Recipes for Successful Sustainability: Empirical Organizational Configurations for Strong Corporate Environmental Performance

Abstract

Abstract We examine 45 existing case studies of firms with strong corporate environmental performance (CEP) to empirically identify four organizational configurations for successful sustainability. These four configurations represent different combinations of variables describing a firm's external environment, organizational structure, and its strategy‐related activities. More specifically, these configurations vary in having a benign or challenging external environment, a mechanistic or organic structure, a low‐cost or differentiation strategy, hands‐on or hands‐off participation by the top management team, high or low consideration given to stakeholders, and a short‐ or long‐term time orientation. Taken together the four organizational configurations introduce an understanding of equifinality for achieving CEP. In other words, given an adequate variety of ingredients, there are multiple recipes for successful sustainability. Implications for scholars, practitioners and policy‐makers and other stakeholders are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

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