How to embed environmental sustainability: The role of dynamic capabilities and managerial approaches in a life cycle management perspective

Abstract

Life cycle management (LCM) is a managerial framework to embed a holistic environmental sustainability logic inside organizations. Despite its long tradition, the implementation of LCM is little explored. In this study we observe how sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring capabilities together with managerial approaches to environmental sustainability help organizations embed LCM in their practices. We performed a multinomial logistic regression using a sample of 187 medium and large enterprises. Our findings show that sensing and seizing capabilities and an integrative approach to sustainability help embed LCM in presence of complex environments. Among dynamic capabilities, reconfiguring does not appear to help organizations embed LCM. This study contributes to the literature on LCM and dynamic capabilities.