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This paper aims to provide an introduction to the special issue on the theme of sustainability and the need for change.

The paper gives an overview of sustainability and its managerial and policy dilemmas for organizations. It also outlines the topics covered in the papers in the special issue.

The question that the papers seek to answer is: how can organisations deal with the sustainability challenge? The papers cover the key sustainability dilemmas: how to balance short term priorities with long term vision, organisational change with stability, strategic goals with day to day implementation, domestic with international responsibilities; how to manage the corporate brand, image and reputation; how to influence policies nationally and internationally, and foster relations, all in the realm of effecting the change in attitude and behaviour that sustainability demands.

The paper introduces an eclectic collection of papers that are intended to inform, challenge and stimulate continuing debate.

This paper aims to explore a model, “The Four Roomed Apartment of Change” developed by Swedish psychologist claes Janssen which uses existential psychology to understand and manage the processes of change. The model has been used extensively in organisations as a diagnostic tool to facilitate changes in organisations, which involve some psychological discomfort. This paper specifically examines whether the model is equally useful when applied to the management of personal career change.

The paper considers the roots of existential psychology and outlines and critically reviews the “Four Roomed Apartment” model. The paper also provides evaluative analysis of the links between existential psychology and career development.

The paper finds that change may be thought of as a cyclical process involving different frames of mind and different emotions and that understanding those frames of mind is the key to successful, well managed change. The paper concludes that the model offered by the Four Roomed Apartment does provide a useful framework for understanding the emotions and feelings experienced during career change, and offers some guidance as to how to manage the process.

Career success today is measured against a broad raft of criteria, such as fulfilling work, work/life balance, skill utilisation and valued relationships. In order to achieve this success today, individuals must be acutely aware of their experiences and sufficiently reflective to understand their emotional significance. This model offers a helpful framework for that reflection and provides answers to some of the questions that must be answered for successful career management.

Research has indicated that employees who remain within an organization after significant downsizing or delayering will experience adverse effects as profoundly as those who have left. This phenomenon has been labelled the “survivor syndrome”. This article first of all examines data from an employee opinion survey in a large UK financial institution following sequential and significant restructuring. The empirical findings contradict some propositions suggested in former studies in that evidence of “survivor syndrome” was not apparent. Second, the article explores possible reasons for the non‐existence of the syndrome. The findings are discussed in the light of the process of the redundancy programme.

Studies and analyses changes to the promotion policies and practices at the University of Western Australia (UWA) and identifies outcomes by gender. Suggests that there are quite a few factors to be addressed before gender equity in academia at UWA is obtained. Discusses, in depth, how to try to deal with lack of networks, socialization, the dual‐role burden, masculine organizational culture and gendered power imbalance in the workplace. States that, although great inroads have been made at UWA, statistics show that there are still very fundamental barriers to be addressed to aid further improvement for women academics.

This paper aims to document how leaders with a highly‐developed meaning‐making system design and engage in sustainability initiatives.

In total, 32 leaders and change agents were assessed for their meaning‐making system, or action logic, using a variation of the Washington University Sentence Completion Test; 13 were identified as holding the three rarest and most complex action logics able to be measured. Semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews explored their behavior and actions as related to complex change initiatives.

These leaders appear to: design from a deep inner foundation, including grounding their work in transpersonal meaning; access non‐rational ways of knowing, and use systems, complexity, and integral theories; and adaptively manage through “dialogue” with the system, three distinct roles, and developmental practices. Fifteen leadership competencies and developmental stage distinctions for three dimensions of leadership were identified.

The sample size leads to the findings being propositions that require further validation before broader generalization.

The results provide the most granular view to date of how individuals with highly complex meaning‐making may think and behave with respect to complex change, offering potential insight into the future of leadership.

The study explores how to cultivate leadership with the capacity to address complex social, economic, and environmental challenges.

The paper documents 15 competencies that are largely new to the leadership literature, and that reflect the actions of leaders operating with highly sophisticated meaning‐making systems.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organisations can develop leaders who have the competences necessary to ensure the sustainability of the company. It considers how the understanding and practice of responsible leadership can be enhanced by defining the competencies for integrating social and environmental considerations into business decision‐making processes.

The research comprised two phases. An initial questionnaire surveyed a sample of managers operating in the public and private sectors in Europe (n=108). A second stage of the research used in‐depth interviews with 11 leading European‐based multinational companies.

Results indicate that, whilst the qualities and skills of responsible leadership can be identified, a further mediating concept deemed to be “reflexive abilitites” is posited as required to explain their translation into individual managerial behaviours. The paper describes the nature of these reflexive abilities.

A key limitation of the research is the small sample size, both for the survey and for the interviews. Further research is needed to develop a clearer understanding of the nature and functioning of the “reflexive abilities” and to establish the robustness of these concepts.

The results of the research support the current awareness amongst management educators that the development of successful business leadership requires more than training in “hard” business functions. Although the importance of experientially learned “soft skills” has been acknowledged, the paper suggests that the development of responsible leadership needs a third dimension to be incorporated into management education.

