Organisational sustainability is associated with the concept of organisational development, which emanates from the resources and capabilities that the organisation has in place. Sustainable organisations possess a strategic system, which is reliant on sustainable resources, and good capabilities that lead to strategic success. This study sets out the extent to which the Egyptian National Olympic Committee (ENOC) and its members the National Federations (NFs) are able to create organisational sustainability. The purpose of this research is to empirically study organisational sustainability and to provide insight into its creation within NFs. It has used a mixed-methods strategy that involved two phases. The first, a thematic analysis, identified the characteristics of the sustainable National Federation. It was undertaken by carrying out semi-structured interviews with ENOC and NF board members, experts, and NF consultants to generate the benchmarks or the requirements needed for sustainable National Federations. The second phase used the Readiness Assessment Tool (RAT) (Robinson and Minikin, 2011) in investigating the organisational development pillars based on the resources and capabilities of the Egyptian NFs (organisations that are responsible for developing the overarching performance of the ENOC). The findings indicated that the NFs included in this study need to develop further in terms of resources and capabilities in order to improve their readiness for sustainability. At their current levels of development, they do not exhibit the necessary or sufficient characteristics to become sustainable sports organisations. In other words, the research reveals that the NFs under investigation are not sufficiently developed to establish organisational sustainability due to their limited resources and low levels of capabilities. The study contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a better understanding of organisational sustainability in NFs. In addition, it creates the characteristics, or the requirements needed for a sustainable NF. Furthermore, it offers the first evidence to suggest that Egyptian NFs need more improvements in terms of resources and capabilities to create a strong sports system leading to sustainable success.

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / This was an exploratory study on the perceptions and experiences of the service providers at the TRAUMA Centre on creativity in human resource development and its contribution towards organisational sustainability. The researcher used the qualitative research methodology as this method was deemed to facilitate participation by research subjects through the use of literature studies, documentary studies, a focus group and semi-structured interviews. In the analyses of the data obtained through methodology used, concepts closely related to the study being that of creativity, human resource development, managerial practices and organisational sustainability emerged as recurring themes that served to locate the study within systems theory. Due to the inter-relatedness of the concepts, the study was conducted within a framework of human resource development as a means of achieving organisational sustainability. Data gathered confirmed that service providers perceived creativity to be linked to organisational sustainability and that the development of the human resources was an integral means to achieve organisational sustainability. The researcher is of the opinion that the utilisation of the different methodologies largely assisted the researcher in achieving the research objectives of developing the human resources in a creative way.

Stakeholder interaction has been recognised as one of the main principles to advance organisational sustainability. However, there is only limited knowledge on how organisations interact with their stakeholders to develop sustainability practices from an overarching perspective. There is also only fragmented research on the role of stakeholders when developing a sustainable business model (SBM). The purpose of this thesis is therefore to explore the role of stakeholder interaction for developing organisational sustainability practices and SBMs. Three research questions drive this thesis which compiles three papers based on three individual studies. The first study concentrates on stakeholder interaction as an organisational sustainability practice applying quantitative methods. The second study is a systematic literature review analysing the role of stakeholder interaction to develop SBMs. The third study explores how organisations implemented stakeholder interaction efforts, using qualitative methods. The results reveal that stakeholder interaction implemented as organisational sustainability practices and part of the SBM includes multiple stakeholders and different interaction degrees, potentially leading to new value opportunities and virtuous cycles of sustainable value creation. However, while organisations recognise the importance of stakeholder interaction, most organisations focus on low-to medium interaction degrees related to specific sustainability activities. This may limits the potential of stakeholder interaction for developing organisational sustainability practices and SBMs. This thesis contributes to sustainability, stakeholder and SBM literature by systematically exploring the role of stakeholder interaction, highlighting different degrees and extents practices are implemented in organisations. For practitioners, insights are offered how to foster stakeholder interaction practices and with that move towards organisational sustainability.

