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Building the Future by Looking to the Past: Examining Research Published on Organizations and Environment

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Abstract

Organizations and environment (O&E) researchers focus their attention either on organizational outcomes or on environmental outcomes. In this paper, we argue that these are significantly different approaches to O&E research. The first aims to contribute to organization theory and performance; the latter aims to improve environmental performance. With a starting position that most research published in influential general management journals would be of the organizational outcomes variety, we reviewed O&E research published from 1995 to 2005 to see if this was true. We found, in fact, that most research is directed at environmental outcomes. This finding suggests that the most influential general management journals are receptive to environmental research that does not fit neatly into the organizational boxes. Yet, we also find that there is room for O&E research to have considerably more impact than we have had so far. This article is a call for more high quality O&E research in our general management journals.

This chapter has been previously published in Organization & Environment (Volume 19, issue 4, pages 458–478). The required permissions have been obtained from Sage Publishers to republish it in this book.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Our analysis shows that 70 % of data samples in UK journals is based on European data sources and 69 % of data samples in US journals is based on North American data. Based on this evidence, one could infer that Europeans are more often targeting UK journals and North Americans more often targeting US journals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ivey Business School, Western University, London, Canada

    Pratima Bansal

  2. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada

    Jijun Gao

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  1. Pratima Bansal
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  2. Jijun Gao
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Correspondence to Pratima Bansal .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, University of South Australia Business School, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Sukhbir Sandhu

  2. School of Management, University of South Australia Business School, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Stephen McKenzie

  3. School of Management, University of South Australia Business School, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Howard Harris

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Bansal, P., Gao, J. (2014). Building the Future by Looking to the Past: Examining Research Published on Organizations and Environment. In: Sandhu, S., McKenzie, S., Harris, H. (eds) Linking Local and Global Sustainability. The International Society of Business, Economics, and Ethics Book Series, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9008-6_8

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