Sustaining Sustainability in Organizations

The importance of social issues and the natural environ-ment to societies and firms has dramatically evolved in the preceding 50 years. Corporate managers are becoming aware of the need to broaden their goals, beyond the tra-ditional financial expectations. Since the term sustainabil-ity has entered the business world, an ever increasing number of firms realize the importance of sustainability and emphasize the social and environmental goals of their organizations (Bansal 2005; Hoffman 1999; GRI 2011). How seriously are these goals considered in corporate strategy? Is sustainability a trendy buzzword without any substantial meaning for operational processes? Or, can we observe tangible improvements in corporate social and environmental performance over time? These and related questions lead to an overarching question: How can sus-tainability be sustained in organizations? Sustainability can be defined, based on earlier defini-tions, as an approach to business that considers economic, environmental and social issues in balanced, holistic, and long-term ways that benefit current and future generations of concerned stakeholders (Elkington 1998; World Com-mission on Environment and Development 1987). In other words, organizations aiming to be sustainable are required to pay attention to their performance on three dimensions: economic performance, social equity, and ecological preservation (Gladwin et al. 1995). A large established literature has been growing in the area of sustainability in organizations, particularly business firms. Some main goals in the sustainability research are to better understand why and how firms decide to adopt more sustainable practices. Considering this literature, two important research streams are noticeable: Researchers have examined both the external drivers, for example, pressures from stakeholders (e.g., Kassinis and Vafeas 2006), and the internal drivers (e.g., Aragón-Correa and Sharma 2003) that motivate organizations to implement a sustainability agenda. However, little attention has been paid to how sustainable practices remain in place and continue to develop over time. This special issue of th