CULTURAL TENSIONS AND VALUES-ACTION GAPS IN SUSTAINABILITY-ORIENTED INNOVATION: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC INQUIRY

Abstract

European companies have widely adopted sustainability goals as part of their strategy and normative guidelines but struggle to facilitate organisation-wide cultural transformation towards more sustainable development. Despite the rapid development of theoretical concepts and methods for values-based and sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI), we still do not understand the discrepancies between sustainability-oriented values and strategies on the one hand and their insufficient translation into innovation-related practices on the other. In order to advance our understanding of the cultural tensions and values-action gaps that constrain SOI at the organisational level and to derive corresponding measures for building values-based innovation cultures, we conducted ethnographic research at a leading technical inspection company in Germany. The resulting insights reveal tensions and gaps between espoused values of corporate sustainability and everyday practices with regard to innovation culture, vertical and horizontal integration, external interfaces, practices and methods and personal alignment. Their discussion enriches our theoretical understanding of values-based and sustainable innovation practices and identifies areas and entry points for managerial intervention to promote a sustainable innovation culture.