Corporate Sustainability and Change Management (GEO42610)
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Summary Corporate Sustainability and Change Management GEO4-2610
Lecture 1: corporate Sustainability and Change Management 1
Understanding the SDG’s
Summary Article 1: SDG Compass: The guide for business action on the SDGs
- GRI, UN Global Compact & WBCSD (2018)
Summary Article 2: a review of the theories of corporate social responsibility: Its evolutionary path and the
road ahead
- Lee, M.D.P. (2008)
Structure of the course
Structured around 5 steps SDG compass
1. Understanding SDG
2. Defining priorities
3. Setting goals
4. Integrating
5. Reporting and communicating
Organization: two or more people (social dimension) who are supposed to cooperate with each other within a
formally established structure mobilizing/using resources to achieve a certain goal
How do we study organizations
Level of analysis
Open versus closed systems
1
,Culture: how things are done around here. It is what is typical of the organization, the habits, the prevailing
attitudes, the grown-up pattern of accepted behaviour
Culture represents an interdependent set of values and ways of behaving that are common in a community and
that tend to perpetuate themselves, sometimes over long periods of time
Specialization [Adam Smith]
• Pin Factory, division of labour
• Specialization → increase productivity
Standardization [Fayol and Taylor]
• Rationalization of jobs: both developed rational techniques that helps to build the structure and
processes necessary to coordinate action in an organization
Bureaucracy [Max Weber]
Bureaucracy: a form of organizational structure in which people can be held accountable for their actions
because they are required to act in accordance with rules and standard operating procedures
Some general ideas at that time
• Organizations are seen as rational entities
• And people are economic beings
• The design of an organization is “science”
• There is ‘One best way’
• Change based on rationality and legitimate managerial authority
Criticism
1. Humans have emotional needs.
2. Organizations are cooperative social systems.
3. Organizations have informal structures and rules a
→ Resulted in the so-called human relations school
→ Change by consent
Current challenge
1. Over time many developments in organizational change observed
2. Current challenge: sustainability
What is the purpose of a corporation?
Henry Ford 1917: my ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to
the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the
greatest share of our profits back in the business
What happened between 1917 (if not late 1970s) and the late 1990s?
Answer: rationalizations of CSR
2
,Limitations of the business case for CSR concept
1. Inconclusive empirical findings
2. Even if a business case exists, the marginal value of social responsibility will decrease as more
corporations become socially responsible
3. Little explanatory power to account for the recent organizational changes
o Institutional factors (pressures from social movements)
o Personal factors (personal ethics of managers)
4. Business case driven CSR assumes that what is good for society should also be good for corporations.
But not necessarily true!
5. Business case driven CSR will bias how corporations select their CSR strategy
3
, Lecture 2: corporate Sustainability and Change Management 2
Understanding the SDG’s
Summary Article 3: organizational theory, design, and change
- Jones, G. R. (2013)
Summary Article 4: designing and implementing corporate social responsibility: An integrative framework
grounded in theory and practice
- Maon, F., Lindgreen, A., & Swaen, V. (2009)
Organisational change: what are we talking about?
Organisational change: the process by which organisation move from their present state to some desired
future state to increase their effectiveness [Jones]. The alternation and transformation of the form to survive
better in the environment [Hage]
Organisational effectiveness: focuses on opportunities to produce revenue, create markets and to change the
economic characteristics of existing products and markets
Types of change
Two types of change
1. Evolutionary change
o Gradual
o Incremental
o Narrowly focused
2. Revolutionary change
o Rapid
o Dramatic
o Broadly focused
→ The alternation and transformation of the form to survive better in the environment
Models of change
Planned change
• Kurt Lewin
• Original purpose to resolve special conflict in society (incl. conflicts within organisations)
• Four elements
1. Field theory/force field analysis
2. Group dynamics
3. Actions research
4. Three-step model of change
Field theory (1) and group dynamics (2)
analyse and understand how social groupings were formed, motivated, and maintained
Action research (3) and the three-step model of change (4)
change the behaviour of social groups
Action research
A strategy for generating and acquiring knowledge that managers can use to define an
organisations desired future state and to plan a change programme that allows the
organisation to reach that state
4
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