The paper suggests that “reflexive abilities” should be developed as core competencies in management development. For the development of responsible leadership it is necessary to foster the intellectual capacities to reflect upon, synthesise and integrate local and global business information in a way that leads to a new interpretation of both factual and emotional data. These abilities may enable leaders to develop new ways of thinking and new business models which will ensure the sustainability of their businesses. The paper explores the implications for those responsible for designing and delivering management development programmes.

This paper seeks to improve the understanding of implementation processes that achieve corporate sustainability by providing explanatory knowledge about the role of change agents from a sensemaking perspective. The paper also aims to focus on the sustainability efforts of change agents in a multinational carpet tile manufacturer.

The theoretical perspective of the paper is based on the concepts of sensemaking and emergent change. The paper examines sustainability sensemaking in the Dutch subsidiary of the US‐based carpet tile manufacturer Interface over a period of ten years (2000‐2010).

The findings show that embedding sustainability by change agents is typically an emergent change process that consists of small steps and is not predictable.

This paper focuses on the emergent, unpredictable aspects of change. More research is needed on processes of adapting the general concept of sustainability to local organisational contexts.

The paper examines sustainability sensemaking by change agents in one organisation.

This paper aims to present an interactions and networks approach (INA) to the issue of change for sustainability, which can bring business out of the firm‐centric impasse and lead to collaborative action and transformation.

This paper builds upon the extant relational theories in management, and presents a holistic multi‐level framework (the system/network, issue‐based or strategic nets, dyadic relationships and the network organization) to conceptualize change for sustainability.

By adopting INA business is able to discuss: the nature and role of the network in building systems level change; the role of dyadic relations as a central mechanism for change; and the nature of organizational level capabilities necessary to enhance learning for sustainability.

Areas of future inquiry include examination of the dynamics of intra‐stakeholder relationships over time, specifically the development of actors' attitudes, behavior and cognition in business networks alongside how actors perceive and capitalize on network embedded learning. Further scholarly attention in these areas can further the appreciation of how an INA can assist in building more sustainable organizational futures.

The paper builds on the concept of “ecological literacy” at an organizational level, and considers the specific capabilities required including network visioning, orchestration and the ability to perceive the “other” as partners in creating new market realities. Moreover, it discusses the role and importance of firm “change agent power” in this regard.

By building on an INA approach, the paper provides an important conceptual stepping stone towards the ongoing realization of sustainable organization and market forms.

The aim of this paper is to examine the narratives of acceptance and resistance to the introduction of corporate environmentalism. Despite recognition that managers and senior executives play a primary role in corporate environmentalism, relatively few researchers have examined how top management supports, accepts, negotiates, disregards, or rejects the implementation of corporate environmentalism within their organization. By considering how members of a top management team reflect on corporate environmentalism the aim is to examine potential identity management conflicts that arise during the implementation of environmentally sustainable initiatives within organizations.

A qualitative approach was adopted to address the research aims. By taking this approach the paper examines the lived experience of the participants as they internalized corporate environmentalism as part of their identity and as part of the organizational identity. Data collection involved 15 semi‐structured interviews with senior executives and board members of a large Australian hospital.

Based on an in‐depth thematic analysis of interview transcripts, it was found that individuals attributed a dominant discourse to corporate environmentalism based on their lived experience of organizational change for sustainability. Six dominant discourses were identified. Three were resistant to corporate environmentalism: the pragmatist, the traditionalist, and the observer; and three were supportive of corporate environmentalism: the technocentrist, holist, and ecopreneur.

The findings demonstrate that although top management operated in and experienced the same organizational context, the narratives and identities they constructed in relation to sustainability varied widely. These findings emphasize the challenges inherent in developing an organizational identity that incorporates sustainability principles and the need for change management strategies to appeal to the diverse values and priorities of organizational managers and executives.

Fiscal sustainability is high on the global political agenda. Yet, implementing the needed performance‐orientation throughout public‐sector organizations remains problematic. Such implementation seems to run counter to deep‐seated social structures. In this paper the aim is to shed light via key change agents' views on these social structures at the management level during the implementation of a performance‐based budgeting scheme.

The authors analyzed documentary data and conducted in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with key change agents operative within central government ministries in The Netherlands. The data were analyzed using a structurational approach to identify the enablers and barriers to performance‐based budgeting implementation.

In total, 29 social enablers and barriers to performance‐based budgeting implementation were derived. These were categorized into: Context, Autonomy, Traditional beliefs, Influence on results, and Top management support. Based on these categories five propositions were developed on how social structures enable and constrain performance‐based budgeting implementation among public managers.

The study was executed in one country in a specific period in time. Although the problems with performance‐based budgeting exist over the globe, research is needed to study whether similar social structures enable and impede implementation.

Policy makers and change agents aiming to improve fiscal sustainability by budgeting reform need to consider the found social structures. Where possible they could strengthen enablers and design specific comprehensive measures to tackle the barriers identified.

This paper provides insight and develops knowledge on the social structures that enable and constrain performance‐based budgeting, which in turn improves fiscal sustainability.