Abstract
Strategic leadership and corporate sustainability have recently come together in conspicuously explicit fashion through the emergence of top management team (TMT) positions with dedicated corporate sustainability responsibilities. These TMT positions, commonly referred to as “Chief Sustainability Officers,” have found their way into the upper echelons of many of the world’s largest corporations alongside more traditional TMT positions including the CEO and CFO. We explore this phenomenon and consider the following two questions: Why are corporate sustainability positions being installed to the TMT? What effects do corporate sustainability TMT positions have at their organizations? We consider these questions through strategic leadership and neoinstitutional theoretical frameworks. Through the latter, we also engage with Weberian considerations of bureaucracy. We find that the reasons why corporate sustainability TMT positions are installed can be in response to a crisis at the corporation for which its legitimacy is challenged. We also find the corporate sustainability TMT position can be installed proactively in an effort to realize external opportunities that may have otherwise gone unrealized without concerted attention and coordination afforded by a strategic level position. Regarding effects, we determine the position can relate to the establishment of bureaucratic structures dedicated to corporate sustainability within the corporation through which formalized processes and key performance indicators to drive corporate sustainability performances are established. In the face of our finding that many corporate sustainability TMT positions are being removed despite having only relatively recently been introduced to their respective TMTs, we find that the successful implementation of bureaucratic machinery can help considerations to sustainability extend beyond the tenure of a corporate sustainability position within the TMT.
Access this article
We’re sorry, something doesn't seem to be working properly.
Please try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, please contact support so we can address the problem.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
As Table 4 shows, the TMT position title CSR Manager identified in 2010 at the Swedish retailer H&M underwent a name change in 2012 when the new incumbent, Helena Helmersson, assumed the title “Sustainability Officer.” Accordingly, one of the 9.5 TMT positions associated with the keyword “CSR” in 2010 became a TMT position associated with the keyword “sustainability” in 2012, thereby reducing the number of CSR-related TMT positions by one and increasing the number of sustainability-related TMT positions by one for 2012.
Goodpaster (1991) employs the expression “strategic ethics” but does not endorse it.
References
Abrahamson, E. (1996). Management fashion. Academy of Management Review, 21(1), 254–285.
Abrahamson, E., & Fairchild, G. (1999). Management fashion: Lifecycles, triggers, and collective learning processes. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(4), 708–740.
Adler, P. S., & Borys, B. (1996). Two types of bureaucracy: Enabling and coercive. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41, 61–90.
Arendt, L., Priem, R., & Ndofor, H. (2005). A CEO-adviser model of strategic decision making. Journal of Management, 31(5), 680–699.
Balch, O. (2011). Chief sustainability officers: CSOs in the C-suite. The Ethical Corporation. April.
Baron, J., & Beilby, W. (1986). The proliferation of job titles in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 31, 561–586.
Beauchamp, T. L., Bowie, N. E., & Arnold, D. G. (2009). Ethical theory and business (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Brubaker, R. (1991). The limits of rationality: An essay on the social and moral thought of Max Weber. New York: Routledge.
Bryman, A., & Bell, E. (2007). Business research methods. Oxford University Press.
Capriottia, P., & Morenob, A. (2007). Corporate citizenship and public relations: The importance and interactivity of social responsibility issues on corporate web sites. Public Relations Review, 33(1), 84–91.
Carpenter, M. A. (2002). The implications of strategy and social context for the relationship between top management team heterogeneity and firm performance. Strategic Management Journal, 23(3), 275–284.
Carpenter, M. A., Geletkanycz, M. A., & Sanders, W. G. (2004). Upper echelons research revisited: Antecedents, elements, and consequences of top management team composition. Journal of Management, 30(6), 749–778.
Carpenter, M., & Reilly, G. (2006). Construct and construct measurement in upper echelons research. In D. Ketchen, D. Bergh, & D. Bergh (Eds.), Research methodology in strategy and management (Vol. 3). New York: Elsevier.
Carroll, A. B. (1999). Corporate social responsibility: Evolution of a definitional construct. Business and Society, 38(3), 268–295.
Casimir, G., & Dutilh, C. (2003). Sustainability: A gender studies perspective. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 27, 316–325.
