Systems Approaches for Corporate Sustainability: How a Certification Program Can Develop and Enact a Bridging Capacity

Abstract

Extant theory in corporate sustainability highlights challenges in coordinating organizational action to “fit” the complex functioning of ecological systems. Our qualitative study shows how a certification organization in the U.S. wine industry developed and enacted a “bridging capacity,” through which it tailored program standards to cultivate members’ attention to ecological issues within and across spatial and temporal scales. Drawing on data covering a 25-year period, we uncover three mechanisms associated with this bridging capacity: sourcing, decoding, and converting. We develop a theoretical model showing how a bridging capacity enables a certification organization to develop standards that reflect and respond to the complexity of the ecological systems in which its members operate. While certification programs have been important for signaling a commitment to sustainability to stakeholders, our work adds that by developing a bridging capacity, such programs can add further value by supporting coordinated, system approaches to corporate sustainability.