Successfully leading change through a corporate sustainability intervention

Abstract

Business has often been accused of being conspicuous by its absence in addressing socio, political and environmental concerns which are exacerbated within a developing market context like South Africa. Over the past decade, the evolving concept of corporate sustainability has aided in increasing the expectations of companies to incorporate these issues more systematically into their core strategic and decision making processes. This research sought to understand how companies have successfully been able to address this through implementing change management interventions within their organizations. Of specific significance were Beer and Nohria’s (2000) theory of strategies for change, Kotter’s (1996) theory of implementing change in organizations and Bass’s (1999) theory of authentic transformational leadership. The qualitative approach utilised in this exploratory study, employed two research mechanisms including semi-structured interviews as well as an analysis of secondary data to conduct the two phases of this research. Experts were interviewed in the first phase to obtain their views on corporate sustainability as well as to list companies that they considered successful in having implemented corporate sustainability change management interventions. The second phase comprised of interviews with sustainability managers from the top ten companies that were identified by the experts. The results of the research are mostly aligned with the core theories of the research and have confirmed the role that context and leadership play in successfully implement corporate sustainability interventions within organisations. The disparities between the rhetoric and practice bring to light the complex and multidimensional nature of corporate sustainability.