Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Perspective
  • Published:

Management for sustainability

Nature Sustainability volume 1, pages 744–749 (2018)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Much of the unsustainable activity that occurs in the world can be traced to organizations. Yet, because organizations are social systems, they cannot be managed for sustainability in the same way as ecosystems and natural resources. Using social systems theory, and employing the concepts of emergence, resilience and scale, I identify management principles for pursuing sustainability across an array of organizational contexts. These principles serve as a basis for an agenda to promote sustainability through logic models and experimentation. The UN Sustainable Development Goals provide an opportunity for putting these principles into action.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Logic goals.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Strike, V. M., Gao, J. & Bansal, P. Being good while being bad: social responsibility and the international diversification of US firms. J. Int. Bus. Stud. 37, 850–862 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Banerjee, S. B. Corporate social responsibility: the good, the bad and the ugly. Crit. Soc. 34, 51–79 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Fleming, T. & Zils, M. Toward a circular economy: Philips CEO Frans van Houten. McKinsey Quarterly (February 2014).

  4. Stephens, J. C., Frumhoff, P. C. & Yona, L. The role of college and university faculty in the fossil fuel divestment movement. Elem. Sci. Anth. 6, 41 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Boudet, H. et al. Effects of a behaviour change intervention for Girl Scouts on child and parent energy-saving behaviours. Nat. Energy 1, 16091 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Hatch, M. J. Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives (Oxford Univ. Press, 2018).

  7. Scott, W. R. & Davis, G. F. Organizations and Organizing: Rational, Natural and Open Systems Perspectives (Routledge, 2015).

  8. Tsoukas, H. & Knudsen, C. The Oxford Handbook of Organization Theory (Oxford Univ. Press, 2003).

  9. Shenhav, Y. A. Manufacturing Rationality: The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution (Oxford Univ. Press, 2002).

  10. Davis, G. F. Do theories of organizations progress? Org. Res. Meth. 13, 690–709 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Morgan, G. Images of Organization (Sage, 1986).

  12. Scott, W. R. Institutions and Organizations (Sage, 1995).

  13. March, J. G. & Simon, H. A. Organizations (Wiley, 1958).

  14. Argyris, C. & Schon, D. A. Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness (Jossey-Bass, 1974).

  15. Hannan, M. T. & Freeman, J. The population ecology of organizations. Am. J. Soc. 82, 929–964 (1977).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Pfeffer, J. & Salancik, G. The External Control of Organizations (Harper and Row, 1978).

  17. Etzion, D. Research on organizations and the natural environment, 1992–present: a review. J. Manag. 33, 637–664 (2007).

    Google Scholar 

  18. Bansal, P., Kim, A. & Wood, M. O. Hidden in plain sight: the importance of scale in organizations’ attention to issues. Acad. Man. Rev. 43, 217–241 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Williamson, O. E. Comparative economic organization: the analysis of discrete structural alternatives. Admin. Sci. Q. 36, 269–296 (1991).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Ostrom, E. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).

  21. Folke, C., Hahn, T., Olsson, P. & Norberg, J. Adaptive governance of social-ecological systems. Ann. Rev. Env. Res. 30, 441–473 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Berkes, F. Evolution of co-management: role of knowledge generation, bridging organizations and social learning. J. Env. Manage. 90, 1692–1702 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Stankey, G. H., Clark, R. N. & Bormann, B. T. Adaptive Management of Natural Resources: Theory, Concepts, and Management Institutions Report PNW-GTR-654 (USDA, 2005).

  24. Rist, L., Felton, A., Samuelsson, L., Sandström, C. & Rosvall, O. A new paradigm for adaptive management. Ecol. Soc. 18, 63 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Edmondson, A. C. Wicked problem solvers. Harvard Bus. Rev. 94, 52–59 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  26. DeFries, R. & Nagendra, H. Ecosystem management as a wicked problem. Science 356, 265–270 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. Rittel, H. W. J. & Webber, M. M. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Pol. Sci. 4, 155–169 (1973).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Verweij, M. et al. Clumsy solutions for a complex world: the case of climate change. Public Admin. 84, 817–843 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Checkland, P. Soft systems methodology: a thirty year retrospective. Sys. Res. Behav. Sci. 17, S11 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Checkland, P. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice (Wiley, 1981).

