What do We Know about Vision? A Sustainability Lens

Abstract

Given the paucity of knowledge on sustainability-related organizational vision, the present study’s objective is to examine the current state of the organizational vision knowledge base with a sustainability focus. It adapts the Integrated Systematic Literature Review approach. Five hundred and four journal articles from Scopus between 1981 and October 2022 are identified and reviewed. Influential journals, scholars and documents concerning organizational vision in the sustainability context are identified, along with four schools of thought on Organizational Vision: Vision Component, Vision Motivation, Transformational Vision and Educational Vision. Overall, findings suggest that organizational vision scholars have focused their efforts on organizational vision in a way that leads to organizational productivity as opposed to sustainability productivity. This knowledge gap is fundamentally critical for sustainability scholars and practitioners alike since (a) organizational culture with vision as a core component is a pre-condition for sustainable enterprise development and (b) sustainability transformations are fundamental changes in cultures that move socio-technical systems toward sustainable production and consumption. Drawing from the identified body of knowledge, a model linking organizational vision and sustainability-related organizational performance is derived as a major contribution of the present study. The model explains how vision components theoretically lead to improved sustainability performance, followed by theoretical, empirical and practical implications as significant contributions to the field of corporate sustainability.