Paradox and Sustainability: Moving Beyond the Business Case

Business sustainability is inherently paradoxical. The skills, resources, and expectations of stakeholders related to profitability goals are often at odds with those for social and environmental goals. Yet, the business case for sustainability masks the underlying paradox. Ignoring this paradox has likely hampered the ability of organizations to act sustainably and undermined sustainability in broader ecological, social and economic systems. The objective of the symposium is to better understand paradox in sustainability. Specifically, the papers in this symposium will explore (1) the locus of the paradox, i.e., how does it manifest in the goals, processes and/or identity of the firms with regard to contradictory but interrelated sustainability aspects; (2) the ways to navigate and address the paradox, such as cognitive, practice-based and institutional; and (3) the characteristics of paradoxical sustainability outcomes, i.e. their generative and processual nature as different from the business case outc...