Reframing Business Sustainability Decision-Making with Value-Focussed Thinking

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Per definition business sustainability demands the integration of environmental, social, and economic outcomes. Yet, managerial decision-making involving sustainability objectives is fraught with tension and the way managerial decision-makers frame sustainability issues in their mindset influences how sustainability tensions are managed at the organisational level. In the bid to better understand what types of managerial mindsets, or cognitive frames, foster integrative business sustainability practices that simultaneously advance environmental, social, and economic objectives, extant research has focussed on the underlying logics that drive the acknowledgement of sustainability tensions. However, the existing logics-based constructs do not sufficiently explain this link, and it has been suggested that managers perceive and manage sustainability tensions based on the values that they hold. To clarify the roles of managerial values and logics as antecedents in business sustainability decision-making, we integrate Keeney’s value-focussed thinking approach with managerial and organisational cognition perspectives. Drawing on data from a survey with 169 senior procurement managers in Australia we found three types of cognitive frames which demonstrate that stronger sustainability values are associated with a more holistic perception of sustainability tensions and vice versa. We also found that managers’ cognitive framing of sustainability is strengthened by more holistic organisational cognitive frames and discuss according implications for managerial decision-making in theory and practice.
Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Business Ethics
Volume174
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)441-456
Number of pages16
ISSN0167-4544
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 11.2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Nature B.V.

    Research areas

  • Business sustainability, Cognitive frames, Decision-making, Holistic thinking, Value-focussed thinking
  • Management studies

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Acquiring 'different strokes'.
  2. More Foxes in the Boardroom: Systems Thinking in Action
  3. Corporate Governance Reporting des Verwaltungsrats und Unternehmensperformance
  4. Wasch mir den Pelz, aber mach' mich nicht nass!
  5. Photochemistry of 2,2', 4,4', %,5'-hexabde (BDE-153) in THF and adsorbed on SiO2
  6. Das Reflexivitätsproblem und die Kategorienlehre
  7. Managing increasing environmental risks through agro-biodiversity and agri-environmental policies
  8. Media of Trust
  9. Environmental justice and care
  10. Occurrence and Air-sea exchange of phthalates in the Arctic
  11. The longitudinal prediction of costs due to health care uptake and productivity losses in a cohort of employees with and without depression or anxiety.
  12. Research contributions to personality at work
  13. Normative Hohlmünzen
  14. Corrosion behavior of multi-layer friction surfaced structure from dissimilar aluminum alloys
  15. 'Where is everybody?' An empirical appraisal of occurrence, prevalence and sustainability of technological species in the Universe
  16. Das Projekt Berber-Zeitung
  17. The relevance of international restoration principles for ecosystem restoration practice in Rwanda
  18. Impacts of species richness on productivity in a large-scale subtropical forest experiment
  19. Stirbt Daily Mail langsam?
  20. Words and deeds
  21. Es geht auch anders!
  22. The Law Behind Rule of Law Transfers
  23. Nonviolence as a weapon of the resourceful
  24. Cyberspace Battleground
  25. Der extrovertierte Rechtstaat
  26. Lernaufgaben nachhaltig gedacht
  27. Independent Music and Digital Technology in the Philippines
  28. Applying the HES-framework
  29. Jazz in Czechoslovakia during the 1950s and 1960s
  30. Beschleunigte Erstellung von Simulationsmodellen für Produktions- und Logistikprozesse mithilfe von GPT-basierten Large Language Models
  31. The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture
  32. Do exporters really pay higher wages?
  33. Internationales Change Management
  34. The case of a proposed 21.5 MWe biomass gasifier in Winkleigh, Devon