How Fast Organizational Response Mismatches the Temporal Threshold of Sustainability Issues

Abstract

The question of how organizations fail to prevent ecological degradations has become one of the most topical issues in management research. However, most existing theories are organization-oriented and the ontological or material properties of the issues are largely ignored. In this paper, drawing insights from ecological studies, we propose a novel framework in which organizational failure in addressing sustainability issues stems from a mismatch between fast organizational response and the temporal threshold of slowly-developing issues. Surprisingly, abundant examples of organizations using fast responses to tackle sustainability issues have been evidenced by management studies. To better understand why and how organizations do so, we conducted an inductive study of four manufacturing firms of ironware that failed to address a serious soil contamination problem. The results informed a model of fast mind- set that depicts how organizational responses to environmental issues exhibit a pattern consists of quick and standard responses. The details of our model advance the current understanding of the decision-making process of corporate sustainable actions. Furthermore, while existing literature widely acknowledges the importance of speed in decision-making, our findings shed light on the unintended pitfalls of adopting fast responses when dealing with sustainability issues.