Sustainable organizational learning and corporate entrepreneurship: a conceptual model of sustainability practices in organizations

Abstract

Purpose The main purpose of this paper is to construct a conceptual model that addresses one of the most urgent matters for contemporary organizations, which is how organizations are to learn and integrate sustainability in its’ working processes. The guiding research question reverberates around how organizational learning (OL) and corporate entrepreneurship (CE) can promote and facilitate sustainability practices in organizations. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses knowledge from OL and CE theories representing tools to think with for an exploration of how to actualize sustainability practices in organizations. Findings This paper construes and presents a four-phase multilevel conceptual model for the analysis and creation of sustainability practices using insights from OL and CE. OL contributes with vital parts for creating sustainability practices in organizations delineated by continuous feedback and feedforward loops on individual, group, organizational and societal levels. CE prompts essential process and concrete working elements accentuating the importance of acquiring sustainability in all phases of the change process. Research limitations/implications The outlined conceptual model is general and need to address the deeper complexities and context dependencies of sustainable practice in organizations in a more elaborate form. Thus, the proposed model calls for empirical scrutiny and further theoretical development. Originality/value Derived from two interrelated fields of research, this paper contributes with a novel model addressing how sustainability practices can be conceptualized and facilitated in organizations. By using OL theory in combination with CE studies, the proposed model seeks to capture key elements to guide new understandings of and transitions to sustainable practices in organizations.