Grabs Janina, Garrett Rachael D
Environmental Policy Lab, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich, Sonneggstrasse 33, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
Universitat Ramon Llull, ESADE Business School, Av. Torre Blanca 59, 08172 Sant Cugat, Spain.
J Bus Ethics. 2023 Mar 13;188(3):1-41. doi: 10.1007/s10551-023-05377-1.
In response to stakeholder pressure, companies increasingly make ambitious forward-looking sustainability commitments. They then draw on corporate policies with varying degrees of alignment to disseminate and enforce corresponding behavioral rules among their suppliers and business partners. This goal-based turn in private sustainability governance has important implications for its likely environmental and social outcomes. Drawing on paradox theory, this article uses a case study of zero-deforestation commitments in the Indonesian palm oil sector to argue that goal-based private sustainability governance's characteristics set the stage for two types of paradoxes to emerge: performing paradoxes between environmental, social, and economic sustainability goals, and organizing paradoxes between cooperation and competition approaches. Companies' responses to these paradoxes, in turn, can explain the lack of full goal attainment and differential rates of progress between actors. These results draw our attention to the complexities hidden behind governance through goal setting in the corporate space, and raise important questions about the viability of similar strategies such as science-based targets and net-zero goals.
为应对利益相关者的压力，企业越来越多地做出雄心勃勃的前瞻性可持续发展承诺。然后，它们借鉴不同程度一致的企业政策，在供应商和商业伙伴中传播并执行相应的行为规则。私营部门可持续发展治理中这种基于目标的转变，对其可能产生的环境和社会成果具有重要影响。本文借鉴悖论理论，通过对印度尼西亚棕榈油行业零森林砍伐承诺的案例研究认为，基于目标的私营部门可持续发展治理的特征为两类悖论的出现奠定了基础：环境、社会和经济可持续发展目标之间的执行悖论，以及合作与竞争方式之间的组织悖论。反过来，企业对这些悖论的应对，可以解释为何未能完全实现目标以及不同行为主体之间进展速度的差异。这些结果让我们注意到企业领域通过设定目标进行治理背后隐藏的复杂性，并引发了关于类似战略（如科学碳目标和净零目标）可行性的重要问题。