  31. Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M. & Obstfeld, D. Organizing and the process of sensemaking. Org. Sci. 16, 409–421 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Daft, R. L. & Weick, K. E. Toward a model of organizations as interpretation systems. Acad. Man. Rev. 9, 284–295 (1984).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Simon, H. A. Administrative Behavior (Macmillan, 1947).

  34. Vaughan, D. The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA (Univ. Chicago Press, 1997).

  35. Holling, C. S. & Meffe, G. K. Command and control and the pathology of natural resource management. Conserv. Biol. 10, 328–337 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Martin, R. L. The big lie of strategic planning. Harvard Bus. Rev. 92, 3–8 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  37. Mintzberg, H. & Waters, J. A. Of strategies, deliberate and emergent. Strat. Man. J. 6, 257–272 (1985).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Mintzberg, H. Crafting strategy. Harvard Bus. Rev. 65, 66–75 (1987).

    Google Scholar 

  39. Plowman, D. A. et al. Radical change accidentally: the emergence and amplification of small change. Acad. Man. J. 50, 515–543 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Garud, R. & Karnøe, P. Bricolage versus breakthrough: distributed and embedded agency in technology entrepreneurship. Res. Pol. 32, 277–300 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Karnøe, P. & Garud, R. Path creation: co-creation of heterogeneous resources in the emergence of the Danish wind turbine cluster. Eur. Plan. Stud. 20, 733–752 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Sabel, C. F. & Victor, D. G. Governing global problems under uncertainty: making bottom-up climate policy work. Clim. Change 144, 15–27 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Holling, C. S. Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annu. Rev. Eco. Sys. 4, 1–23 (1973).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Biggs, R. et al. Toward principles for enhancing the resilience of ecosystem services. Annu. Rev. Env. Res. 37, 421–448 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Stouten, J., Rousseau, D. M. & De Cremer, D. Successful organizational change: integrating the management practice and scholarly literatures. Acad. Man. Ann. 12, 752–788 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Broman, G. I. & Robèrt, K.-H. A framework for strategic sustainable development. J. Clean. Prod. 140, 17–31 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Pidgeon, N. & Fischhoff, B. The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks. Nat. Clim. Change 1, 35 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. Nisbet, E. C., Cooper, K. E. & Garrett, R. K. The partisan brain: how dissonant science messages lead conservatives and liberals to (dis)trust science. Ann. Amer. Acad. Polit. Soc. Sci. 658, 36–66 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Kahan, D. M. et al. The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nat. Clim. Change 2, 732–735 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Kay, J. Obliquity: Why Our Goals are Best Achieved Indirectly (Profile Books, 2011).

  51. Eccles, R. G. & Nohria, N. Beyond the Hype: Rediscovering the Essence of Management (Beard Books, 1992).

  52. Ferraro, F., Etzion, D. & Gehman, J. Tackling grand challenges pragmatically: robust action revisited. Org. Stud. 36, 363–390 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Padgett, J. F. & Ansell, C. K. Robust action and the rise of the Medici, 1400–1434. Am. J. Soc. 98, 1259–1319 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  54. Whittier, N. Rethinking coalitions: anti-pornography feminists, conservatives, and relationships between collaborative adversarial movements. Soc. Prob. 61, 175–193 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. Gillis, J. & Popovich, N. In Trump country, renewable energy is thriving. New York Times (6 June 2017).

  56. Costello, C., Gaines, S. & Gerber, L. R. Conservation science: a market approach to saving the whales. Nature 481, 139–140 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  57. Pinch, T. J. & Bijker, W. E. The social construction of facts and artefacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Soc. Stud. Sci. 14, 399–441 (1984).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  58. Seelos, C. & Mair, J. Profitable business models and market creation in the context of deep poverty: a strategic view. Acad. Man. Persp. 21, 49–63 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. Duke, D. Why don’t BOP ventures solve the environmental problems they initially set out to address? Org. Env. 29, 508–528 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  60. Ehrenstein, V. & Neyland, D. On scale work: evidential practices and global health interventions. Econ. Soc. 47, 59–82 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  61. Gonzalez-Vega, C. & Villafani-Ibarnegaray, M. in The Handbook of Microfinance (eds Armendáriz, B. & Labie, M.) 203–250 (World Scientific, 2011).

