BUILDING SPIRITUAL CAPABILITIES TO SUSTAIN …

Spiritual Capabilities

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BUILDING SPIRITUAL CAPABILITIES TO SUSTAIN SUSTAINABILITY-

BASED COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES*

Jean Garner Stead, PhD

Professor of Strategic Management

East Tennessee State University

Department of Management and Marketing

PO Box 70625

Johnson City, TN 37614

423-341-1130

[email protected]

W. Edward Stead, PhD

Professor of Management

East Tennessee State University

Department of Management and Marketing

PO Box 70625

Johnson City, TN 37614

423-341-1214

[email protected]

*An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Management, Religion, and

Spirituality Interest Group, 2010 Academy of Management meetings in Montreal.

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


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BASED COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

RUNNING HEAD: Spiritual Capabilities

5-10 KEY WORDS: Sustainability, spirituality, spiritual capabilities, spiritual

intelligence, spiritual capital, coevolution, spiral dynamics, competitive

advantages, resource-based view, core competencies

ABSTRACT

There is a rapidly growing global sustainability movement afoot putting significant

pressures on business organizations for greater social and ecological responsibility. As

a result of these environmental pressures, firms are now faced with the task of

integrating sustainability into their core strategic management processes. Such

integration is an upwardly spiraling coevolutionary process that leads organizations to

a higher level of existence based on the sacredness of humankind and nature. Firms

operating at this level are prepared to develop intangible spiritual capabilities that

contribute to the development of sustainability-based core competencies that are

valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate, thus providing them with sustainable

sustainability-based competitive advantages.


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BASED COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

There is a rapidly growing global movement afoot that is putting real pressure on

business organizations to function in sustainable ways (Edwards, 2005; Hawken,

2007). As a result, the business environment today is rife with demands for greater

social and ecological responsibility on the part of organizations. These demands add

further complexity to the already highly complex and turbulent web of resource

scarcities, competitive dynamics, institutional requirements, customer demands,

investor demands, and so forth that business organizations currently face.

Sustainability, meeting the needs of human beings now and for posterity, is an idea

that is simple to state but highly complex to understand and practice. Its complexity

comes from many factors. It is global, it looks deeply into the future because of its

focus on future generations, it has both short-term and long-term economic, ecological

and social dimensions, and it has many of its own contradictions, conundrums, and

tradeoffs. To complicate matters further, sustainability has deep spiritual roots in the

transcendent value of nature and humankind forever.

Given the complexity of sustainability, it should come as no surprise that integrating

it into the strategic processes of business organizations is highly complex. Doing so

will require a total strategic transformation for most firms (Laszlo and Zhexembayeva,

2011; Stead and Stead, 2009). They must find new ways of meeting customer

demands while using less resources and energy, generating no non-reusable, non-

renewable, and/or non-recyclable wastes, having a minimal carbon footprint, and


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contributing to global social and economic equity (Winston, 2009). Making this

strategic transformation requires firms to develop sustainability-based capabilities that

can be tied together in ways that build the core competencies that provide firms with

the competitive advantages necessary to earn short-term and long-term profits in

ecologically and socially responsible ways (Laszlo and Zhexembayeva, 2011; Lovins

and Cohen, 2011; Stead and Stead, 2009).

Capabilities are “tangible and intangible assets that enable a firm to take full

advantage of the other resources it controls” (Barney and Hesterly, 2010: 66).

Capabilities are specific skill sets that can be creatively composed in various and

sundry ways to build unique core competencies that provide the firm with sustainable

competitive advantages (Prahalad and Hamel, 1990). Thus, firms generally have

numerous capabilities that can be arranged into a few core competencies that provide

them with sustained competitive advantages.

Capabilities useful for building sustainability-based core competencies are numerous

and complex. Tangible capabilities such as life cycle analysis, pollution prevention,

full-cost accounting, and effective change management processes, and intangible

capabilities, such as a good sustainability reputation, positive economic, social, and

ecological community relationships, and an ethical system grounded in sustainability,

are some examples. These tangible and intangible capabilities range from scientific to

technological to organizational to spiritual (Laszlo and Zhexembayeva, 2011, Stead

and Stead, 2009).

