Towards Organizational Symbiosis: A Conceptual Dialectic Framework for Sustainable Development (2014)
This study examines how sustainability and growth can become symbiotic perspectives, focusing specifically on the international fashion and textiles industry which is widely recognized as one of the most polluting industries in the world. Corporate social innovation(CSI), or simply social innovation, is becoming an increasingly prominent concept within the field of corporate responsibility and has been suggested to become a megatrend, even to the point of replacing classic CSR. Approaching CSR from the analytical level of sustainable development, the study addresses CSR and CSI in relation to the emergence of ‘game-changing’ major environmental issues such the depletion of natural finite resources and climate change. A two-tier framework is suggested which examines CSR from both a macro-level and an organizational level using a dialectical perspective and approach. The project has been developed in collaboration with several organizations which work with sustainability and circular economy in the Nordic fashion industry, i.e. the industry network Innonet Lifestyle, the NGO CradlePeople, and the industrial symbiosis in Kalundborg.
The first part presents the concept of a Sustainability Grid which enables classification of major historical and emerging sustainability paradigms and strategies, e.g. industrial symbiosis, circular economy. In tier two, eight key ‘traits’ or dialectical relationships of sustainable development are discussed and will be mapped together in a Sustainability Compass that can be used to display the differences between different types of corporate responsibility, i.e. CSI, CSR, CSR 2.0, CSV etc. The dialectical relationships of the Compass include: Commitment vs. flexibility(motivation), innovation vs. refinement(creativity), collaboration vs. ethno-centrism(interplay), prosumerism vs. consumerism(engagement). Six archetypical behavior patterns of social responsibility and innovation are presented. The concept of ‘sustainability’ and several of its inherent paradoxes are approached and it is discussed if the existing forms of CSR and sustainability paradigms are sufficient to meet the future challenges of sustainable development.
Jen Noel Fabel