Organizing change: testing cultural limits of sustainability

Abstract

PurposeA concept of culture as a solid black box of mental software is gone from serious research surviving in consulting modules and undergraduate teaching. Cultural values evolve and are more frequently examined in public through filters of institutional patterns and frames. The new, emergent cluster of sustainability values dominates and realigns all other values in unpredictable ways. One of the most relevant consequences consists of reinventing democracy, even within business corporations, Large Hadron Colliders and office work floors. The paper aims to define and interpret the cultural dimension of the emergent value of sustainability, which migrates towards the center of core values in the management of organizations.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents a theoretical interpretation with cutting‐edge empirical reports on the most complex research projects and their management based on negotiating values, goals and pragmatics. The paper also applies Boisot's information space model.FindingsIt is through continuous organized renegotiations that we learn how to construct a multiple, multilevel, ongoing platform for a global governance in the face of serious challenges.Practical implicationsThe practical implications of the paper include a possible redesign of complex research projects with diverse organizational members (public authorities, business companies, NGOs, communities of knowledge) and a revision of the curricula of business schools from the point of insertion of the humanities.Originality/valueThe paper is the first attempt to draw a road map for a multidimensional information‐space inspired approach towards organizational change as a renegotiated process.