An empirical inquiry of strategic corporate sustainable development orientation - taxonomy, and interrelationships with antecedents, consequences, contingencies and pathways

This thesis addresses two research objectives: i).empirically develop a taxonomy based on firms strategic Corporate Sustainable Development (CSD) orientation to better understand and describe their characteristics and business differentials; and ii).develop and empirically test an integrated framework of antecedents and consequences of the strategic CSD, including pathways and contingencies. The full study involves two consecutive steps: a qualitative study using in-depth interviews with senior marketing executives/experts from eight selected organisations; and a quantitative inquiry using an online survey, with a final sample of 183 medium to large Australian companies across manufacturing, mining and utilities/energy industries. Collectively, this two-stage study yields interesting research findings that are of substantial academic and managerial value as follows: The taxonomy analysis identifies three distinct groups: Strategic Achievers, Risk Avoiders and Suspicious Observers, that represent the three levels/stages of CSD adoption from high to low. These three clusters are described by what they do, why they do it, the major barriers and performance differentials. These findings contribute to the classification scheme and may assist managers to determine current levels of CSD, identify possible business opportunities and/or decide on the strategies of CSD adoption. Through developing CSD measures and testing the relationships within the proposed framework, Innovation Capability (IC) is found to be a pathway (mediator) for firms to gain competitive advantage from Corporate Sustainable Development, whereas CSD does not impact on Business Performance directly when IC is absent. This inconsistent mediating effect of IC provides interesting new insight. In addition, CSD exhibits a positive impact on firms Member Organisation Identification, a surrogate measure of corporate reputation from the perspective of employees. As part of the second research objective, this study also conducts the first empirical testing of the Menon and Menon (1997) model, and found that Industry Reputation moderated the Enviropreneurial Marketing and Business Performance relationship. These findings provide new knowledge concerning strategic Corporate Sustainable Development (CSD) orientation as well as the underlying mechanisms, which may inform managers with viable directions for integrating corporate economic benefits with social and environmental considerations