Sustainability and organizational behavior: A micro‐foundational perspective

• Author: Yipeng Liu,Shlomo Y. Tarba,Sir Cary L. Cooper,Peter Stokes
• Published date: 01 November 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2242
• Date: 01 November 2017

EDITORIAL

Sustainability and organizational behavior: A micro‐

foundational perspective

Summary

Organizational behavior is a well‐established academic field comprising a comprehensive and wide range of extant literature. In contrast, sus-

tainability and micro‐foundational literature constitute significant but nevertheless more relatively recent emergent bodies of work with each

having developed particular predilections in the manner in which they are cast and discussed. There is scope, therefore, to bring to bear a range

of organizational behavioral insights in conjunction with these areas thereby creating a fusion that surfaces the drivers and antecedents that

operate and play out in the dynamic between these domains. The mechanism employed to do this is through the development of a special issue

of papers, drawing on a range of methodological approaches and sectorial perspectives. This is important and has the aim of generating fresh

insights and challenging conventional ways of viewing the behavioral dimensions of sustainability and especially through a micro‐foundational

lens. The analyses in special issue underline and demonstrate the value of engaging a range of national contexts, sectorial settings, and

historical and contemporaneous perspectives that shed novel light on the confluences of sustainability, organizational behavior, and micro‐

foundations. Special issue also suggests future directions that subsequent research may take in these arenas.

1|INTRODUCTION

Organizational behavior is a seminal and multi‐faceted domain that

has generated multifarious analyses connected with a range of con-

temporary management and organizational literatures (Cooper, Flint‐

Taylor, & Pearn, 2013; Hodgkinson & Healey, 2008; Luthans, 2002).

In contrast, sustainability, as a topic area points per se at concerns

that have crystallized over more relatively recent decades. Equally,

although there has been extensive research on both sustainability

and organizational behavior as discrete areas of interest, the ques-

tions pertaining to behaviors driving sustainability in relation to var-

ious levels of organization are more emergent. Although there has

been a rounded mix of micro‐and macro‐studies of organizational

behavior in a range of contexts, much of the underlying approach

that drives investigation into sustainability has tended to build its

analyses around macro‐orientation rather than micro‐orientated

environmental perspectives (Andersson, Jackson, & Russell, 2013).

This predilection in work on sustainability tends to result in a focus

on overall entities such as, for example, companies or organizations

and, moreover, points at the ways in which sustainability intercon-

nects with broad concepts of, for instance, efficacy, effectiveness

and performativity rather than, for example, micro‐analyses. This

zeitgeist prompts the concern that such prevailing currents may be

prone to occluding a more fused and interactive understanding of

the more micro, individual, political, relational dimensions and drivers

of sustainability actions, situations, and contexts. In recognizing this,

it can also be argued that it is the inter‐meshing of myriad micro‐

events that work to generate macro‐situations and contexts (Alcaraz

& Thiruvattal, 2010; Porritt, 2007). There is, thus, growing support

that an appreciation of sustainability inherently invokes attempts to

generate understanding from a more multi‐level and multi‐systemic

perspectives, and this is particularly apposite to a refocus of atten-

tion on organizational behavioral aspects of sustainability. Although

initial work has been undertaken, as recently noted by Akhtar, Khan,

Frynas, Tse, and Rao‐Nicholson (2017), despite the fact that various

studies have emphasized linkages between firm competencies, net-

works, and sustainability at organizational level, the links between

top management tangible competencies, relationship‐based business

networks, and environmental sustainability have not been so well‐

explored at micro‐level.

Therefore, the above outlined context and emergent studies

point towards a timely pretext with which to examine the micro‐

behavioral aspects of sustainability (Shoham, Almor, Lee, &

Ahammad, 2017; Strauss, Lepoutre, & Wood, 2017). This special issue

responds to this identified need by assembling an original, valuable,

and insightful set of papers that in their own ways and particular

approaches, cast light on the interaction of organizational behavior

with sustainability from a range of perspectives and organizational

and institutional contexts. Organizational behavioral issues reside at

the heart of the development of sustainable mindsets and stances.

However, sustainability is all too often discussed primarily through

lenses concentrating on, for example, structure, function, policy and

geo‐political formulation/engagement, strategy imperative, and pro-

cess. These aspects are of course seminal and important, embodying

pan‐national initiatives sponsored by, for example, the United

Nations and the Principles for Responsible Management Education

Received: 20 September 2017 Accepted: 21 September 2017

DOI: 10.1002/job.2242

J Organ Behav. 2017;38:1297–1301. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 1297