New Article on Managers and their Business Orientation by Professor Adam Lindgreen
This qualitative study investigates whether the views of managers need to be congruent with the corporate sustainability (CS) logics—either integrative or instrumental—of their employing organization. Together with my colleagues Jay Joseph, Marc Orlitzky, Bruce Gurd, and Helen Borland, we assessed the CS performance of 25 organizations within the Australian forestry and wood products industry and analyzed the CS orientations of 32 senior managers within these companies to explore whether their individual CS views are consistent with organizational CS logics. Our findings indicate that, in general, better performing organizations are led by managers that hold the integrative view, while poorer performing organizations are more likely to have managers with an instrumental view of CS. Nonetheless, there were noteworthy exceptions to this conclusion. Our findings indicate that, under certain industry conditions, managers who hold an instrumental view may be able to generate ecological and social organizational outcomes that are at least equal to those produced by integrative managers.