Using positioning theory to understand how senior managers deal with sustainability

Using positioning theory to understand how senior managers deal with sustainability

Boxer, L 2003, Using positioning theory to understand how senior managers deal with sustainability, PhD Thesis, School of Management, RMIT University.

Document type:	Thesis
Collection:	Theses

Attached Files
Name			Description	MIMEType		Size	Downloads
Boxer.pdf			Thesis		application/pdf	11.49MB	92

Title	Using positioning theory to understand how senior managers deal with sustainability
Author(s)	Boxer, L
Year	2003
Abstract	Social pressure for sustainability has become a significant factor in Australian business. Made popular by a variety of diverse social movements that employ various tactics, sustainability is increasingly being debated in boardrooms and work areas of both large and small businesses. In this research, sustainability issues are treated as a set of a wider range of obligatory and externally imposed (OEI) issues that are increasingly confronting contemporary business. Of interest to this research is how senior managers deal with sustainability issues. While some businesses excel in dealing with OEI issues, others prevaricate. This research focuses on those businesses that appear to excel in resolving sustainability issues to explore how senior managers deal with sustainability issues. Such understanding is essential for contemporary practising senior managers, as it provides guidance for management behaviour that will enable sustainability and other OEI issues to be dealt with. The author's effort to understand how senior managers deal with sustainability issues has led to the first business context application of Harré's positioning theory. A social constructionist approach, positioning theory is concerned with ordinary conversations, and presumes that these are the building blocks of all other discursive phenomena. The resulting theory builds on positioning theory and provides a point of departure to conduct related research on other organizations that excel in dealing with OEI issues and those that prevaricate. With positioning theory it has been shown that, in dealing with sustainability issues, senior managers engage in a range of positioning of themselves and others. In doing so, power and knowledge have been considered in the light of Foucault's unique and penetrating concepts. This has led to the proposed augmentation of positioning theory to include a concept of social flux, which is put forward as an indication of social order or culture. Through this development, it has shown how senior managers confront opposition and reinforce support to enable them to achieve and preserve sustainability objectives. In practical terms, senior managers alter four components of the social order to align the culture with the issues that need to be dealt with. These components - rights, duties, morals and actions - are parameters that senior managers tune or level when they deal with sustainability issues. When the social order is appropriately tuned or levelled, it is aligned with the issues that need to be dealt with. That alignment enables issues to be resolved in a way appropriate for the organization.
Degree	PhD Thesis
Institution	RMIT University
School, Department or Centre	School of Management
Keyword(s)	Executives -- Attitudes Sustainable development Intentionalism -- Moral and ethical aspects

Access Statistics:	70 Abstract Views, 92 File Downloads - Detailed Statistics
Created:	Tue, 25 Jan 2011, 12:11:32 EST