CIFRE research project between ESCP Business School Paris and Artefact

Context:

This document describes the context and outlines research questions for a CIFRE management research thesis (mainly qualitative methodology, but also using quantitative methods). Academic supervision would be provided by Gorgi Krlev, in the ESCP doctoral program. The doctoral student would be put in contact with the CSR managers of Artefact’s clients, which will allow them to feed their research and later be able to do a series of interviews or focus groups, and potentially surveys or quasi-experiments on the client side (field work).

This doctoral student would be integrated beforehand into the 1st year of doctoral training at ESCP, during which they will study the literature on the subject, refine the research questions, and the following 3 years will be under a CIFRE contract after validation of the file by the ANRT (during the 1st year).

Relevance and main research questions

We have reached a status where most stakeholders agree we need measures of environmental and social sustainability to achieve a much needed sustainable transformation of society. Sustainability indicators are already a well-established field in the management and social sciences (Krlev & Terstriep, 2022; Bell & Morse, 2018). However and unfortunately, we are also very aware of the limitations of indicators, for example that ratings can be gamed and that actors might engage in reporting merely for symbolic reasons (Delmas & Blass, 2010).

This leads to a high degree of confusion and ambiguity about what indicators mean and subsequently stymies progress against sustainability challenges, such as operating within planetary boundaries (Rockstroem et al., 2009) or combatting social inequalities (Bapuji et al., 2020; Raworth, 2012). Recent observers have noted that even with measures as seemingly clear as CO2 emissions, stakeholders struggle to perform in line with others or to extract meaning from the information that is being reported (Pucker, 2021; Pucker & King, 2022). So it is not surprising that despite increasing activity or measuring and reporting, we only see limited progress on how organizations engage to become more sustainable.

Against this background we propose a shift in focus from the field to the organizational level to better understand how measurement and reporting can lead to substantial organizational change. In this project we thus want to investigate two broad and guiding research questions, which we specify and break into sub-projects below:

How can businesses measure social and environmental sustainability performance in the most meaningful way?

How do organizational stakeholders process sustainability measures and reporting and why do they fail to change organizational practices as a consequence?

How can transformational change within and between organizations be managed more effectively in order to align measurement, new or revised organizational practices and lasting progress against sustainability challenges?

Sub-projects (and detailed research questions)

Sub-project 1: Data-driven measures of a company's sustainability impact

What data should be traced in order to measure sustainability across different dimensions? As mentioned, carbon footprints seem an obvious dimension. They are already well established but still contain a high degree of ambiguity, especially when it comes to deriving concrete prompts for how to lower the footprint most effectively. There are many contingencies at the field and industry level involved, which we aim to unpack.

Water pollution or pollution via rare metals are other relevant examples, which complicate the issues further. The measurement of social impacts would also be an area to be studied, such as how firms affect relational networks of a territory in terms of employment or in terms of connecting or driving people apart. Within these dimensions, it will be necessary to distinguish between “mid-term” indicators and the associated “long-term” indicators. Focusing on immediate but incremental improvements may come at the risk of undermining lasting and major progress against sustainability challenges.

What internal governance structures, processes or practices make it possible not only to implement adequate measures but also to act on the shortcomings and need for improvement they uncover? The challenge is to align the planetary environmental and social emergency with that of the company, whose objective and nature is often more short-term and driven by financial logics. A major challenge is to have the proper organizational procedures, responsibilities and resources in place to make reporting effective (instead of a symbolic exercise that produces a lot of ambiguous information; Moldan & Dahl, 2007) and to integrate this with the actual decision making at various levels of the organization.

Sub-project 2: Transparency, governance and standards with third-parties (Scope 3)

A persistent challenge in sustainability measurement and management is that most organizations operate within complex global value chains (Akhtar, et al. 2016). What are effective approaches to governance between the actors and what are the standards to ensure that the measures have the same meaning for the core company and those that are part of its global value chain (scope 3)? Another organizational issue would be how to determine the support to be provided to third-parties so that they can set up and calibrate their own data acquisition and management principles (costly both, in terms of financial investments needed and in terms of learning costs).

Beyond those standards and feasibility issues, how to "authenticate/audit" those data-driven measures to start closing the gap between individual firm activity and progress against sustainability challenges at the field level? The objective is to be able to assess the measures provided by the third-parties, but also to enable publishing transparent data that external stakeholders (policy makers, regulators, investors, citizens etc.) would trust, with the company image and reputation at stake in case of failing to achieve this goal.

