IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/bstrat/v27y2018i8p1355-1367.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainability management: research insights from social cognitive neuroscience

Author

Listed:
  • Paul McDonald

Abstract

Research in the field of social cognitive neuroscience is advancing rapidly, accelerated by technological innovation in brain imaging. This research is producing novel insights as to how humans process information, make decisions and behave in response to the growing imperatives for sustainability management. Recent research findings have implications for the theoretical foundations of sustainability management as well as the practical challenges confronting managers. Neuroscientific evidence underscores the magnitude of the challenges. Physiological evidence of six neural processes, hardwired via synaptic connections and potentially antagonistic to enhanced sustainability management, establish the structure of the paper. These neural phenomena, which are reflexive and preconscious, include: amygdala intercept, in‐group/out‐group differentiation, loss aversion, implicit persuasion and priming effects – cognitive and cultural. Propositions are advanced linking neurological processes to sustainability management. The paper concludes with strategic considerations and practical implications for greater integration between social cognitive neuroscience and sustainability management research.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul McDonald, 2018. "Sustainability management: research insights from social cognitive neuroscience," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(8), pages 1355-1367, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:27:y:2018:i:8:p:1355-1367
    DOI: 10.1002/bse.2184
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2184
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/bse.2184?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    2. Ahmed Yamen & Khalil Nimer & Abdulhadi Ramadan & Oualid Abidi, 2018. "The impact of national culture on sustainability reporting: a cross country analysis," Asian Journal of Empirical Research, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 8(3), pages 110-123, March.
    3. Fernanda Paiva Duarte, 2015. "Barriers to Sustainability: An Exploratory Study on Perspectives from Brazilian Organizations," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(6), pages 425-434, December.
    4. Ahmed Yamen & Khalil Nimer & Abdulhadi Ramadan & Oualid Abidi, 2018. "The Impact of National Culture on Sustainability Reporting: A Cross Country Analysis," Asian Journal of Empirical Research, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 8(3), pages 110-123.
    5. Christina Weidinger, 2014. "Business Success Through Sustainability," CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance, in: Christina Weidinger & Franz Fischler & René Schmidpeter (ed.), Sustainable Entrepreneurship, edition 127, pages 287-301, Springer.
    6. Matheus Nardo & Jeremy S. Brooks & Sonja Klinsky & Charlie Wilson, 2017. "Social signals and sustainability: ambiguity about motivations can affect status perceptions of efficiency and curtailment behaviors," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 184-197, June.
    7. Vito Albino & Azzurra Balice & Rosa Maria Dangelico, 2009. "Environmental strategies and green product development: an overview on sustainability‐driven companies," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(2), pages 83-96, February.
    8. Robert Huber & Bernhard Hirsch, 2017. "Behavioral Effects of Sustainability‐Oriented Incentive Systems," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 163-181, February.
    9. David Ervin & JunJie Wu & Madhu Khanna & Cody Jones & Teresa Wirkkala, 2013. "Motivations and Barriers to Corporate Environmental Management," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(6), pages 390-409, September.
    10. Michael Howes & Liana Wortley & Ruth Potts & Aysin Dedekorkut-Howes & Silvia Serrao-Neumann & Julie Davidson & Timothy Smith & Patrick Nunn, 2017. "Environmental Sustainability: A Case of Policy Implementation Failure?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-17, January.
    11. Peter Oberhofer & Maria Dieplinger, 2014. "Sustainability in the Transport and Logistics Sector: Lacking Environmental Measures," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(4), pages 236-253, May.
    12. Wilson, Daniel R., 2006. "The evolutionary neuroscience of human reciprocal sociality: A basic outline for economists," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 626-633, August.
    13. Edeltraud Guenther & Uwe Schneidewind, 2017. "Sustainability management – integrating the multiple dimensions of an interdisciplinary research discipline," Sustainability Nexus Forum, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 1-4, June.
    14. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    15. repec:gam:jadmsc:v:6:y:2015:i:1:p:-:d:61293 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Pratima Bansal, 2005. "Evolving sustainably: a longitudinal study of corporate sustainable development," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 197-218, March.
    17. Jacob Hörisch & Matthew P. Johnson & Stefan Schaltegger, 2015. "Implementation of Sustainability Management and Company Size: A Knowledge‐Based View," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(8), pages 765-779, December.
    18. Karoline Augenstein & Alexandra Palzkill, 2015. "The Dilemma of Incumbents in Sustainability Transitions: A Narrative Approach," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-23, December.
    19. Daniela M. Salvioni & Simona Franzoni & Francesca Gennari & Raffaella Cassano, 2018. "Convergence in corporate governance systems and sustainability culture," International Journal of Business Performance Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 19(1), pages 7-15.
    20. Johan Jansson & Jonas Nilsson & Frida Modig & Gabriella Hed Vall, 2017. "Commitment to Sustainability in Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises: The Influence of Strategic Orientations and Management Values," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 69-83, January.
    21. Franz Fischler, 2014. "Sustainability: The Concept for Modern Society," CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance, in: Christina Weidinger & Franz Fischler & René Schmidpeter (ed.), Sustainable Entrepreneurship, edition 127, pages 13-21, Springer.
    22. Ali Intezari, 2015. "Integrating Wisdom and Sustainability: Dealing with Instability," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(7), pages 617-627, November.
