Framing sustainability strategies for the enactment of corporate actions with positive macro-level impact: Evidence from a developing country

The literature on sustainability strategies has focused on outcomes at the micro or meso level of analysis, such as changes in the indicators of people, organizations, or supply chains. However, sustainable development involves a set of macro-level issues such as the atmosphere, oceans, and societal phenomena. There is scarce research linking business actions to planetary- or national-level outcomes. Therefore, this research focuses on how the process of framing a sustainability strategy shapes the enactment of social or environmental actions with an intended positive macro-level impact. We use five longitudinal case studies in Ecuador to create a framework that links the framing of sustainability strategies with the enactment of actions with a positive macro-level impact. This research finds that sustainability strategies framed as environmental impacts following science-based methods, and integrative cross-sector partnerships mobilize explorative sustainable innovation capabilities and partnerships for collective actions with macro-level impacts. We also find that temporal ambidextrous management, purpose alignment, and perceived competence in monitoring resource allocation are enablers of the transition of these framing processes. Finally, managers should be aware that macro-level impacts are more likely to be generated through collective actions and innovation efforts deployed using ecosystem logic for value creation.