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Can You Drink Money? Integrating Organizational Perspective-Taking and Organizational Resilience in a Multi-level Systems Framework for Sustainability Leadership

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Abstract

Social and environmental shocks associated with freshwater management are inherently tied with the lives and well-being of all global citizens. Thus, exploring key actors’ roles is a critical element of this grand challenge. Utilizing an inductive multiple case study, we explore sustainability leadership and subsequent organizational perspective-taking behaviours initiated by actors within freshwater management in response to the grand challenge. A vibrant inductive model elicited three main themes: (1) identifying conditions for organizational perspective-taking, (2) modifying organizational frames of reference and (3) emergence of multi-level influence. The discussion extracts critical insights for sustainability leadership and highlights complexities involved in facilitating effective decision-making among diverse actors. Fundamentally, this article contributes a distinct multi-level systems framework for sustainability leadership drawing from social–ecological systems theory and organizational resilience. We conclude by offering future research opportunities within sustainability leadership designed to bridge the gap between grand challenges and our abilities to solve them.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our interviewees for their time and support of this research project. A big thank you to the World Social Science Forum, University of Auckland Business School, Kyushu University, UN Water, Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP), and Prof. Alberto Cimadamore for their feedback and suggestions. We could not have done this without all of you. We would also like to thank Prof. Scott Taylor and two anonymous reviewers who have helped greatly in increasing the clarity and cogency of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Management and International Business, Auckland Business School, 12 Grafton Rd, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand

    Gerson Francis Tuazon & Rachel Wolfgramm

  2. Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, 220 Trowbridge Rd, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Kyle Powys Whyte

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  1. Gerson Francis Tuazon
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Correspondence to Gerson Francis Tuazon.

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Gerson Tuazon, Rachel Wolfgramm and Kyle Powys Whyte declared that they have no conflict of interest.

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Tuazon, G.F., Wolfgramm, R. & Whyte, K.P. Can You Drink Money? Integrating Organizational Perspective-Taking and Organizational Resilience in a Multi-level Systems Framework for Sustainability Leadership. J Bus Ethics 168, 469–490 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04219-3

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