Sustainability & decoupling

: an exploration of causes and effects

Abstract

Organizations face increasing pressure to adopt socially responsible policies but often struggle to fully implement them and therefore perform decoupling, that is, they detach portrayed policies from internal practices in the effort to convey appropriateness to external stakeholders. In this study, I investigate drivers of decoupling in the context of corporate social responsibility and effects in terms of stakeholder reaction through a single case study of the sustainability strategy of Unilever, one of the global players in the fast-moving consumer goods sector. My results suggest that Unilever engages not only in traditional policy-practice decoupling, but also in another, less investigated form of decoupling: in means-ends decoupling. Indeed, although the corporation has clear CSR objectives (ends), it struggles to implement them because employees struggle to understand how to operationalize these objectives in their daily activities (means). My findings also show that means-ends decoupling is an antecedent of policy-practice decoupling. Finally, although stakeholders generally respond negatively towards decoupling, my results revealed that this holds not true in the case of Unilever as the positive associations related to the organization’s efforts appear to outweigh. Indeed, stakeholders value the firm’s progress in terms of sustainability, its seriousness and trustworthiness as well as the ambitious goals of its sustainability agenda. In this way, my findings contribute to the literature of sustainability and decoupling, also providing useful managerial implications for corporations engaged in corporate social responsibility.

Date of Award	27 Feb 2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Tommaso Ramus (Supervisor)