Sustainability management emergence and integration on different management levels in smaller large-sized companies in Austria

Abstract

Companies should integrate sustainability into all organizational units and on all management levels to contribute to sustainable development. This study explores nine smaller large-sized companies (revenue between €50 and €300 million, at least 250 employees) from various sectors. We applied the framework of Baumgartner for corporate sustainability/corporate social responsibility empirically and used the promotor model of Witte from innovation management in the context of sustainability. The findings show that companies must have (a) top management support and (b) an open organizational culture regarding sustainable development to integrate sustainability on operational, strategic, and normative management levels. These two prerequisites need to remain stable over time, as changes in top management and staff create new challenges in sustainability implementation. The companies have mainly implemented sustainability management from the top-down, first enlarging aspects of environmental management and human resource management and then integrating sustainability in terms of their vision and strategy. If top management does not see the need to alter the organization to address sustainability challenges, lower level managers or middle managers might take the initiative. In this case, however, only good environmental and human resources management practices are enabled. The top management blocks bottom-up implementation efforts if they are not willing to make decisions based on new values and judgement and promote change in the organization. Our case studies show that a power promoter is essential for the integration of sustainability on all organizational levels. Presence of strong power promoter allows other promoter types to act in sustainability integration.