Sub-project 3: Impacts of sustainability measurement on decision-making and actual actions

The purpose of any of these organizational measures discussed above as well as of the sustainability measures themselves is to have a positive impact in terms of sustainable development. If the implementation of measures enables organizations to identify unsustainable organizational units, structures, processes or activities, the ultimate challenge is to mobilize this information to lead to concrete actions for the company to reduce its social and ecological footprint (reduce harm), and ideally to actively contribute to society (positive impact). With this issue in mind, the proposed research will culminate in studying how to transform measures into actions, how to identify and address potential obstacles (contingencies, behavioural inertia, vested interests, lack of incentives, information asymmetries, ineffective governance etc.), and to propose possible solutions.

Practical impact: Digital tool

As part of the thesis, a digital tool may be developed in order to translate the research for practical application through a graphical interface, which enhances for example comparability of data, harmonization across organizations, evidence-based decision making and organizational change etc.. An example would be a dashboard that would allow organizational decision makers to view the various environmental and societal impacts, by emission item, by supplier, etc. The ideal scenario would be to develop this tool via the participation of various clients of Artefact (and with the support of an Artefact tech team), to then implement it at the clients to improve decision making for sustainability.

Methods

Most of the research questions posed above are of a procedural nature, in which we seek to better understand how data is gathered, processed, reported and then most importantly acted upon. This is why the project will mainly be grounded in qualitative methods, i.e. expert interviews, focus groups, document analysis, participant observations etc. These will take place in cooperation with several of Artefact’s clients.

Depending on how the initial review work of the research progresses that will reveal the most critical issues concerning sustainability measurement and management, we will perform a homogenous sampling (possibility to go deeper, in case the issues are quite uniform and the variation is relatively low) or a heterogenous sampling (possibility to work in a comparative fashion, especially if the issues are very context dependent).

However, the research will also contain elements of quantitative research. A key building block will be data work and exemplary descriptive and inferential analyses based on existing company data or data to be collected for and with the companies.

Optional quantitative measures include primary survey work across the participating clients. This will be done, either to identify the most critical issues concerning implementation and turning information into action across clients. Or to explore and test various strategies of implementation, once several options for solutions to improve decision-making have been developed.

An additional option are (quasi-)experimental approaches in which employees of the clients would participate to test for differences in how information is perceived and processed to lead (or not lead) to effective changes in behaviour. This would help us unpack the decision-scientific dynamics which need to be considered when organizations reshape their structures, processes and practices to enable more sustainable organizational management.

References

Akhtar, P., Tse, Y. K., Khan, Z., & Rao-Nicholson, R. (2016). Data-driven and adaptive leadership contributing to sustainability: Global agri-food supply chains connected with emerging markets. International Journal of Production Economics, 181, 392-401.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2015.11.013

Bapuji, H., Patel, C., Ertug, G., & Allen, D. G. (2020). Corona Crisis and Inequality: Why Management Research Needs a Societal Turn. Journal of Management, 98, 014920632092588. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206320925881

Bell, S., & Morse, S. (2018). Sustainability Indicators Past and Present: What Next? Sustainability, 10(5), 1688. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10051688

Delmas, M., & Blass, V. D. (2010). Measuring corporate environmental performance: The trade-offs of sustainability ratings. Business Strategy and the Environment, 19(4), 245-260. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.676

Krlev, G., & Terstriep, J. (2022). Pinning it down? Measuring innovation for sustainability transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 45(1), 270-288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.11.005

Moldan, B., & Dahl, A. L. (2007). Challenges to sustainability indicators. Sustainability indicators: a scientific assessment, 67, 1.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tomas-Hak/publication/258261619_Sustainability_Indicators_A_Scientific_Assessment_SCOPE_67/links/5b7c49dd299bf1d5a719ec34/Sustainability-Indicators-A-Scientific-Assessment-SCOPE-67.pdf#page=30

Pucker, K. P. (2021). Overselling Sustainability Reporting. Harvard Business Review. (May-June). Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2021/05/overselling-sustainability-reporting

Pucker, K. P., & King, A. A. (2022). ESG Investing Isn’t Designed to Save the Planet. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2022/08/esg-investing-isnt-designed-to-save-the-planet

Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, A., Chapin, F. S., Lambin, E. F., . . . Foley, J. A. (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461(7263), 472-475. https://doi.org/10.1038/461472a

Raworth, K. (2012). A safe and just space for humanity: can we live within the doughnut?. Oxfam.
https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/dp-a-safe-and-just-space-for-humanity-130212-en.pdf

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