Systematic Review - Network for Business Sustainability

A marked and radical shift in business firms’ relations
with society occurred around the middle of the 19th
century, when “economic life became disembedded
from society and viewed itself as a self-contained
system consisting of consumers and their needs
awaiting fulfilment by producers” (Polanyi, 1944,
cited in Simanis & Hart, 2009: 79). At that time, the
most polluted town in England was Bradford, where
mill workers endured unimaginable conditions of
employment, and life expectancy was only 20 years.
On the back of technological innovation, Titus Salt
wove alpaca wool with a silk or cotton warp to create
a cloth of the finest quality, and, in so doing, amassed
a fortune. He moved his mills out of Bradford and
built a new industrial community, the eponymous
Saltaire. 19 Salt built 850 houses for his workers, each
served with fresh water from Saltaire’s own reservoir.
He also built shops, schools and Sunday schools,
baths, washhouses, almshouses, a club and institute, a
Wesleyan chapel, a magnificent Congregational church
and a park (Ingham, 2006; Smith, 2003). In the context
of Victorian England, Saltaire is an exemplar case of
SOI or corporate social responsibility — though, of
course, the term was not coined until considerably later.
There are other similar examples, too, especially among
the Quaker families, including the Cadbury family and
Bournville (Lamming et al., 1999).
Of course, socially responsible thinking has moved
on since the 1850s, and, although Saltaire may have
been an exemplar of local social responsibility, the
contemporary picture is made more complex by
additional considerations, such as the ecological impact
19 Now a UNESCO world heritage site, see www.saltairevillage.info
of industrial processes, the use of non-renewable
sources of energy and interactions with suppliers. But,
perhaps the sustainability orientation is not a wholly
new phenomenon and organizations need not be
disembedded from society, but perhaps instead need
to acquire the capability to re-embed themselves.
At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the
21st century, firms were reacquainting themselves with
the principles of SOI and taking ideas further, heralding
a new era of innovation activity and opportunity.
Whether driven by regulatory obligations, competitive
opportunity or the desire to “do the right thing,” firms
engage in a range of innovation-related practices under
the banner of sustainability.
We note two categories of practice that we have
labelled Operational Optimizers and Organizational
Transformation. We also note an aspirational third
category, Systems Builders, but find no empirical
instances of firms operating in this context. In this
last category, because the emphasis is on Systems
Building, “the firm” may not even be the relevant unit of
analysis.
Of the studies reviewed, the great majority focus on
the innovation activities of Operational Optimizers.
There are several explanations for this. First, at the start
of our period of study (1992), many firms innovated
as a reaction to regulatory requirements. Second,
technological and management innovations offered
opportunities to integrate sustainability thinking into
existing operations and to deliver efficiency savings and
Innovating for Sustainability 58