Seeds of hope? Exploring business actors’ diverse understandings of sustainable development

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is first, to investigate empirically the plurality of understanding surrounding sustainability held by those working in the business sector, and second, to consider the likelihood of a dialogic accounting that would account for the plurality of perspectives identified. Design/methodology/approach – The subjects of this study are those people actively working to incorporate sustainability within New Zealand business, both business people and their sustainability advisors. Participant’s subjective understanding is investigated using Q methodology, a method used widely by social science researchers to investigate typical views on a particular topic, from an analysis of the order in which participants individually sort a sample of stimuli. In this study, the stimuli were opinion statements. Findings – Five typical understandings of sustainable development were identified, including understandings more usually attributed to business antagonists than business. Conflicts betwe...