The DPOBE Model for Organizational Sustainability: An Exploratory Study about its Structure, Pillars and Components among a Group of Master Degree Students

Abstract Research purpose. To get a validation of the structure, pillars and components that seem to be central, and under which, business management and managers need to develop abilities and competences to ensure the sustainability of their organizations according to the ‘DPOBE Model for Organizational Sustainability’ structure. Design/Methodology/Approach. For the validation of the structure, pillars and components and it’s practical application to measure the organization’s sustainability level with the referred model, despite the focus group exercise made in an early stage, it’s also important to get a solid opinion about it among managers and also in academia, specifically among teachers and investigators on management, business administration and economics as well near master and doctorate students in this field. In this paper, we analyse the results obtained in an exploratory study, based on a survey made among students from four different master’s degree in several specific areas of business management from the School of Business Administration from the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal (Portugal). Findings. Main results obtained with this exploratory study let the authors be granted with the developments made so far in the model and its structure, pillars and components. However, only with a major collection of opinions (answer to the survey) from the referred groups, it’s possible to define and adjust the final structure and components of the DPOBE Model. Originality/Value/Practical implications. Being an investigation with several years of development, with several articles, chapters of books, master’s degree thesis, congress presentations and papers made so far, only with a solid and validated structure, pillars and components of the DPOBE Model for Organizational Sustainability, it’s possible to go to its aim, the use of it as a quantitative tool to measure the effective organizations sustainability in a way different from other existing sustainability tools and indexes.