Cultural Effects on Sustainability Strategies

This report provides insight into the way organizational cultures affect the sustainability strategy in small- and medium sized enterprises, and is performed for finalizing the bachelor program Business Administration at the VU University Amsterdam. This research shows that organizational cultures affect the sustainability strategy in a few ways. First of all, there are four different organizational cultures this research builds further on; the clan culture, adhocracy culture, hierarchical culture and the market culture (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). These four cultures correspond with different organizational characteristics (Ghobadian & Gallear, 1996). Organizational characteristics stimulating a sustainability strategy are; full commitment of management and employees, employee-focused, flexibility, openness for innovation and responsive to changes in the market. Characteristics negatively influencing the performance of a sustainability strategy are; resistance to change, process-focused, and a formalized and standardized way of working.

Autorentext

Shenna Straathof - Faculdade de Economia e Administração de Empresas, Amesterdão.