Business Sustainability Embeddedness as a Strategic Imperative

Abstract

This article examines the dynamic process through which business sustainability becomes embedded as a strategic imperative of the firm. Using inductive theory building on 15 case studies of companies operating in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Egypt, the author traces an eight-phase process that tracks how firms develop lucrative operational capabilities in response to pervasive contextual issues, how the role of convergent contradiction across the firm and its stakeholders precipitates a shift in thinking, and how firms and their stakeholders collectively theorize to develop complementary capabilities, the product of which enables significant economic and social value creation and firm strategic differentiation.