Kate Kearins

Creating Adventures in Wonderland: The Journey Metaphor and Environmental Sustainability

This paper provides a critical exploration of the journey metaphor promoted in much business discourse on sustainability—in corporate reports and advertisements, and in commentaries by business and professional associations. The portrayal of ‘sustainability as a journey’ evokes images of organizational adaptation, learning, progress, and a movement away from business-as-usual practices. The journey metaphor, however, masks the issue of towards what it is that businesses are actually, or even supposedly, moving. It is argued that in constructing ‘sustainability as a journey’, business commentators and other purveyors of corporate rhetoric can avoid becoming embroiled in debates about future desirable and sustainable states of affairs—states of affairs, perhaps, which would question the very raison d’être for some organizations and their outputs. ‘Sustainability as a journey’ invokes a subtle and powerful use of language that appears to seriously engage with elements of the discourse around sustainable development and sustainability, but yet at the same time, paradoxically, may serve to further reinforce business-as-usual.

Transparent and Caring Corporations? A Study of Sustainability Reports by the Body Shop and Royal Dutch/Shell

This article analyzes sustainability values reports published by The Body Shop International and bythe Royal Dutch/Shell Group. The authors show how corporate discourses expressed in these precedent-setting texts both reflect and influence sociopolitical struggle over the meanings and practices of sustainable development. Specifically, the authors examine metaphors of transparencyand care used to describe corporate rationales for increasing stake-holder communication, including reporting. Drawing on distinct discursive domains of business accountancyand personal ethics and sentiment, these metaphors promise to reconstruct the interface between the firm and society. Exploring the quite different assumptions on which each of these metaphors relies and their implications for corporate practices of sustainable development, the authors consider whether sustainability values reporting and the dialogue that it claims to facilitate can promote more democratic and socially and environmentally responsive corporate decision making, even as they impose new forms of managerial control.

Sustainable “what”? A cognitive approach to understanding sustainable development

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of sustainable development held by New Zealand “thought leaders” and “influencers” promoting sustainability, business, or sustainable business. It seeks to compare inductively derived worldviews with theories associated with sustainability and the humanity-nature relationship. Design/methodology/approach - Worldviews were explored through a cognitive mapping exercise. A total of 21 thought leaders and influencers constructed maps of their understanding of sustainable development. These maps were analysed to reveal commonalities and differences. Findings - Participant maps illustrated disparate levels of detail and complexity. Those participants promoting business generally emphasized the economic domain, accepting economic growth and development as the key to sustainable development. An emphasis on the environmental domain, the future, limits to the Earths resources, and achievement through various radical means, was more commonly articulated by those promoting sustainability. Participants promoting sustainable business held elements of both approaches, combining an emphasis on the environmental domain and achievement of sustainable development by various reformist means. Research limitations/implications - This study identified the range of worldviews expressed by 21 thought leaders and influencers across three main domains only – promoters of sustainability, business or both. Extending this sample and exploring how these and other views arise and are represented within a wider population could be the subject of further research. Practical implications - Such divergence of opinion as to what connotes sustainable development across even a small sample does not bode well for its achievement. The elucidation of the worldview of promoters of sustainable business points to the need to consider more carefully the implications of environmentalism, and other aspects of sustainability, integrated into a business agenda. Originality/value - This paper contributes to empirical research on environmental worldviews which has barely penetrated discussion of sustainability within the management and business literature. It shows cognitive mapping to be an effective technique for investigating the meaning of a conceptual theme like sustainable development.

Knowing “the price of everything and the value of nothing”: accounting for heritage assets

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the conceptual arguments surrounding accounting for heritage assets and the resistance by some New Zealand museums to a mandatory valuing of their holdings.Design/methodology/approach – Evidence was derived from museum annual reports, interviews and personal communications with representatives of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand (ICANZ) and a range of New Zealand museums.Findings – ICANZs requirement that heritage assets be accounted for in a manner similar to other assets is shown as deriving from a managerialist rationality which, in espousing sector neutrality, assumes an unproblematic stance to the particular nature and circumstances of museums and their holdings. Resisting the imposition of the standard, New Zealands regional museums evince an identity tied more strongly to notions of aesthetic, cultural and social value implicit in curatorship, than to a concern with the economic value of their holdings. Museum managers and accountants pref...

Interorganizational Collaboration for Regional Sustainability: What Happens When Organizational Representatives Come Together?

This article presents a critical-interpretive investigation of an interorganizational collaboration for regional sustainability. It highlights the potential and problems in such a process and exposes how sustainable development influences collaboration. Through collaborating, members can develop a better understanding of the economic, social, and environmental issues affecting their region’s sustainability and challenging their organizations’ legitimacy. By sharing experiences and expectations of sustainable development, members can also develop better relationships and respond to various pressures for sustainable development. However, the ideological foundations of sustainable development philosophy can make such collaboration an extremely tense and political process. As members explore solutions that integrate environmental, economic, and social sustainability dimensions in the local and regional context, they may also strive to preserve or enhance their organizational interests. Ultimately, they may compromise on fairly easy or abstract solutions that can build their organization’s reputation and legitimacy rather than serve the wider remit of sustainable development.

