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BUILDING AN ORGANIZATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE THAT FOSTERS A
CULTURE OF SUSTAINABILITY
Timothy Galpin
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
J.Lee Whittington
University of Dallas, Dallas, USA
Greg Bell
University of Dallas, Dallas, USA
Key Words: Sustainability, Organizational Culture, Strategy, HR Practices, Best Practices
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ABSTRACT
Building an organizational infrastructure that fosters a culture of sustainability
results in positive employee-level and organizational-level sustainability performance.
However, a gap exists in both the empirical and practitioner literature regarding the
development and assessment of the organizational factors that foster a culture of
sustainability. Moreover, no clear model exists with the expressed purpose of helping
leaders create such a culture, while providing a framework to guide research into the
relationship between organizational culture and sustainability. The prevailing empirical and
practitioner literature regarding sustainability is typically single-stage (sustainability
strategy formulation, sustainability process design, or sustainability measurement), single-
discipline (strategy, human resources, operations, marketing, or finance), and single-level
(senior management, middle management, or front-line employees). Therefore, a narrative
synthesis approach was used to integrate extant empirical and practitioner literature
spanning various disciplines in order to build a comprehensive multi-stage multi-level
model, including key propositions, to assist both practitioners and researchers alike. Case
examples illustrating each component of the model in practice and implications for future
research based on the key tenets of the model are also provided.
INTRODUCTION
Sustainability has become the strategic imperative of the new millennium. The
phrases Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate Social
Performance (CSP), Going Green, and the “Triple Bottom Line” (Elkington, 1998) all refer
to organizations enhancing their long-term economic, social, and environmental
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performance. There is an ever-expanding volume of literature underscoring the importance
of sustainability to organizations and its positive impact on performance. For example, the
companies listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the FTSE4 Good Indexes
demonstrated share price performance superior to that of firms listed in broader indexes, and
companies belonging to the World Business Counsel for Sustainable Development
outperformed their respective stock exchanges by 15 to 25 percent over a three year period
(Savitz and Weber, 2006).
Both industry leaders and academics have recognized that sustainability is important
to the long-term success of both firms and the communities in which they operate. In fact, a
recent survey of business leaders by The Economist found that less than four percent of
managers surveyed considered socially and environmentally responsible to be a “waste of
time and money” (The Economist, 2008). However, in our review of the prevailing
literature on the topic we find that innovative water, energy, and waste solutions which
produce win-win outcomes for the environment and for firms appears to depend upon
leaders being purposeful in fostering an organizational culture of sustainability within their
organizations. Accomplishing this depends upon management addressing both the explicit
and implicit organizational factors that shape a firm’s culture. Indeed, research has shown
that an organization’s culture operates at multiple levels (Schein, 2010). The first level
consists of visible artifacts and behaviors. These elements are tangible and overt elements of
the organization that can be recognized by those who are not part of the organization. The
second level of culture includes the espoused values of the organization. These are the
explicitly stated values and rules of behavior. As such, espoused values reflect how the
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organization seeks to present itself both internally and externally. The final level of
organizational culture consists of the shared basic assumptions that guide the behavior of
the organization’s members. These assumptions are often implicit and operate at a sub-
conscious level. They are deeply embedded and well-integrated into the life of the firm.
They form the essence of the culture, yet the implicit nature of these assumptions makes
them difficult to observe directly.
The explicit and implicit nature of organizational culture creates unique challenges
for managers attempting to encourage awareness among employees that sustainability not
only reduces the firm’s impact on the natural environment, but also can significantly impact
the long-term viability of the organization. Studies have shown that changing a culture is a
large-scale undertaking and that managers need to employ multiple tools to change the
behaviors of management and employees (Denning, 2011). Given the complexity and time
required, cultures can be changed through the diligent and intentional effort of the
organization’s leadership team (Schein, 2010). Because an organization’s culture is a
montage of interrelated formal and informal elements, each component contributes to
forming an organization’s culture, and each of these key ingredients must be leveraged in
order to create an organizational culture of sustainability. Changing a culture begins with
the top management team, but it must permeate the entire organization (Atkinson, 2012).
Successful culture change efforts flow from the organization’s mission, values, goals and
strategy, to the criteria used for hiring and promotion, to the content of and how
communications are delivered, to workforce training, and the performance management
process used.
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Due the complexity of the undertaking, an interdisciplinary model was developed
providing a blueprint for leaders attempting to create a culture of sustainability within their
organizations as well as for use as a framework to guide research into the relationship
between organizational culture and sustainability (see Figure 1). The components of the
model presented in Figure 1 are interrelated and iterative. However, our discussion follows
a linear flow through the model including case examples illustrating each component of the
model in practice, along with implications for future research based on the key tenets of the
framework.
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INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE
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METHOD OF MODEL DEVELOPMENT
The prevailing empirical and practitioner literature regarding sustainability is
typically single-stage (e.g. sustainability strategy formulation, sustainability process design,
or sustainability measurement), single-discipline (e.g. strategy, human resources, operations,
marketing, or finance), and single-level (e.g. senior management, middle management, or
front-line employees). Therefore, the framework presented in Figure 1 was developed by
performing and interdisciplinary synthesis of literature from typically disparate fields,
including: sustainability, strategy, leadership, organizational culture, human resources, and
organizational behavior. The multidisciplinary evidence drawn upon encompasses both
qualitative and quantitative information.