Enacting and Organizing Sustainability Transitions: Qualitative Perspectives on Organizational Practices, Systems, and Societal Change

Closes:
Journal
Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal
Guest editor(s)
Hanna Lehtimäk, Natalia Yakovleva, Kristina Leppälä, Klara Scheurenbrand,

Introduction

Sustainability transitions entail a fundamental shift from environmentally and socially unsustainable practices toward more efficient, circular, and equitable systems of production and consumption. These transitions require not only technological innovation but also new approaches to management, collaboration, and governance. Increasing regulatory pressures, such as the European Union Green Deal and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, alongside voluntary sustainability initiatives or objectives such as the soon-expiring United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), have encouraged organisations to advance practices such as digitalisation, product traceability, and sustainable product innovation. However, significant gaps remain in understanding how sustainable business models are adopted and scaled across contexts, particularly among small- and medium-sized enterprises and multinational firms globally. Additionally, research is needed that examines market and socio-cultural economy sustainability transition practices in countries or regions where market-based consumption practices have not developed as extensively as in the industrialised Global North.

This special issue aims to advance research on how sustainability transitions can be achieved and scaled across organisations, industries, and societies. It invites critical contributions that explore theoretical foundations, consumer behaviour, circular economy practices, sustainability leadership, material and waste transitions, and the interaction between policy, practice, and stakeholder engagement in fostering systemic change. We welcome contributions that examine sustainability from a range of perspectives, including reflective and critical approaches that enhance understanding and directly address underlying assumptions, tensions, forms of resistance, contradictions, failures, degrowth, unintended consequences, challenges, practices, and implications.

 

List of Topic Areas

  1. explore theoretical foundations, innovations, boundaries, and social dimensions of the implementation of and the scaling-up of sustainable or circular systems, their management, and longitudinal effects;
  2. shed light on knowledge gaps on sustainability transitions and transformation from a local or global perspective, including multiple-case studies and transnational perspectives. Both Global North or Global South perspectives are encouraged;
  3. investigate sustainable or circular marketing, along with consumer behaviours and preferences, their measurement, and solution-focused assessments;
  4. inquire on the planning and management of sustainable materialities and/or waste transitions or the reframing of waste to be a source material;
  5. examine sustainability leadership research in various organizations, including industrial or civic based formal organizational leaders;
  6. explore circular ecosystems during circular economic transitions and transformation, or nascent to functioning circular economic ecosystems during transitions to sustainable or circular operations;
  7. examine how scholars or organizational representative engage with policy makers, practitioners, and communities, to establish the interface between public policy and voluntary action for ecological and socially equitable transitions;
  8. refine or evaluate sustainability or circular ventures using critical, reflexive, qualitative methodologies;
  9. consider alternative economic practices, context-specific forms of sustainability, and diverse pathways toward environmental and social wellbeing, ones that may not fit dominant circular economy models through rich, contextually grounded qualitative scholarship.

 

References

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Submissions Information

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Key Deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 01 November 2026

Closing date for manuscripts submission: 30 May 2027