University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

In this context, and through reference to Burnes (2000) the view and understanding
of environment/SD strategy and behaviour can, in general, be seen as either:
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• a process grounded in a rational/scientific and narrow view of phenomenon;
and/or
• the outcome of a/this rational process.
This approach (i.e. to understanding SME strategy and describing strategy
development and behaviour) is evidenced by discussions of the ESCM literature
above and it has been commented that this potentially takes a narrow view of the
‘situation’ and phenomenon. This leads in turn to the prescriptive nature of the work
and the policy led approach to behaviour change contained. The issue with this
being that in doing this the work fails to consider or understand the wider process
impacts and elements (i.e. organisations as social and socially constructed
entities/systems) and the wider responsibilities and roles of business(es) in the
system (i.e. business’ role as a key actor within the sustainable development process
and/or related to CSR; with links to contracting out and the potential impact of
customers and larger organisations on SMEs as also noted).
Interestingly, the work of Wolfe (1998), like that of Stubbs (2000), responds to
earlier comment by Welford (1998) and, in turn, is linked to Welford (2003). In his
1998 article, Welford identifies the complex nature of the environment/sustainable
development, the link with business, the current approaches taken to manage issues
and the associated research agenda (with specific reference here to the importance of
overall systems and supply-chains too). This agenda, as noted, has been heavily
influenced by positivism (and normative views) and the paradigm is seen, by
Welford (1998), as ‘sterile’ and one which offers little real insight to, and outcome
for, practice; as is also the case with rational views of business and strategy (E.g.
Johnson, 1988; Whittington, 2004).
The Information Tool, Response and Observations
To collect the information necessary for the author’s sense-making a tool was
developed based on the literature/theory available, and specifically the work of
Williamson and Lynch-Wood (2001), and the needs of the research and the case
organisation. The author did not completely replicate the work of Williamson and
Lynch-Wood (2001) due to the overall focus and intention of this work (and its
intended outcomes). The organisational learning indicators (identified by Petts et al,
1998; which are similar to the generic knowledge/learning characteristics of
organisations, identified by, for example, Nonaka et al, 2006) were also used as these
provided an assessment of current learning capacity, processes and approaches (i.e.
to learning and knowledge creation and strategy development) and thus the internal
processes which may assist with the description of how strategy is developed and
deployed in the case SMEs.