Stakeholder engagement is considered, by both researchers and practitioners, an increasingly important aspect of corporate sustainability, and it is argued that companies should work together with their stakeholders to address the substantial social and environmental challenges ahead. Because of its importance, scholars within stakeholder theory and corporate sustainability have called for more research on how stakeholder engagement is conducted. This thesis, based on interviews with sustainability executives representing 18 Nordic companies, explores how companies work to engage stakeholders in their sustainability work. The study indicates that stakeholder engagement is an important part of the companies’ sustainability work, and that the companies are dependent on working together with stakeholders. It also highlights that even though stakeholder engagement occurs on a range of different levels, from one-way communication to strategic collaborations, education and information sharing efforts appear to be the most common. The companies in the study advocate for engaging with all stakeholders, but three stakeholder groups are considered particularly important due to their impact on the companies: customers, investors, and employees. Finally, transparency, openness, and listening are considered important success factors for stakeholder engagement, whereas lack of resources is seen as the overarching challenge.

One of the most critical issues of our time is sustainability. Simultaneously, techno optimism is prevailing in public discourse suggesting that technology will create a sustainable future without requiring drastic changes. Despite the connection that is often drawn between technology and sustainability and the presence of technologies in organisations, research combining the two concepts remains limited and does not account for the interplay of social values and technological artefacts. To overcome this incomplete picture of technology, this thesis employs sociomateriality to investigate how sustainability and technology are understood in relation to each other by young sustainability practitioners in for-profit organisations. Following the social constructivist philosophy, nine semi-structured interviews were conducted which show that practitioners recognise the environmental and social limits to development and use the triple bottom line (TBL), consisting of economic, environmental and social dimensions to translate sustainability into organisations. However, TBL implementation varies between organisations showing the difficulty of unifying organisational sustainability in one concept. Furthermore, young sustainability practitioners understand technology as sociomaterial, describing the interplay between an artefact’s affordances and restraints, and the practitioner’s configuration work that co-create outcomes. Moreover, the interviewees are optimists not because they rely on technology, but they believe in human’s ability to change which differs from techno optimism. It can be concluded that practitioners are critical about relying on technology for sustainability and believe that sustainability is created through an interplay of humans with technology, transferring responsibility to humans. When it comes to creating a sustainable future, they first struggled to envision an alternative future beyond technological developments but started imagining when given space to reflect. One outcome of the research is that young sustainability practitioners must be given room to reflect on their understanding of sustainability, technology and their relationship as the first step to taking actions to create the future.

The rise in popularity of the concept of sustainability has brought along many theoretical models and tools that promise to facilitate the sustainability transition of those who use them. One of those tools is the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, which several organisations have already used. However, what happens to this framework once it leaves its written format and is used by actual organisations? To help us answer this question, we have conducted semi-structured interviews with six organisations with the support of documentary research. All of which have used the framework. We then used thematic analysis to analyse the data. To interpret the results, we combined the perspectives of Scandinavian Institutionalism theory with a focus on translation and Change Management. The findings suggest that the motivation before selecting the framework plays a critical role in the way it is translated to practice. Early communication efforts may also influence the way the employees of an organisation perceive the framework and hence influence if they will resist its adoption. The framework does not maintain its integral theoretical form when organisations adopt it. Most of the organisations completely discarded one of its components. One organisation changed another almost beyond recognition. But at the same time, they recognise it as a uniquely good guiding tool. It also appears that among the components, the sustainability principles and the ABCD-procedure are almost always effectively translated and serve organisations’ sustainability objectives.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-198) / The research explored the partnership of Namutamba Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) in Uganda with its main donor, the Neukirchener Mission (NM). The review of the literature focused on empowerment, NGO partnerships and organisational sustainability. The achievements and challenges of the partnership of the NRC with the NM regarding the organisational sustainability of the NRC were identified by evaluating documents of both partners, individual interviews and focus group discussions of stakeholders of NRC. In brief, the relationship of NRC with the NM was characterised as a dependent partnership due to the power imbalance between the partners and the resource dependency of NRC. It was recommended that the NRC and the NM focus on creating greater self-reliance of NRC while attempting to develop an authentic partnership. This might have wide reaching consequences not only for the sustainability of NRC but also for the services offered to persons with disabilities in Central Uganda. / Development Studies / M.A. (Development Studies)