The micro-foundations of ambidexterity for corporate social performance: A study on sustainability managers’ response to conflicting goals

Abstract

Studies on corporate social performance advocate that interrelated yet conflicting goals, such as sustainability and profitability, give rise to specific dynamics and inherent tensions, and call for more research to investigate how the duality of goals is managed by specific individuals in organizations. Through a micro-foundational view of ambidexterity for corporate social performance, and by relying on a qualitative data analysis of 41 interviews with sustainability managers and their immediate stakeholders, both internal and external to their organization boundaries, we developed a multilevel model of sustainability managers' responses to conflicting goals. We discovered how sustainability managers enacted internal and external, long term and short term brokering behaviors, enabled by their individual values, multidisciplinary knowledge, and relational abilities and skills, although constrained by their organizational and institutional contexts. By taking into account simultaneously contextual forces and individual cognitive characteristics, we thus advance our understanding of sustainability managers’ behaviors towards ambidexterity for corporate social responsibility and of microfoundations for ambidexterity.