result, Sustainable Value Added considers simultaneously economic, environmental and social aspects. The overall result can be expressed in any of the three dimensions of sustainability.