Veranstaltungsprogramm der VHB Jahrestagung

Management research often takes a ‘business case’ approach to sustainability issues. Paradox theory has criticized this approach for framing the problem as an either/or and ultimately giving priority to economic ends over environmental or social concerns. Instead, paradox scholars argue for the generative potential of making the tensions underlying sustainability salient and embracing them with a both/and approach. In this paper, we problematize the assumption that either/or approaches cannot lead to generative outcomes for sustainability. With an in-depth ethnographic study, making use of a practice-theoretical lens, we shed light on the key role of normativity in mundane organizational practices to cope with (paradoxical) tensions in general and those linked to sustainability in particular. Specifically, we discover how a normative orientation that strongly leans towards social and environmental ends generates the development of a recursive loop that facilitates to meet economic demands, at least in the long run. This provides a processual understanding of the prematurely dismissed either/or approach and shows the generative potential of this response to urgent sustainability problems. The study thus contributes not only to paradox research but also to research on corporate sustainability by uncovering the importance of the normativity implicit in daily practices for sustainability and developing an empirically grounded model that shows traces of a sustainability case for business.

This study explores how firms and civil society organizations (CSOs) engage in inter-organizational learning to achieve the transition towards the Circular Economy (CE). While the need for collaboration is widely acknowledged, prior research lacks an understanding of successful practices, especially in horizontal relationships and between heterogeneous actor groups. Based on qualitative data from the fashion industry, the findings of this study are used to develop an empirically grounded model of inter-organizational learning for the CE transition. The model unfolds the different challenges inherent in inter-organizational learning for the CE. In addition, it captures three practices of inter-organizational learning that firms and CSOs develop to realize the CE transition: 1) creating a safe learning space, 2) visualizing CE processes and outcomes and, 3) involving additional expertise. Finally, it shows how inter-organizational learning enables actors to realize collaborative pathways that enable the transition to the CE, such as creating experimental forms of collaboration and professionalizing CE knowledge. Thus, the study contributes to the literatures on inter-organizational learning and CE and, overall, towards a socio-technical theory of the CE transition.