Organizational Culture and Sustainability

While the interest in applying the principles of sustainable development to the business world has exploded over the last few decades, and companies have increasingly focused efforts on introducing or changing policies, products and/or processes to address pollution, minimize resource use, and to improve community and stakeholder relations, many have argued that the only way an organization can truly and fully respond to environmental and social challenges and become sustainable is to undergo a significant cultural change and transformation that leads to the development and maintenance of a sustainability-oriented organizational culture. This chapter describes the research that has been conducted on the influence of organizational culture on the implementation of sustainability and discussed various frameworks and recommendations for embedding sustainability into organizational culture.