Natalie Slawinski

Leading Organizational Learning Through Authentic Dialogue

This article explores how authentic leaders enable learning in organizations through the mechanism of dialogue. Using Crossan et al.s multi-level framework, we examine how top managers who exhibit the authentic leadership capabilities of self-awareness, balanced processing, self-regulation and relational transparency can shape an organizational culture characterized by authentic dialogue. This culture then supports feed-forward and feedback learning across individual, group and organizational levels, promoting and reinforcing double-loop learning. We develop propositions that integrate the leadership and organizational learning literatures and offer suggestions for future research.

A Matter of Time: The Temporal Perspectives of Organizational Responses to Climate Change

Prior research often categorizes corporate environmental responses on a spectrum that ranges from reactive to proactive. Such research subordinates the role of time, yet time is central to organizational responses to environmental issues such as climate change. In this paper, we study five oil and gas firms and inductively develop a framework of corporate responses to climate change that explicitly acknowledges the role of time. The framework identifies two categories of corporate responses grounded in different temporal perspectives: focused and integrated. We discuss the implications of this categorization for research on corporate environmentalism and time in organizational theory.

Short on Time: Intertemporal Tensions in Business Sustainability

This inductive study of five firms in Albertas oil sands examines how organizations attend to the intertemporal tensions between the short term and long term that are inherent in business sustainability. Grounding our insights in organizational responses to the climate change issue, we find that firms that juxtapose the short term and long term also confront the tension between business and society. These firms are, therefore, more likely to recognize the complexity of climate change and the need for integrated, multidimensional solutions. These insights contribute to prior research in business sustainability.

The Role of Short-Termism and Uncertainty Avoidance in Organizational Inaction on Climate Change: A Multi-Level Framework

Despite increasing pressure to deal with climate change, firms have been slow to respond with effective action. This article presents a multi-level framework for a better understanding of why many firms are failing to reduce their absolute greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change. The concepts of short-termism and uncertainty avoidance from research in psychology, sociology, and organization theory can explain the phenomenon of organizational inaction on climate change. Antecedents related to short-termism and uncertainty avoidance reinforce one another at three levels—individual, organizational, and institutional—and result in organizational inaction on climate change. The article also discusses the implications of this multi-level framework for research on corporate sustainability.

SHORT ON TIME: THE ROLE OF TIME IN BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY.

The article focuses on the role of time in business sustainability. Particular attention is given to the competition that exists between working for increased profits and working to be socially and...