Sustainability‐oriented Innovation: A Systematic Review

• Author: Richard Adams,Sally Jeanrenaud,John Bessant,Patrick Overy,David Denyer
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12068
• Published date: 01 April 2016
• Date: 01 April 2016

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 18, 180–205 (2016)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12068

Sustainability-oriented Innovation:

A Systematic Review

Richard Adams, Sally Jeanrenaud,1John Bessant,1David Denyer2

and Patrick Overy3

University of Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK, 1University of Exeter

Business School, Streatham Court, Streatham Campus, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4ST, UK, 2Cranfield

University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UK, and 3Forum Library, University of Exeter,Stocker Road, Exeter,

EX4 4PT, UK

Corresponding author email: correspond.adams@btinternet.com

This paper is intended as a contribution to the ongoing conceptual development of

sustainability-oriented innovation(SOI) and provides initial guidance on becoming and

being sustainable. The authors organize and integrate the diverse body of empirical

literature relating to SOI and, in doing so, developa synthesized conceptual framework

onto which SOI practices and processes can be mapped. Sustainability-oriented inno-

vation involves making intentional changes to an organization’s philosophy and values,

as well as to its products, processes or practicesto serve the specific purpose of creating

and realizing social and environmentalvalue in addition to economic returns. A critical

reading of previousliterature relating to environmental management and sustainability

reveals how little attention has been paid to SOI, and what exists is only partial. In a

review of 100 scholarly articles and 27 grey sources drawn from the period of the three

Earth Summits (1992, 2002 and 2012), the authors address fourspecific deficiencies that

have given rise to these limitations: the meaning of SOI; how it has been conceptual-

ized; its treatment as a dichotomous phenomenon; and a general failure to reflectmore

contemporary practices. The authors adopt a framework synthesis approachinvolving

first constructing an initial architecture of the landscape grounded in previous studies,

which is subsequently iteratively tested, shaped, refined and reinforced into a model of

SOI with data drawn from included studies: so advancing theoretical development in

the field of SOI.

Introduction

Growing concern about resource over-consumption,

environmental degradation and social inequity have

resulted in calls for a transition towarda more sustain-

able society and economy. The first mass-readership

The authors acknowledge the generous contribution of the

Network for Business Sustainability (http://www.nbs.net)in

supporting this work and permitting reproduction of Figures

1 and 3. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous

reviewersand editor of the International Journal of Manage-

ment Reviews for the helpful and insightful comments that

have helped improvethis paper. John Bessant would also like

to acknowledge the support of the Theo and Friedl Schoeller

Foundation.

environmental book detailing the scale of damage

wrought on nature by humanity was Fairfield Os-

borne’s (1948) classic, Our Plundered Planet.Other

more, or less, apocalyptic studies followed (e.g.

Carson 1962; Cole et al. 1973; Meadows et al. 1972),

their fears and ideas echoed in institutional environ-

mental initiatives such as The International Union for

the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources

(IUCN, founded 1956), The United Nations Envi-

ronment Programme (UNEP, founded 1972) and the

launch of the World Conservation Strategy in 1980,

the product of a collaboration between IUCN, UNEP

and the WorldWildlife Fund (WWF 1980). The latter

document showed, for the first time, that economic

development and conservation are not incompatible.

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Sustainability-oriented Innovation 181

It was in the subsequent work of the World Commis-

sion on Environment and Development’s Brundtland

report (Brundtland 1987) that the idea of sustainable

development – ‘development that meets the needs of

the present without compromising the ability of future

generations to meet their own needs’ – became more

mainstream. Elkington (1997) popularized the notion

of sustainable developmentin ter ms of the TripleBot-

tom Line (TBL), in which businesses are exhorted to

adopt a responsible approach and give equivalence

to environmental, social and economic dimensions in

decision-making.

Markets and economic agents have been identi-

fied as either part of the problem, thus requiring

changes to the dominant economic paradigm (Mit-

telstaedt and Kilbourne 2008), or part of the solution,

positioned to effect positive change in the direction

of sustainability (Mittelstaedt and Kilbourne 2008;

UN 1999; Desrochers and Hoffbauer 2009; Sima-

nis and Hart 2009). Either way, business has been

encouraged to find means of achieving sustainable

economic growth, and so the role of innovation in

helping businesses transition to sustainability has re-

ceived considerable interest from academics, man-

agers and policy-makers (EYGM 2012; Hall 2002;

OECD 2010a, UNDP 2010). Sustainability-oriented

innovation(SOI) involves making intentional changes

to an organization’s philosophy and values, as well as

to its products, processes or practices, to serve the

specific purpose of creating and realizing social and

environmental value in addition to economic returns.

A critical reading of previous literature relating to

environmental management, sustainability and inno-

vation reveals how little attention has been paid to

SOI (Doherty et al. 2014), and what exists is often

deficient in four respects.

First, within the existing literature it remains un-

certain precisely what sustainability means or how

it can be achieved. A variety of conceptualizations

exist (Bl¨

attel-Mink 1998; Blowfield et al. 2007; Bos-

Brouwers 2010; Elkington 1994; Fussler and James

1996; George et al. 2012; Gladwin et al. 1995) and

a confusing array of labels applied to (aspects of) the

phenomenon, including, but not exhaustively: corpo-

rate social responsibility; green-, eco- or ecological

innovation; social environmental management; and

responsible innovation (Carroll and Shabana 2010;

Owen et al. 2013; Seebode et al. 2012). Second, pre-

vious worktends to treat sustainability dichotomously

(sustainable/not sustainable), rather than embedding

SOI as a dynamic, unfolding process that is achieved

over time. Third, with some notable exceptions (e.g.

Klewitz and Hansen 2013), previous workoften over-

looks the social dimension (Schiederig et al. 2012) of

SOI. Fourth, many reviewsof environmental manage-

ment and sustainability exclude contemporary grey

evidence and are thus prone to time lag and incom-

pleteness of search.

The purpose of this paper is to present the evidence

on SOI through identifying, analysing and synthesiz-

ing firm-level SOI practices and processes, and to pro-

vide guidance on becoming and being sustainable. In

so doing, we attempt to address the deficiencies high-

lighted above. To achieve this, we employ a novel

review approach involving three stages:

(1) Stage 1: Developing an initial ‘architecture’ for

review ing SO I. Drawing on theories of environ-

mental management and of innovation in fields

cognate to sustainability, we sketch the basic

building blocks of an initial conceptual frame-

work of SOI, its underlying assumptions and key

dimensions.

(2) Stage 2: Systematic review of SOI. We systemat-

ically review (Tranfield et al. 2003) the literature

on SOI published between 1992 and 2012. We

chose these dates as they mark an era when busi-

ness began seriously to engage in the sustainable

development debate, highlighted by their role in

the three Earth Summits 1992, 2002 and 2012.1

(3) Stage 3: Framework synthesis. We adopt a frame-

work synthesis methodology for our systematic

review, in which the initial framework from stage

1 is iteratively developed as it is tested, shaped,

reinforced and refined by findings from included

studies (Barnett-Page and Thomas 2009; Dixon-

Woods 2011; Thomas et al. 2013).

We propose a model of SOI that commences as a re-

sponse to regulatory stimuli with incremental change

at the firm level and culminates with radical change

at the large-scale systems level. We argue that to

move through the framework requires a step-change

in philosophy, values and behaviour, and that this

is reflected in the firm’s innovation activity. The pa-

per concludes with a discussion of the implications

of findings for scholarship, policy and practice, and

identifies opportunities for further research.

1See, for example: http://www.uncsd2012.org/ (accessed 25

November 2014).

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