Innovation and Sustainability

There is a burgeoning academic literature on the societal and environmental role of the corporation.  Unfortunately, this research has failed to generate a substantive academically relevant and empirically practical business logic for these corporate roles (Devinney, 2009).  However, if one goes back to early work in the field, there is a strong suggestion that the business case for sustainability and social responsibility can be found in a linkage to innovation (Hart & Milstein, 1999).  That is, that the value of corporate social and environmental responsibility – the core of the sustainability agenda – can be found by looking at it as a form of market and organizational innovation.  This is supported by later work from scholars such as McWilliams and Siegel (2000) who cite evidence such as the strong correlation of CSR with R&D and advertising to argue that the value of socially responsible behavior and sustainability is strongly related to its integration with other intangible assets. However, despite the logic of this early work, there has been little research that has effectively integrated our extensive knowledge of innovation and product and service development with concerns about sustainability and social responsibility.  Integrating these two areas could create a more coherent and parsimonious business case for sustainability and CSR and help to provide a normative guide for managers attempting to develop more sustainable corporate strategies.

The purpose of this special issue is to engage scholars who are focus on organizational and product/process/service innovation.  We would like to go beyond traditional management scholarship and engage thinkers in economics, sociology and engineering.  The special issue targets two audiences: academics involved in the fields of innovation and scholars interested in sustainability and social responsibility. Theoretical, methodological and empirical manuscripts will be considered, as long as the research has significant implications for strategy and innovation research and practice. Possible topics that will be suitable for this special issue include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Applications of existing models of innovation and product/service development to a sustainable enterprise model
• The role of open and collaborative innovation in developing more sustainable organizations as well as products and services
• The role of extra-organizational knowledge (e.g., from NGOs) in fostering innovation
• New empirical approaches to innovation arising from increasing demands on corporations for environmental and social responsibility
• Theoretical and empirical research on the role of innovation in “strategic” CSR and sustainability (Siegel, 2009)
• The role of environmentally and socially responsible ‘creative destruction’ in building new products and markets

Linkage with the 6th International CSR Conference and Special Workshops
Authors considering this special issue are also encouraged to present their research at the 6th International CSR Conference to be held in Berlin on 8–10 October, 2014 (information is available here: http://www.csr-hu-berlin.org).  Proposals to this conference only require a short abstract and this will provide an opportunity to interact with the special issue editors and get comments on your work. The deadline for abstracts is 5 May, 2014.

In addition, we expect that all papers receiving an R&R (Revise & Resubmit) in the first round will be invited to a series of workshops in mid-2015 to interact with the special issue editors plus other authors.
Note that attending the conference or the workshops is not mandatory and will not influence the disposition of your manuscript.  These are simply part of the process of improving scholarship.

Process and Deadlines:

• Abstracts for the 6th International CSR Conference (for those wishing to attend): 5 May 2014
• Full paper submissions to the LRP Special Issue: 1 December 2014
• Decisions made on the first round of submissions: 31 March 2015 (approximate)
• Workshops for papers receiving R&Rs: June 2015 (approximate)
• Submission deadline for second round: 31 August 2015

Each article will be sent to two or three reviewers, with the intent that each paper will be examined by experts in the application area – e.g., CSR, environmental sustainability – and in innovation/strategy. Assigning reviewers in such a manner is meant to ensure that the paper address both ‘sustainability’ and ‘innovation’ issues of relevance to the key audience of the special issue.

Special Issue Editors

Timothy M Devinney (Ph.D., University of Chicago), University Leadership Chair and Professor, University of Leeds, and Professor (Conjoint) at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales. 

Joachim Schwalbach (Ph.D., University of Bonn), Professor of International Management at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Donald S. Siegel (Ph.D., Columbia University).  Donald Siegel is Dean of the School of Business and Professor of Management at the University at Albany, SUNY.