With apologies for cross-posting:
We are calling for the caucus meeting during the Academy of Management 2010
meeting in Montreal on the topic "The Strategic Imperative of
Sustainability". This caucus will bring together scholars, researchers and
practitioners interested in operationalizing sustainability throughout
management practices, free of any theoretic or discipline specific
orthodoxy. We are particularly interested in elaborating on
interdisciplinary approaches that will promote sustainability as integral to
the strategic imperatives of managing organizations. We hope to provide a
forum that enables researchers and practitioners to interact and discuss
future research initiatives that integrate environmental concerns within a
pragmatic managerial model.
Presently, there seems to be very little consensus about the role and scope
of sustainability initiatives in the management of organizations. While
triple bottom line and ESG measures have their advocates, regulatory
requirements and institutional standards have lagged.
Most classic economic management approaches consider sustainability to be a
cost for organizations and incidental to the 'business of business'. While
the societal and activist approaches (including the natural resource based
view) consider business as an integral part of society and thus obligated to
deal with social and environmental issues. The gap between these approaches
also seems to be widening, fuelled by the rhetoric of the different
management disciplines. Whether we have reached a Schumpeter moment or
whether realignment of current practices can bring about desired results
remains to be seen, yet provokes strong adverse responses all around.
We propose to initiate a dialogue to bring together researchers and
practitioners across disciplines, who thereafter could develop an
interdisciplinary research agenda to holistically address the issues and
attempt to integrate theory and practices to further our evolution towards a
sustainable society. This caucus recognizes the inherent importance of
sustainability to all business strategy in the years to come. We seek to
reconceptualize organizations to fully integrate sustainability
considerations into the core strategy around which managerial decisions are
taken.
To this effect, we have set up a web group (
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/strategy-sustainability/?yguid=82480175>
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/strategy-sustainability/?yguid=82480175) that
will commence the conversations amongst those interested in the topic, and
we hope to bring together the discussion threads during the caucus meeting
at Montreal. NBS (Network for Business Sustainability) supports this
initiative to bring together international researchers and practitioners
engaged in furthering sustainability initiatives, and the discussion forum
will migrate to their website ( <http://www.nbs.net>
http://www.nbs.net)
after the caucus to allow the caucus members to continue their collaborative
efforts.
All those interested in being part of this caucus are requested to inform
the organizers (
sujitsur@dal.ca and
CA_TetraultSirsly@carleton.ca) and
thereafter upload their discussion query on the yahoo webgroup.
Look forward to meeting you in Montreal!
Carol-Ann Tetrault Sirsly & Sujit Sur