Mike Valente

In response to recent calls for theory to predict and explain the phenomenon of “meta-organizations,” we set out to identify the causes of their formation. Using a cross-case comparison of multiple case studies in sub-Saharan Africa, where nine focal firms varied in their response to the complexities of sustainability, we examined how and why some firms approached sustainability through a meta-organization while others did not. Our findings show that meta-organizations may be an effective means of managing the complexity of sustainability when participants exhibit an openness to innovative forms of collaboration—which, in turn, rests on complex systems framing and experiential embeddedness—and when they collectively undergo a four-stage process of meta-organization formation that transforms dormant resources into critical sources for achieving systemic goals. Our results also suggest that meta-organizations may be particularly well suited to addressing institutional and market voids, which typically constitute highly complex economic and social contexts. In addition to making contributions to the extant literature on interorganizational relationships and networks, this paper, to our knowledge, is the first to examine the appropriateness of the meta-organizational form in less developed economies, extending the potential generalizability of its application to multiple economic contexts.

This article examines the dynamic process through which business sustainability becomes embedded as a strategic imperative of the firm. Using inductive theory building on 15 case studies of companies operating in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Egypt, the author traces an eight-phase process that tracks how firms develop lucrative operational capabilities in response to pervasive contextual issues, how the role of convergent contradiction across the firm and its stakeholders precipitates a shift in thinking, and how firms and their stakeholders collectively theorize to develop complementary capabilities, the product of which enables significant economic and social value creation and firm strategic differentiation.

Two obvious trends in corporate governance include broadening board accountability beyond shareholders’ interests and paying outside directors with equity compensation (stock and stock options). By integrating common agency and instrumental stakeholder theories, we examine the effect of stock compensation on secondary stakeholders and a firm’s participation in social issues, two areas where interests are less aligned with shareholder value. Consistent with our predictions, we found that while stock compensation may be an effective way to align directors’ goals to those of shareholders, it has adverse effects on important non-shareholder constituencies in the company’s operating environment.

Two obvious trends in corporate governance include broadening board accountability beyond shareholders’ interests and paying outside directors with equity compensation (stock and stock options). By integrating common agency and instrumental stakeholder theories, we examine the effect of stock compensation on secondary stakeholders and a firm’s participation in social issues, two areas where interests are less aligned with shareholder value. Consistent with our predictions, we found that while stock compensation may be an effective way to align directors’ goals to those of shareholders, it has adverse effects on important non-shareholder constituencies in the company’s operating environment.

In this article, we examine how organizations become less sensitive to the symbolic and material carriers of a prevailing logic and correspondingly enact a deviating logic. Using the highly institutionalized Belgian horticulture industry, we employ a multicase, inductive study of firms that vary in their responses to an emerging logic that diverges from institutionalized norms and practices of their organizational field. We introduce symbolic and material immunity as two essential and interacting attributes predicting firm-level deviation from a dominant logic and discuss factors that enable firms to possess these characteristics.

Although scholars agree that local context is critical in a firm’s commitment to sustainable development, questions remain about how this context plays a role in achieving simultaneous goals of sustainable community development and firm strategic success. By sampling two groups of firms differentiated according to their adoption of a weak or strong orientation to sustainable development, this author searched for relevant explanations from the local context that help to answer this very question. Results point to indigenous resource and institutional capital, the combination of which assists the firm in its ability to embed sustainable development. Whereas more tangible forms of capital assist in the strategy implementation process, less tangible forms of capital influence the strategy formulation process. What is more, firms tended to progress sequentially in the appropriation of these forms of capital as a result of the strengthening of the relationship with contextual stakeholders.

In the midst of a fundamental gap between theoretical assertions of a sustaincentric business paradigm and any rigorous empirical examination of its adoption at the firm level, I set out to answer the following two interrelated research questions: (1) How can we identify firms that adopt a sustaincentric paradigm and (2) What explains firm adoption of this paradigm? Based on cross-case comparisons of 12 African firms adopting a reactive, proactive, or sustaincentric orientation to sustainability, I develop a conceptual framework comprised of three interrelated constructs informed by descriptive observations across individual, organizational and interorganizational levels of analysis. Unlike their reactive and proactive counterparts, sustaincentric firms exhibited critical multilevel characteristics that demonstrated capacity for cognitive complexity and linked them closely to a highly interconnected network of external actors, the combination of which enabled the achievement of competitive advantage based on sustaincentrism.