Combining SDGs: The Need for a Responsive Approach to Manage Sustainability Paradoxes

Abstract

Social purpose organizations are increasingly facing the need to address multiple sustainable development goals simultaneously. One way to address multiple sustainability demands is to seek synergies among them, while minimizing underling tensions between those demands. Paradox lenses are increasingly used to understand how organizations can manage conflicting –yet interrelated– sustainability goals. Via action research in the setting of a Dutch housing association, we analyse the process of strategy change while observing the societal response to this change. First, we identify the synergies and conflicts of the organization’s sustainable demands, which we categorize as good intentions and unintended consequences, respectively. Second, we define specific types of sustainability paradoxes that emerge while implementing a new sustainable goal. Our abductive study shows that a poor management of tensions hinders an organization’s proactive stance to solving sustainability challenges. We contribute to the literature on social purpose organizations by showing that a proactive approach to sustainability does not always lead to positive social impacts and suggesting that responsive approaches are to be preferred when combining sustainable development goals that show paradoxical relationships among each other.