Cultural Effects on Sustainability Strategies

This report provides insight into the way organizational cultures affect the sustainability strategy in small- and medium sized enterprises and is performed for finalizing the bachelor program Business Administration at the VU University Amsterdam. This research shows that organizational cultures affect the sustainability strategy in a few ways. First of all there are four different organizational cultures this research builds further on; the clan culture adhocracy culture hierarchical culture and the market culture (Cameron & Quinn 1999). These four cultures correspond with different organizational characteristics (Ghobadian & Gallear 1996). Organizational characteristics stimulating a sustainability strategy are; full commitment of management and employees employee-focused flexibility openness for innovation and responsive to changes in the market. Characteristics negatively influencing the performance of a sustainability strategy are; resistance to change process-focused and a formalized and standardized way of working.