Strategies for Sustainable Development: Organizational Motivations, Stakeholders’ Expectations and Sustainability Agendas

Society’s expectations of business are mounting and stakeholders are asking organizations to become more mindful of their interests. Companies are responding by becoming more involved in the resolution of social–environmental challenges. Their sustainability agendas, however, are often claimed to be ineffective and to lack strategic thinking. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the factors that determine the scope and features of these agendas. Specifically, we investigate organizational objectives (the starting point of any strategy) and the posture towards mounting – and sometimes conflicting – expectations. We find that pessimistic judgments about sustainability agenda effectiveness may have been too hasty from both a micro-level and a macro-level standpoint