Abstract
How and why do business organizations make strategic commitments to sustainability and develop the organizational capabilities for achieving them in innovative ways? We seek to contribute to the debate by exploring the development of Woolworths’ relational approach to sustainability innovation. Woolworths is an illustrative case study because of its far-reaching commitments, sustainability management system, and boundary-spanning work, specifically in its supply chain. The company’s “Farming for the Future” programme offers a particularly sharp illustration of how sustainability leaders can come to identify their own long-term interests as inter-dependent with the broader social-ecological system, and how novel organizational and relational capabilities are necessary to conceive and implement such innovations.
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Notes
- 1.
Woolworths was the first retailer that joined WWF South Africa Water Balance Programme. The Water Balance Programme is an innovative initiative for collaboration among public and private actors on the issue of alien invasive vegetation, which poses a big threat to South Africa’s water supply. On the corporate side the programme has the aim to assist business organizations to become water stewards by reducing their water demand and to increase overall water supply by off-setting their operational water consumption through the sponsoring of alien clearing activities.
- 2.
Here it should be noted that, with regard to social standards in the supply chain, some interviewees suggested that more might be expected from Woolworths and that the FfF programme’s emphasis on environmental issues did not have an equal counterpart in the realm of social standards.
- 3.
For example, 92 % of Woolworths’ fresh produce come from South African suppliers. (Tom McLaughlin, 13 Apr 2011, personal communication).
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Annex 5.1: List of Interviews
Annex 5.1: List of Interviews
In chronological order
Name | Affiliation (position) | Dates of interviews |
|---|---|---|
Tom Mc Laughlin, Johan Ferreira, Kobus Pienaar | Woolworths (respectively): Manager: Good food journey; Manager: Food business unit; Food technologist | 23 July 2008 |
Tom McLaughlin | Woolworths, Manager: Good food journey | 1 August 2008 |
Mao Amis | WWF South Africa | 3 May 2011 |
Rodney February and Helen Gordon | WWF South Africa | 3 May 2011 |
Tom McLaughlin | Woolworths, Manager: Good food journey | 13 April 2011 |
Kobus Pienaar | Woolworths, Food technologist | 6 May 2011 |
Tatjana von Borman | WWF South Africa | 3 August 2011 |
Justin Smith | Woolworths, Sustainability manager | 4 August 2011 |
Kobus Pienaar | (Formerly) Woolworths, Food technologist | 6 January 2012 |
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Methner, N., Hamann, R., Nilsson, W. (2015). The Evolution of a Sustainability Leader: The Development of Strategic and Boundary Spanning Organizational Innovation Capabilities in Woolworths. In: Bitzer, V., Hamann, R., Hall, M., Griffin-EL, E. (eds) The Business of Social and Environmental Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04051-6_5
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