Beyond Corporate Environmental Management to a Consideration of Nature in Visionary Small Enterprise

This article examines the potential for visionary small-enterprise to operate with a fundamentally different conception of nature from the environmental management mode offered within the business case for sustainable development. Corporate environmental management is critiqued for not offering any fundamental reassessment of the business—nature relationship, which would be required to achieve ecological sustainability. Three contrasting cases of visionary small-enterprise in New Zealand are described in terms of the entrepreneurs’ expressed understandings of nature and constructions of the business—nature relationship. The entrepreneurs in this study readily made connections between nature and their businesses and were aware of value judgments they made either in favor of nature, or with some regret against it where supporting infrastructure was absent, or economic rationalities prevailed. A nature-centered and not overly growth-focused outlook appears an essential element of business aligned with the new ecological paradigm.

Exposing Students To the Potential and Risks of Stakeholder Engagement When Teaching Sustainability: a Classroom Exercise:

In-class, stakeholder negotiation exercises are proposed as a means of students experiencing and reflecting critically on the potential and the risks of an increasingly popular mechanism for advancing sustainability—stakeholder engagement. This article reviews the theoretical framework for stakeholder engagement and for an issue-based rather than firm-centric approach to classroom stakeholder negotiation exercises. An example of a classroom exercise is given as the basis of a possible template for replicating the exercise. This assists students to recognize the potential and risks associated with stakeholder engagement at individual, organizational, and societal levels.

The Politics of Knowing “Organizational Sustainable Development”

We critically examine organizational representations of sustainable development in 197 publicly available corporate reports. Using a discourse theoretical approach, we analyze how these organizations have come to “know” sustainable development, and we consider the conditions that made this knowledge possible. Themes identified are (a) enlightened self-interest and the business case, (b) organizational sustainable development as a balancing act, (c) organizational sustainable development as necessary and important, (d) being sustainable as responsibility and/or obligation, (e) organizational sustainable development as challenge and opportunity, and (f) sustainable development as a new and an old concept. Taken-for-granted assumptions in corporate reports emphasize organizational ability to manage sustainably underpinned by optimism about technological advancements, continuous improvement, and efficiencies. The organizational construction of sustainable development “accommodates” current organizations and systems of organizing. More extensive and compelling engagement with the discourse is required by both practitioners and academics, and with each other—if an environmentally, socially, and economically enabling construction of sustainable development is to be realized.

Innovative and entrepreneurial activity in the public sector: The changing face of public sector institutions

Abstract This paper investigates the drivers and facilitators of innovative and entrepreneurial activity in three New Zealand state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Illustrative cases reveal that those aspects typically associated with entrepreneurship, such as innovation, risk acceptance, pro-activeness and growth, are supported by a number of other elements within the public sector context studied. These elements include external drivers related to performance, including operational excellence and cost efficiency. They also comprise internal facilitators such as a more flexible culture, an investment in people, a focus on branding, and the deliberate application and transfer of knowledge. The implications are twofold. First, that innovation and entrepreneurship in the public sector can go beyond government policy-making, with the SOE model representing an important policy decision and sector of the New Zealand Government. And second, that the impact of several SOEs on international markets suggests competition on the global stage will increasingly come from both public and private sector organisations.

Seeds of hope? Exploring business actors’ diverse understandings of sustainable development

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is first, to investigate empirically the plurality of understanding surrounding sustainability held by those working in the business sector, and second, to consider the likelihood of a dialogic accounting that would account for the plurality of perspectives identified. Design/methodology/approach - – The subjects of this study are those people actively working to incorporate sustainability within New Zealand business, both business people and their sustainability advisors. Participant’s subjective understanding is investigated using Q methodology, a method used widely by social science researchers to investigate typical views on a particular topic, from an analysis of the order in which participants individually sort a sample of stimuli. In this study, the stimuli were opinion statements. Findings - – Five typical understandings of sustainable development were identified, including understandings more usually attributed to business antagonists than business. Conflicts between environment and development are acknowledged by most participants. However, an agonistic debate that will create spaces, practices, and institutions through which marginalised understandings of sustainable development might be addressed and contested, is yet to be established and will not be easy. Originality/value - – The paper contributes to the few empirical investigations of the plurality of understandings of sustainability held by those people working to incorporate sustainability within business. It is further distinguished by the authors attempt to describe divergent beliefs and values, absent from their immediate business context, and absent from any academic priming. The paper also provides an illustrative example of the application of Q methodology, a method not commonly used in accounting research.