Sustainability has been framed by the World Commission on Environment and Development as a fundamental concept in human society and by Fiorino (2010) as a critical conceptual focus for public administration over the next decade. A large number of U.S. local governments have implemented sustainability initiatives. Nevertheless, relatively few studies have comprehensively examined sustainability implementation by local governments. This study makes a concerted effort to examine sustainability implementation in U.S. local governments, which have taken the lead in many areas of sustainability. This study also develops a capacity building model to empirically evaluate how organizational strategies and capacities influence sustainability practices at the local level of government through a national survey of U.S. cities with populations over 50,000. The results show that cities are most successful in implementing sustainability initiatives if they develop proper technical, financial, and, particularly, managerial capacities and if they pursue primarily external, bottom-up, more participative, citizen or stakeholder driven strategies. These results suggest a public manager road map for sustainability implementation. From a theoretical perspective, the capacity building model adopted in this study provides a relatively powerful explanation of sustainability implementation, which demonstrates the value of a capacity building model in further studying sustainability implementation.

La planification stratégique en tant que processus rationnel a été très critiquée par beaucoup de chercheurs notamment en raison de ses effets incertains et contradictoires sur la performance des entreprises. Certains chercheurs proposent que le processus rationnel soit combiné avec un processus adaptatif afin de construire un processus intégré de planification stratégique qui serait mieux adapté à un environnement de plus en plus dynamique, complexe et incertain.L’objet de cette thèse est, d’une part, d’examiner si la combinaison des deux processus de planification stratégique est plus bénéfique aux entreprises que l’utilisation exclusive de l’un ou l’autre des deux processus et, d’autre part, d’étudier le rôle de cette combinaison dans le développement des capacités organisationnelles et l’amélioration de la performance des entreprises. Pour ce faire, nous avons construit un modèle conceptuel que nous avons testé empiriquement à l’aide d’une étude quantitative à laquelle 335 entreprises européennes ont participé.Les résultats de cette étude montrent que la planification stratégique combinant des caractéristiques de l’approche rationnelle avec des caractéristiques de l’approche adaptative est plus bénéfique aux entreprises. Nous trouvons également que la relation entre la planification stratégique combinée et la performance des entreprises est indirecte. / Strategic planning as a rational process has been strongly criticized by many researchers because of its uncertain and contradictory effects on company performance. As a result, some researchers suggest that the rational process should be combined with an adaptive process in order to build a global process of strategic planning which is better suited to the current dynamic, complex and uncertain environment.The purpose of this research is twofold: to examine whether the combination of the two processes of strategic planning is more beneficial to companies than the exclusive use of one or the other of the two and, to identify the role of this combination in the development of organizational capabilities and in improving company performance. To this end, we have built and tested empirically a conceptual model using a quantitative study in which 335 European companies have participated.The results of this study show that, in one hand, a strategic planning process combining rational with adaptive characteristics is more beneficial to companies and, on the other hand, the relationship between strategic planning and company performance is indirect.

Submitted by JOSIANE SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA (josianeso) on 2019-02-28T12:36:40Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Josiane Márcia Cabral_.pdf: 2226809 bytes, checksum: dba46f8a9eb329199603ac48641a3966 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2019-02-28T12:36:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Josiane Márcia Cabral_.pdf: 2226809 bytes, checksum: dba46f8a9eb329199603ac48641a3966 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-09-27 / Nenhuma / As respectivas literaturas em negócios sociais inseridos em contextos de base da pirâmide (BoP) ainda não são claras sobre quais as características de sucesso para este tipo de modelo de negócio sustentável. A premissa de que este tipo de negócio ainda seja novo, juntamente com diferentes vertentes da literatura, fazem com que não se conheça os elementos constituintes de tais organizações. Tendo isso em vista, este trabalho ousou reunir três estudos sobre: capacidades organizacionais, estratégias de escalonamento social e barreiras ao crescimento, inseridas no contexto de um estudo de caso múltiplo, desenvolvido na Região Sul do Brasil por duas instituições de microfinanças. Foi mostrado que o modelo sugerido pode ser utilizado para dimensionar as características de sucesso de negócios sociais na base da pirâmide. Argumentou-se ainda sobre quais são os elementos responsáveis por determinar o sucesso dos negócios sociais estudados. / The respective literatures in social businesses inserted in basic contexts of the pyramid (BoP) still are not clear on what the characteristics of success for this type of sustainable business model. The premise that this type of business is still new, together with different aspects of the literature, make it difficult to know the outline elements of such organizations. To this end, this paper dared to gather three studies on organizational capacities, social scaling strategies and barriers to growth, inserted in the context of a multiple case study developed in the south of Brazil by two microfinance institutions. It has been shown that the suggested model can be used to size the social business success characteristics at the base of the pyramid. It was also argued on which elements are responsible for determining the success of the social businesses studied.