The importance of market and entrepreneurial strategic orientations among companies committed to sustainability values and practices

In the last few decades it has become ever clearer that humankind faces many serious environmental challenges. As the corporate sector has been identified as an important actor to address these challenges, understanding why certain companies choose to adopt sustainability initiatives, while others do not, is an important question. However, little previous research has addressed how sustainability is linked with core business strategies and concepts. In this chapter, we address this gap by highlighting how corporate strategic orientations relate to adherence to an ecological worldview and different measures of sustainability performance. Using an analytical framework where companies are classified according to their level of market and entrepreneurial orientation, we find that companies high in these orientations also display higher levels of integration of sustainability in corporate strategies and culture. The main implication of this study points to the importance of market and entrepreneurial strategic orientations among companies committed to sustainability values and practices.