Contingency in business sustainability research and in the sustainability service industry: A problematization and research agenda
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Authors
A sustainability service industry has emerged that promotes the adoption of management tools, mechanisms, and procedures. This emergence took place despite a knowledge gap of how sustainability performance occurs in businesses. To understand practices amid the knowledge gap, this article explores through problematization how the performance orientations of practitioners and researchers relate to each other in the business sustainability field. The article unearths that like the sustainability service industry in practice, scholarship implicitly accepts assumptions of contingency in research designs. Because these implicit assumptions are unattended, it seems, to date, not possible for researchers to provide evidence-based guidance to practitioners on how to address business unsustainability. In addition, basic concepts of contingency are not yet established in this field to explain performance, rendering the acceptance of corresponding assumptions unfounded. The article concludes with research suggestions for the development of theory of sustainability performance in businesses.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Organization & Environment |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Pages (from-to) | 298-322 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| ISSN | 1086-0266 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 06.2021 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4597-9940 Imbrogiano Jean-Pierre 1 1 The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia Jean-Pierre Imbrogiano, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland, 47A Staff House Road, St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia. Email: j.imbrogiano@uq.edu.au 1 2020 1086026619897532 © The Author(s) 2020 2020 SAGE Publications A sustainability service industry has emerged that promotes the adoption of management tools, mechanisms, and procedures. This emergence took place despite a knowledge gap of how sustainability performance occurs in businesses. To understand practices amid the knowledge gap, this article explores through problematization how the performance orientations of practitioners and researchers relate to each other in the business sustainability field. The article unearths that like the sustainability service industry in practice, scholarship implicitly accepts assumptions of contingency in research designs. Because these implicit assumptions are unattended, it seems, to date, not possible for researchers to provide evidence-based guidance to practitioners on how to address business unsustainability. In addition, basic concepts of contingency are not yet established in this field to explain performance, rendering the acceptance of corresponding assumptions unfounded. The article concludes with research suggestions for the development of theory of sustainability performance in businesses. sustainability performance sustainability service industry contingency theory problematization field assumptions edited-state corrected-proof typesetter ts1 Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was financially supported by The University of Queensland and by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). ORCID iD Jean-Pierre Imbrogiano https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4597-9940
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
- contingency theory, field assumptions, problematization, sustainability performance, sustainability service industry
- Sustainability Governance