Certo, S. T., Lester, R. H., Dalton, C. M., & Dalton, D. R. (2006). Top management teams, strategy, and financial performance: A meta-analytic examination. Journal of Management Studies, 43, 813–839.
Chatterji, A., Levine, D., & Toffel, M. (2009). How well do social ratings actually measure corporate social responsibility. Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 18(1), 125–169.
Christensen, L. T., Morsing, M., & Thyssen, O. (2013). CSR as aspirational talk. Organization, 20(3), 372–393.
Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2010). Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dahlsrud, A. (2008). How corporate social responsibility is defined: An analysis of 37 definitions. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 15(1), 1–13.
Davis, J. H., Schoorman, F. D., & Donaldson, L. (1997). Toward a stewardship theory of management. Academy of Management Review, 22(1), 20–47.
DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147–160.
Du Gay, P. (2000). In praise of bureaucracy: Weber-organization-ethics. London: Sage.
Dyllick, T., & Hockerts, K. (2002). Beyond the business case for corporate sustainability. Business Strategy and the Environment, 11(2), 130–141.
Eisenberg, E. M. (1984). Ambiguity as strategy in organizational communication. Communication Monographs, 51, 227–242.
Eisenhardt, K. M., & Graebner, M. E. (2007). Theory building from cases: Opportunities and challenges. Academy of Management Journal, 50(1), 25–32.
Elkington, J. (1997). Cannibals with forks. The triple bottom line of 21st century business. Oxford: Capstone Publishing.
European Commission. (2011). A renewed EU strategy 2011–2014 for corporate social responsibility. Brussels: European Commission.
Finkelstein, S., & Hambrick, D. C. (1990). Top-management-team tenure and organizational outcomes: The moderating role of managerial discretion. Administrative Science Quarterly, 484–503.
Finkelstein, S., Hambrick, D., & Cannella, A. (2009). Strategic leadership: theory and research on executives, top management teams, and boards. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Forbes. (2012). Profiles: Sandra lin. Retrieved February 1, 2012, from http://www.forbes.com/profile/sandra-lin/.
Forbes. (2012). Ranking the world’s most sustainable companies. 24 January. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/01/24/ranking-the-worlds-most-sustainable-companies.
Ford. (2012). Press release: ford environment and safety chief sue cischke to retire after 35-year career; Robert Brown named her successor. Retrieved October 1, 2012, from http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=35731.
Frankfurt, H. G. (2005). On bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Boston, MA: Pitman.
Freeman, R. E., Harrison, J., Wicks, A., Parmar, B., & de Colle, S. (2010). Stakeholder theory: The state of the art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Garrahan, M. (2007). Design not China blamed for toy recalls. Financial Times.
Gephart, R. P, Jr. (1978). Status degradation and organizational succession: An ethnomethodological approach. Administrative Science Quarterly, 23, 553–581.
Gond, J., & Crane, A. (2010). Corporate social performance disoriented: Saving the lost paradigm? Business and Society, 49(4), 677–703.
Goodpaster, K. E. (1991). Business ethics and stakeholder analysis. Business Ethics Quarterly, 1, 53–73.
Gourji, L. (2008). Adding sustainability to the C-Suite. Corporate Board Member Magazine. Retrieved November 1, 2012, from www.boardmember.com/MagazineArticle_Details.aspx?id=417.
Green, S. (1988). Strategy, organizational culture and symbolism. Long Range Planning, 21(4), 121–129.
Guthey, E. (2012). Fashions, trends, and the production of leadership. Presented at The Administrative Science Association of Canada, St. Johns, Newfoundland.
Guthey, E., & Morsing, M. (2013). CSR and the mediated emergence of strategic ambiguity. Journal of Business Ethics. doi:10.1007/s10551-013-2005-7.
Haleblian, J., & Finikelstein, S. (1993). Top management team size, CEO dominance, and firm performance: the moderating roles of environmental turbulence and discretion. Academy of Management Journal, 36(4), 844–863.
Hambrick, D. (2007). Upper echelons theory: An update. Academy of Management Review, 32(2), 334–343.
Hambrick, D. C., Cho, T. S., & Chen, M. J. (1996). The influence of top management team heterogeneity on firms’ competitive moves. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41, 659–684.
