Exploring Potentials (Asynchronous Session)
Can Multinational Corporations Advance SDG 6.1 in Ghana? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sarah Ehlinger Affotey, Johanna Koehler
Engaging the private sector is important for developing countries to meet SDG 6.1 – universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water – given sizeable finance gaps and declining foreign aid. However, limited and varied guidance exists for its involvement. This research uses interviews and document analysis from multinational corporations, government, and nonprofit organizations to investigate how multinationals in Ghana might advance SDG 6.1. Drawing from institutional theory, it discusses two key findings. First, the UN and Ghanaian Government offer normative guidance but fewer practical suggestions for the private sector's involvement, contributing to a governance-related institutional void. Second, multinationals demonstrate three categories of strategies: responsibility, sustainability, and sustainable development, the latter being most likely to fill a governance void and advance SDG 6.1. The study concludes that corporate sustainable development strategies allow multinationals to be both rule-following (adhering to normative UN and state guidance) and rule-making (governing community water projects).
Enabling Multi-stakeholders’ Dialogue and Collaboration in the Energy Transition with We-Energy Game View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tania Ouariachi
Energy transition is a complex and urgent process, and therefore, effective actions cannot be address by a single industry, company, or any other institution alone; governments need multi-stakeholder collaboration to progress: a variety of expertise, convictions and resources. But how can governments create awareness on the energy transition while enabling multi-stakeholder dialogue and collaboration? Innovative approaches such as “serious games” have gained popularity in recent years. The use of serious games - games intended to fulfill a purpose, have potential to allow participants to actively engage with actionable information presented through a game interface. Under these premises, the We-Energy Game was developed. In the game, a minimum of five players can take the roles of production, people, planet, profit and balance. From their respective roles, they first negotiate which energy source they want to employ and on which location, and then they check the consequences for each of the roles. Through playing the game, they realize about the complexities in the provision of renewable energy and they initiate dialogue and collaboration with the others to achieve the ultimate goal of creating a sustainable energy mix for their town or city. The study explores the process of how serious games can facilitate stakeholders’ engagement with the issue by carrying out observation and group discussions with 120 participants in The Netherlands. In addition, the study analyses which game attributes facilitate engagement among participants by applying a validated framework. Practical recommendations are provided to enable multi-stakeholders’ dialogue and collaboration with serious games.
A Research Agenda on Environmental Organisational Culture: Bridging the Gap Between Research and Management Practice View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carmen Isensee, Frank Teuteberg, Kai Michael Griese
Environmental organisational culture (EOC) facilitates the environmentally sustainable development of organizations. While it is of interest to motivate future research on this underexplored and scattered field, bridging the gap between organisational research and management practice will be a decisive factor to ensure the successful dissemination of academic insights into practice. We present a solutions-oriented research agenda to advance the field and ensure bidirectional knowledge transfer. The literature review and analyses are based on a scoping review of N = 70 previous studies and thematically related research agendas, using the Belief-Action-Outcome (BAO) framework as a theoretical foundation for structured data extraction and presentation. To develop the agenda, illustrative research questions were formulated for each of the main characteristics of EOC identified. These were synthesised into overarching research questions on EOC covering the three BAO phenomena and the two domains of research methodology and knowledge transfer. For the latter, we present three dissemination paths and examples of “ready-to-use” purified artefacts drawing from the concept of engaged scholarship.