  62. Yunus, M., Moingeon, B. & Lehmann-Ortega, L. Building social business models: lessons from the grameen experience. Long Range Plan. 43, 308–325 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  63. Mintzberg, H. The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of the Research (Prentice-Hall, 1979).

  64. Prahalad, C. K. & Hamel, G. The core competence of the corporation. Harvard Bus. Rev. 68, 79–91 (1990).

    Google Scholar 

  65. Porter, M. E. From competitive advantage to corporate strategy. Harvard Bus. Rev. 65, 43–59 (1987).

    Google Scholar 

  66. Meadows, D. H. Places to intervene in a system. Whole Earth 91, 78–84 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  67. Salisbury, C. Paying for health care with trees: A win-win for orangutans and communities. Pacific Standard (4 April 2017).

  68. Mair, J., Wolf, M. & Seelos, C. Scaffolding: a process of transforming patterns of inequality in small-scale societies. Acad. Man. J. 59, 2021–2044 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  69. Poister, T. H. Measuring Performance in Public and Nonprofit Organizations (Jossey-Bass, 2003).

  70. The Water for Life Decade 2005–2015 and Beyond (UN Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication, 2015).

  71. Uvin, P., Jain, P. S. & Brown, L. D. Think large and act small: toward a new paradigm for NGO scaling up. World Dev. 28, 1409–1419 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  72. McLaughlin, J. A. & Jordan, G. B. in Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation (eds Wholey, J. S., Hatry, H. P. & Newcomer, K. E.) 55–80 (2010).

  73. Rogers, P. J. Using programme theory to evaluate complicated and complex aspects of interventions. Evaluation 14, 29–48 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  74. Weitz, N., Carlsen, H., Nilsson, M. & Skånberg, K. Towards systemic and contextual priority setting for implementing the 2030 Agenda. Sust. Sci. 13, 531–548 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  75. Le Blanc, D. Towards integration at last? The sustainable development goals as a network of targets. Sust. Dev. 23, 176–187 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  76. Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN, 2015).

  77. Food Wastage Footprint: Full Cost Accounting (FAO, 2014).

  78. Weitz, N., Nilsson, M. & Davis, M. A nexus approach to the post-2015 agenda: formulating integrated water, energy, and food SDGs. SAIS Rev. Int. Aff. 34, 37–50 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  79. Gustavsson, J., Cederberg, C. & Sonesson, U. Global Food Losses and Food Waste (FAO, 2011).

  80. Wilkie, W. L. & Moore, E. S. Marketing’s contributions to society. J. Market. 63, 198–218 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  81. Ewen, S. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (McGraw-Hill, 1976).

  82. Ansell, C. & Bartenberger, M. in New Perspectives on Technology in Society: Experimentation Beyond the Laboratory (eds van de Poel, I., Asveld, L. & Mehos, D. C.) 36–58 (Routledge, 2017).

  83. Rist, L., Campbell, B. M. & Frost, P. Adaptive management: where are we now? Env. Cons. 40, 5–18 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  84. Gordon, A., Becerra, L. & Fressoli, M. Potentialities and constraints in the relation between social innovation and public policies: some lessons from South America. Ecol. Soc. 22, 2 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  85. Kemp, R. The Dutch energy transition approach. Int. Econ. Econ. Pol. 7, 291–316 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  86. Gross, N. Pragmatism and the study of large-scale social phenomena. Theory Soc. 47, 87–111 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  87. Hawken, P. Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (Penguin, 2017).

  88. George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A. & Tihanyi, L. Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research. Acad. Man. J. 59, 1880–1895 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  89. Reid, W. V. et al. Earth system science for global sustainability: grand challenges. Science 330, 916–917 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

McGill’s Centre for Strategy Studies in Organizations (CSSO) supported this research. I thank E. Bennett, A. Gonzalez, A. Li., H. McShane and D. Pencheon for valuable suggestions and feedback.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

    Dror Etzion

Authors
  1. Dror Etzion
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dror Etzion.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Etzion, D. Management for sustainability. Nat Sustain 1, 744–749 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0184-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0184-z

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing