Sustainable organizational performance management: deciphering the role of emotional capital in e-commerce industry

This study aims to understand role employee emotional capital in e-commerce organizations for implementing a sustainability-oriented approach. It explores two research questions: First, what role does emotional capital play in creating a sustainability-oriented functioning in an e-commerce organization? Second, how the emotional capital of employees and leaders can be molded and aligned to the desired behavioral approach toward sustainability.

The authors’ methodology involves literature review undertaken to appropriately position the understanding of sustainability and its relationship with emotional capital in the e-commerce industry. The paper is based on the review of articles published between the year 1990 and 2020. Academic and peer-reviewed journal articles, which have contributed to enrich the concept of emotional capital and sustainability, were collected from various data sources like SCOPUS, ERIC, Science Direct and Emerald.

The findings indicate that the organizational emotional capital can help in designing and pursuing sustainability-oriented practices in a more “engaged” manner. This can further stimulate a new approach for determining the dimensions, goals and measurement criteria for organizational performance management in the e-commerce industry.

This is a first of its kind study that connects the dots between sustainable organization performance and emotional capital establishing groundwork for future research pursuits in the direction. This study presents strong futuristic managerial implications and focuses on how e-commerce organizations can achieve long-term sustainability performance by harnessing the resource of emotional capital, which is inherently present with them at individual and collective levels.