Welcome to the winners’ circle Examining the effects of sustainability awards

Abstract

Engaging in sustainability has increasingly become commonplace in organisations of today due to the improved understanding of pressures on the environment. As organisations strive for higher sustainability goals, sustainability awards offer them an opportunity to be recognised and rewarded for their efforts. Yet, no research has been conducted on what happens in these award winning organisations as a result of receiving an award. This thesis, therefore, set out to answer the following research questions. 1. How do sustainability awards affect organisations? 2. What happens to an organisation’s sustainability strategy after it has won such an award? In order to answer these questions, in addition to a thorough review of academic literature, this research employed semi-structured interviews with sustainability professionals and general managers from award recipient organisations. Moreover, thematic analysis was utilised for drawing out common themes and detailed insights from the participants’ answers. The findings revealed that while the majority of impacts, such as stronger credibility and brand awareness, collaboration and shared learning, as well as employee buy in, were largely alike between organisations, significant differences were discovered in the length of the effects. In fact, organisational governance and funding structure were linked to many of the contradictions between effects and strategy development. In terms of adverse effects, most participants reported similar feelings of frustration and demotivation due to slow pace of changes and organisational constraints limiting sustainability engagement. This thesis concludes as sustainability is an issue of heightened significance today and in the future, inspiring, promoting, and recognising it becomes critically important. As the effects of sustainability awards include all those measures, the awards offer an avenue for further improvement and become a key player in steering the society towards a more sustainable future.