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Introduction
Sustainability has become the strategic imperative of the new millennium. The phrases sustainability, corporate social responsibility, corporate social performance, going green and the “triple bottom line” (Elkington, 1998) all refer to organizations enhancing their long-term economic, social and environmental 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 15-25 per cent over a three-year period (Savitz and Weber, 2006). A recent survey of business leaders by The Economist (2008) found that less than four per cent of managers surveyed considered being socially and environmentally responsible to be a “waste of time and money”.
Both industry leaders and academics recognize that sustainability is important to the long-term success of both firms and the communities in which they operate. However, the means in which managers can lead and position their firms to be more sustainable remains uncertain. There are many examples of firms who have seen sporadic success through the isolated efforts of employee teams or individual departments to reduce water, waste and energy in products or processes. Firms today need systemic approaches to sustainability if they are to be competitive over the long term. Without a diligent effort to create an organizational infrastructure that supports the development of a sustainability strategy, the firm’s efforts to successfully implement a sustainability strategy will be severely hindered. Hence, the question we address is: how can managers lead their firms to be sustainable over the long term?
Innovative sustainability solutions, which produce win–win–win outcomes for the environment, society and firms, depend upon leaders being intentional in fostering a “culture of sustainability” within their organizations. Research has shown that an organization’s culture operates at multiple levels (Schein, 2010), and developing and maintaining a culture of sustainability, requires leaders to address each of these levels. 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...