Hambrick, D. C., & D’Aveni, R. A. (1992). Top team deterioration as part of the downward spiral of large corporate bankruptcies. Management Science, 38(10), 1445–1466.
Hambrick, D. C., & Finkelstein, S. (1987). Managerial discretion: a bridge between polar views of organizational outcomes. Research in organizational behavior.
Hambrick, D., & Mason, P. (1984). Upper echelons: The organization as a reflection of its top managers. Academy of Management Review, 9, 193–206.
Hirsch, P. M., & Levin, D. Z. (1999). Umbrella advocates versus validity police: A life-cycle model. Organization Science, 10(2), 199–212.
Just Good Business. (2008). A special report on corporate social responsibility. The Economist. 19 January.
Krishnan, H. A., & Park, D. (2005). A few good women: On top management teams. Journal of Business Research, 58(12), 1712–1720.
Lubin, D. A., & Esty, D. C. (2010). The sustainability imperative. Harvard Business Review, 88(5), 42–50.
Lunheim, R. (2005). Confessions of a corporate window dresser (pp. 6–7). Summer: Leading Perspectives.
Mærsk. (2012). Press release 7 August 2012: Changes in the HR organisation at A. P. Moller—Maersk. Retrieved October 1, 2012, from www.maerskpress.com/Latest-Press-Releases/changes-in-the-hr-organisation-at-a.p.-moller-maersk/s/0e168cd3-0b59-4ec3-b843-59313adbecb2.
Marrewijk, M. V. (2003). Concepts and definitions of CSR and corporate sustainability: Between agency and communion. Journal of Business Ethics, 44(2/3), 95–105.
Mattel. (2011). Mattel Inc. Q4 2010 Earnings Call. 2 February 2011. Transcripts provided by Factset-callstreet.
Matten, D., & Crane, A. (2005). Corporate citizenship: Toward an extended theoretical conceptualization. Academy of Management Review, 30(1), 166–179.
McNulty, E. & Davis, R. (2010). Should the C-suite have a “green” suite? Harvard Business School. December.
Menz, M. (2012). Functional top management team members: A review, synthesis, and research agenda. Journal of Management, 38(1), 45–80.
Menz, M., & Scheef, C. (forthcoming). Chief strategy officers: Contingency analysis of their presence in top management teams. Strategic Management Journal. doi 10.1002/smj.2104.
Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations. American Journal of Sociology, 83, 340–363.
Mintzberg, H. (1979). The structuring of organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Moon, J., Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2005). Can corporations be citizens? Corporate citizenship as a metaphor for business participation in society. Business Ethics Quarterly, 15, 427–451.
Newmont Mining. (2011). Press release: Newmont appoints gary goldberg as executive vice president and chief operating officer; brian hill appointed executive vice president of sustainability and external affairs. Retrieved October 1, 2012, from http://www.newmont.com/our-investors/press-releases/2011/10102011.
New York Times. (2011). Business background defines chief of staff. 6 January. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/politics/07daley.html?_r=0.
Nokia. (2008). Press release 15 August 2008. Esko Aho to join Nokia on November 1, 2008: Veli Sundbäck to retire at the end of May, 2009. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from http://presse.nokia.fr/2008/08/15/esko-aho-to-join-nokia-on-november-1-2008-veli-sundback-to-retire-at-the-end-of-may-2009.
Nokia. (2012). Press release 30 May 2012. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from http://press.nokia.com/2012/05/30/esko-aho-to-join-harvard-university-as-senior-fellow.
Park, H., Russell, C., & Lee, J. (2007). National culture and environmental sustainability: A cross-national analysis. Journal of Economics and Finance, 31(1), 104–121.
Pettigrew, A. (1992). On studying managerial elites. Strategic Management Journal. Special Issue: Fundamental Themes in Strategy Process Research, 13(Winter), 163–182.
Pfeffer, J. (1981). Management as symbolic action: The creation and maintenance of organizational paradigms. Research in Organizational Behavior, 3(1), 1–52.
Pless, N. M., Maak, T., & Waldman, D. A. (2012). Different approaches toward doing the right thing: Mapping the responsibility orientations of leaders. Academy of Management Perspectives, 26(4), 51–65.
