Friday 29.5, 12.00-15.00
The doctoral dissertation of Marleen Wierenga, M.Sc, "Innovative entrepreneurial processes in the low-income context" will be publicly examined at the Aalto University School of Business on Friday, May 29th, 2020.
The dissertation studies innovations and entrepreneurship in the context of poverty. In particular, the dissertation looks at the scaling process of low-income grassroots entrepreneurs in India, the support provided to the grassroots innovators and entrepreneurs and the networks of startups from the Global North with innovations for the Global South.
The public defense will be organized via remote technology. Please join the Zoom meeting here: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/68716566710. The wish is for the audience to keep the camera and microphone off during the public examination.
Opponent: Professor Sarah Jack (Stockholm School of Economics)
Custos (Chairperson): Professor Minna Halme (Aalto University School of Business)
For more information:https://www.aalto.fi/en/events/defense-of-dissertation-in-organization-and-management-marleen-wierenga-msc
Friday 20.3, 12.00-13.00
Remote seminar, contact [email protected] for more information
Jouni Juntunen and Minna Halme, Aalto University
Sustainability-Oriented Innovation with Stakeholders: Achieving System Level Impacts
Given the centrality of innovation to addressing grand societal challenges, this paper uses a Europe wide data set to identify conditions for sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI). Such challenges cannot be resolved by firms alone but rather in collaboration with stakeholders within the innovation process. Using the focus of ‘doing good by doing new things with others’ we connect the often technical orientation of SOI research to a relational account of stakeholder collaboration in innovation. We operationalise different measures to distinguish innovation leading to incremental or system level impact, bringing the latter to an empirical level. The use of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) reveals a causal complexity behind SOI. Our findings identify concrete configurations of firm-stakeholder collaboration associated with incremental and system level impact. We demonstrate the influence of timing and stakeholder selection on the innovation outcome. In this way we contribute to understanding how and when collaborating with stakeholders can bolster the system level impacts of innovations and enlighten the future for organisations and institutions faced with grand societal challenges.
Wednesday 26.2, 12.30-13.30
Aalto Business School (Ekonominaukio 1), room U213
Simone Carmine, University of Padua
Being the Turtle: A Paradox Approach to Foster Sustainability
Nowadays many companies are implementing sustainability strategies, driven by stakeholder pressure, regulations or intrinsic motivations. However, in doing so, they may face challenges in balancing environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability (e.g. environmental and social performance VS economic performance) and this can weaken their sustainability performance. Usually, in addressing sustainability tensions organizations adopt a business case perspective, which emphasizes the economic element over the other two. However, in recent years a new perspective is emerging in the literature: a paradox perspective on corporate sustainability. Scholars are investigating how individuals and companies are able to live with these tensions and purse competing sustainability goals simultaneously. So, first, the project aims to understand how scholars are adopting this perspective to study sustainability tensions. Through a systematic review of existing literature, we have highlighted three main uses of paradox perspective: a detective approach, a sensemaking approach and a managerial one. Secondly, as we know from the literature, approaching tensions in a paradoxically way can lead to creative and innovative solutions. For these reasons we have investigated empirically how a paradox perspective can help companies to cope with tensions in sustainability, achieving sustainability innovative outcomes and better sustainability performance. A quantitative analysis has been performed on original survey data - from Italian companies in textile, chemicals and basic metals sectors - on paradox perspective, innovation and performance in sustainability. Our analysis revels a positive effect of the paradoxical approach to sustainability tensions on sustainability performance. Finally, through a qualitative study we want to deepen these results and investigate how companies with a high paradox perspective are able to achieve better innovative solutions to sustainability tensions.
