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The imperative of embedding sustainability in business: a model for transformational sustainable development

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journal contribution
posted on 2021-03-31, 14:16 authored by Hana Trollman, James ColwillJames Colwill
Sustainable development is the current strategic trajectory with transformative intent for complex global challenges including eradication of poverty, full social inclusion and prevention of ecological collapse. However, discourses related to the private sector emphasise economic and social development over the environmental components of sustainable development. Embedding sustainability is the related management imperative for business, supported by numerous frameworks, yet there is confusion about implementation in both literature and practice. This research addresses these issues with a mixed methods study combining a scoping literature review with a qualitative e‐Delphi study. The main findings are that the economic system constrains the embedding of sustainability in business; and that a paradigm shift towards ecocentric business models lacks support. The results are used to develop a novel model to aid transformational sustainable development that acknowledges the influences of the economic system in business whilst respecting social and ecological embeddedness.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

Sustainable Development

Volume

29

Issue

5

Pages

974-986

Publisher

Wiley

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Wiley under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2021-03-17

Publication date

2021-03-28

Copyright date

2021

ISSN

0968-0802

eISSN

1099-1719

Language

  • en

Depositor

Hana Trollman. Deposit date: 29 March 2021

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