Quinn, D. P., & Jones, T. M. (1995). An agent morality view of business policy. Academy of Management Review, 20(1), 22–42.
Resolve. (2013). Board of directors biography: David A. Baker. Retrieved April 1, 2013, from http://www.resolv.org/blog/boardofdirectors/dave-baker.
Rigby, D., & Tager, S. (2008). Learning the advantages of sustainable growth. Strategy and Leadership, 36(4), 24–28.
Senate Committee on Appropriations. (2007). Testimony of Robert A. Eckert. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mattel, Inc. Submitted to the Senate Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. Washington, DC 12 September 2007. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from www.appropriations.senate.gov.
Smith, K. G., Smith, K. A., Olian, J. D., Sims, H. P, Jr., O’Bannon, D. P., & Scully, J. A. (1994). Top management team demography and process: The role of social integration and communication. Administrative Science Quarterly, 39, 412–438.
Smith, N., Smith, V., & Verner, M. (2006). Do women in top management affect firm performance? A panel study of 2,500 Danish firms. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 55(7), 569–593.
Storebrand. (2012). Storebrand 2011 annual report. Retrieved October 15, 2012, from http://www.storebrand.no/site/stb.nsf/2011AnnualIndex.html.
Strand, R. (2011). Exploring the role of leadership in corporate social responsibility: A review. Journal of Leadership, Accountability, and Ethics, 8(4), 84–96.
Strand, R. (2013). The chief officer of corporate social responsibility: A study of its presence in top management teams. Journal of Business Ethics, 112(4), 721–734.
Strang, D., & Baron, J. N. (1990). Categorical imperatives: the structure of job titles in California state agencies. American Sociological Review, 55, 479–495.
Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 571–610.
Tagesson, T., Blank, V., Broberg, P., & Collin, S. (2009). What explains the extent and content of social and environmental disclosures on corporate web sites: A study of social and environmental reporting in Swedish listed corporations. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 16(6), 352–364.
Tiessen, J. H. (2004). Multinational multilingualism on the internet: The use of Japanese on corporate web sites. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, 21(2), 180–189.
United Parcel Service (UPS). (2010). Press release 20 December 2012. Bob Stoffel retiring after 35 years of service. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from http://www.pressroom.ups.com/Press+Releases/Archive/2010/Q4/Bob+Stoffel+Retiring+After+35+Years+of+Service.
Watson, T. J. (2006). Organising and managing work: Organisational, managerial and strategic behaviour in theory and practice (2nd ed.). London: Financial Times: Prentice Hall, Pearson Education.
Watson, T. J. (2010). Critical social science, pragmatism and the realities of HRM. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21(6), 915–931.
Weaver, G. R., Trevino, L. K., & Cochran, P. L. (1999). Integrated and decoupled corporate social performance: Management commitments, external pressures, and corporate ethics practices. Academy of Management Journal, 42(5), 539–552.
Weber, M. (1958). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Weber, M. (1978). Bureaucracy. In G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds.), Economy and society (Vol. 2). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Weinreb Group. (2011). CSO back story: How chief sustainability officers reached the C-suite. September 2011. Retrieved December 15, 2012, from http://weinrebgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CSO-Back-Story-by-Weinreb-Group.pdf.
West, C. T., & Schwenk, C. R. (1996). Top management team strategic consensus, demographic homogeneity and firm performance: A report of resounding nonfindings. Strategic Management Journal, 17(7), 571–576.
Wiersema, M. F., & Bantel, K. A. (1992). Top management team demography and corporate strategic change. Academy of Management Journal, 35(1), 91–121.
Xylem. (2013). Water advisory board biography: Roberta Bowman. Retrieved April 1, 2013, from http://www.xyleminc.com/en-us/about-us/water-advisory-board/Pages/Roberta-B.-Bowman.aspx.
Zorn, D. (2004). Here a chief, there a chief: The rise of the CFO in the American firm. American Sociological Review, 69(3), 345–364.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Strand, R. Strategic Leadership of Corporate Sustainability. J Bus Ethics 123, 687–706 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-2017-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-2017-3