| dc.description.abstract | Previous research on sustainability and innovation has received increased attention
from researchers over the past years. However, the literature on sustainableoriented
innovation (SOI) still is at an early stage and lacks in-depth research on
how it can be embedded in organizations as a dynamic process. Moreover, previous
literature has mainly regarded sustainability in a dichotomous way, with projects
being either sustainable or not rather than understanding SOI as a dynamic,
unfolding process that is realized over time. This thesis aims to contribute to this
gap by conducting a comparative study on four pilot projects in a Norwegian
cooperative in the food retail industry where we investigate SOI processes and
whether it makes a difference if sustainability is the project's main driver or if it
subsequently becomes an important element. We examined four distinct pilot
projects, where two were mainly driven by sustainability, and the two others had
other drivers. We found several challenges related to incorporating sustainability
later in the process, including issues with resources of competence when this was
not included at the beginning of the project. Moreover, our findings indicate that
large corporations must consider the triple bottom line holistically to succeed with
SOI. Large firms are facing pressure from various stakeholders to take
responsibility for business activities' environmental and social impacts. Even more
so, cooperatives have strong community ties, thus, researchers argue that
cooperatives have more substantial incentives to engage in sustainable
development. Our findings indicate that even though they desire to contribute to
sustainable development, it is challenging due to the complexity of the
organizational structure.
Key words: triple bottom line, sustainable-oriented innovation, innovation process,
cooperative | en_US |