    23. Stefan Schaltegger & Markus Beckmann & Erik G. Hansen, 2013. "Transdisciplinarity in Corporate Sustainability: Mapping the Field," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(4), pages 219-229, May.
    24. Graham Hubbard, 2009. "Measuring organizational performance: beyond the triple bottom line," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(3), pages 177-191, March.
    25. Thomas Dyllick & Kai Hockerts, 2002. "Beyond the business case for corporate sustainability," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(2), pages 130-141, March.
    26. Ana Tur-Porcar & Norat Roig-Tierno & Anna Llorca Mestre, 2018. "Factors Affecting Entrepreneurship and Business Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-12, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sarah Birrell Ivory & R. Bradley MacKay, 2020. "Scaling sustainability from the organizational periphery to the strategic core: Towards a practice‐based framework of what practitioners “do”," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(5), pages 2058-2077, July.
    2. Kaur, Vaneet, 2024. "Neurostrategy: A scientometric analysis of marriage between neuroscience and strategic management," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    3. Michael Kühnen & Samanthi Silva & Rüdiger Hahn, 2022. "From negative to positive sustainability performance measurement and assessment? A qualitative inquiry drawing on framing effects theory," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(5), pages 1985-2001, July.
    4. Jo Crotty & Diane Holt, 2021. "Towards a typology of strategic corporate social responsibility through camouflage and courtship analogies," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(3), pages 980-991, May.
    5. Michela Balconi & Roberta Sebastiani & Laura Angioletti, 2019. "A Neuroscientific Approach to Explore Consumers’ Intentions Towards Sustainability within the Luxury Fashion Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(18), pages 1-14, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert Huber & Bernhard Hirsch, 2017. "Behavioral Effects of Sustainability‐Oriented Incentive Systems," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 163-181, February.
    2. Laura F. Sasse-Werhahn & Claudius Bachmann & André Habisch, 2020. "Managing Tensions in Corporate Sustainability Through a Practical Wisdom Lens," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 53-66, April.
    3. Aleksandra Pieloch-Babiarz & Anna Misztal & Magdalena Kowalska, 2021. "An impact of macroeconomic stabilization on the sustainable development of manufacturing enterprises: the case of Central and Eastern European Countries," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(6), pages 8669-8698, June.
    4. Anselm Schneider & Erika Meins, 2012. "Two Dimensions of Corporate Sustainability Assessment: Towards a Comprehensive Framework," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 211-222, May.
    5. Andrew Mzembe, 2021. "The psychological distance and construal level perspectives of sustainable value creation in SMEs," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2), pages 465-478, March.
    6. Ivan Pribićević & Boris Delibašić, 2021. "Critical sustainability indicators identification and cause–effect relationships analysis for sustainable organization strategy based on fuzzy DEMATEL," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(12), pages 17263-17304, December.
    7. Jonathan Luffarelli & Amrou Awaysheh, 2018. "The Impact of Indirect Corporate Social Performance Signals on Firm Value: Evidence from an Event Study," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(3), pages 295-310, May.
    8. Chen, Chung-Jen & Guo, Ruey-Shan & Hsiao, Yung-Chang & Chen, Kuo-Liang, 2018. "How business strategy in non-financial firms moderates the curvilinear effects of corporate social responsibility and irresponsibility on corporate financial performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 154-167.
    9. David Littlewood & Rachel Decelis & Carola Hillenbrand & Diane Holt, 2018. "Examining the drivers and outcomes of corporate commitment to climate change action in European high emitting industry," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(8), pages 1437-1449, December.
    10. Lueg, Rainer & Radlach, Ronny, 2016. "Managing sustainable development with management control systems: A literature review," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 158-171.
    11. Izabela Luiza Pop & Diana Sabina Ighian & Rita Monica Toader & Rada Florina Hahn, 2024. "Predictors of Adopting a Sustainability Policy in Museums," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(10), pages 1-20, May.
    12. Samuel Roscoe & Nachiappan Subramanian & Romina Prifti & Lin Wu, 2020. "Stakeholder engagement in a sustainable sales and operations planning process," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(8), pages 3526-3541, December.
    13. Philip Hallinger, 2020. "Analyzing the intellectual structure of the Knowledge base on managing for sustainability, 1982–2019: A meta‐analysis," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(5), pages 1493-1506, September.
    14. Rick Edgeman & Jacob Eskildsen, 2014. "Modeling and Assessing Sustainable Enterprise Excellence," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 173-187, March.
    15. Philip Hallinger, 2021. "A Meta-Synthesis of Bibliometric Reviews of Research on Managing for Sustainability, 1982–2019," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-22, March.
    16. Muhammad Farrukh & Fanchen Meng & Yihua Wu & Kalsoom Nawaz, 2020. "Twenty‐eight years of business strategy and the environment research: A bibliometric analysis," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(6), pages 2572-2582, September.
    17. Anna Katharina Provasnek & Erwin Schmid & Bernhard Geissler & Gerald Steiner, 2017. "Sustainable Corporate Entrepreneurship: Performance and Strategies Toward Innovation," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 521-535, May.
    18. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    19. Shoji, Isao & Kanehiro, Sumei, 2016. "Disposition effect as a behavioral trading activity elicited by investors' different risk preferences," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 104-112.
    20. Jonathan Meng & Feng Fu, 2020. "Understanding Gambling Behavior and Risk Attitudes Using Cryptocurrency-based Casino Blockchain Data," Papers 2008.05653, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2020.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:27:y:2018:i:8:p:1355-1367. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-0836 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.