According to Laszlo and Zhexembayeva (2011: 217), even though there are many

questions that must be answered about humankind’s pursuit of sustainability, “a


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collective spiritual transformation that de-emphasizes acquisition and domination over

nature [is]…dictated by the stark realities of 7 (soon 9) billion people living on a small

planet.” Many now say that while short-term profitability can be temporarily enhanced

by developing only tangible sustainability capabilities, the ability of firms to survive

and thrive in the long term will require developing intangible capabilities that support

a deep spiritual commitment to the land and its people (Laszlo and Zhexembayeva,

2011; MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group, 2011; Stead

and Stead, 2009). Whereas the tangible capabilities may together provide firms with

cost-saving and revenue-generating benefits, they are unlikely to support the

development of the ‘disruptive innovations’ necessary for long-term survival during

the sustainability revolution (Laszlo and Zhexembayeva, 2011).

Thus, in a nutshell spiritual capabilities are necessary for sustaining sustainability. In

this paper we will explore the idea that spiritual capabilities, including spiritual

intelligence and spiritual capital (Aburdene, 2005; Malloch, 2008; Zohar and

Marshall, 2000; Zohar and Marshall, 2004), provide organizations with valuable, rare,

difficult to imitate competitive advantages that help organizations develop and embed

sustainability into their strategic management processes.

The Sustainability Movement and Rising Levels of Consciousness

Numerous scholars have noted that there is a fundamental shift taking place in human

consciousness today. Regardless of whether it is called the ‘great emergence’ (Tickle

2008; McLaren 2007), the ‘blessed unrest’ (Hawken, 2007), the ‘sustainability


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revolution’ (Edwards, 2007), or the ‘rebirth of the soul’ (Chopra, 2001), there is

definitely a rise in consciousness happening regarding the relationship between the

health of the planet and the people who inhabit it. The new consciousness involves a

complex network of social, ecological, economic, cultural, political, and intellectual

dimensions with sustainability at its heart. Hawken (2007:12) expresses it this way:

“The movement expresses the needs of the majority of people on Earth to sustain the

environment, wage peace, democratize decision making and policy, rejuvenate public

governance…and improve their lives...”

In researching the movement, Hawken (2007) began with the idea that there are at

least 100,000 environmental and social justice organizations globally committed to

achieving some aspect of sustainability, but he soon discovered that the number is

closer to a million. He found these organizations to be quite diverse, focusing on a

wide variety of global, regional, and local issues.

Edwards (2005) describes the movement as a transformation from the industrial

revolution to the sustainability revolution. He says that the sustainability revolution is

currently following the developmental path typical of all social revolutions: genesis,

critical mass, and diffusion. He says that the revolution had its beginnings (its genesis)

in the 1970s and 1980s, and that it is currently in the process of building the necessary

critical mass and worldwide diffusion. Speth (2008) agrees with both Hawken and

Edwards that there is a revolutionary new sustainability-based consciousness arising

that focuses on concerns for the Earth and its people. Aburdene (2008) describes this

rising consciousness as a new ‘megatrend’ that is bottom-up, participative, and

spiritually charged.


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Chopra (2001) comments extensively on the spiritual nature of the new

consciousness. He believes that the rising new consciousness is humanity’s yearning

to reconnect with its soul, and he believes this idea is consistent with the tenets of

quantum theory. Quantum theory has led to the understanding that all reality is

interrelated; the world is essentially a seamless whole with all life interdependent and

coevolving. According to Chopra (2001), if the theory of the cosmos is ultimately the

theory of how God’s mind works, as Einstein believed, then this holistic, integrated

view of the world provides the framework to connect humanity’s mind, body, and

spirit into one.

Thus the sustainability movement, with its rising spiritual consciousness and its

worldwide cries for economic equity, fair trade, social justice, local preservation, clean

air and water, safe food, safe consumer products, and so forth, has become a major

force permeating virtually all aspects of society and nature, including the business

arena. Further, sustainability is now laying down deep roots in the global business

environment. A recent survey of 3000 business executives around the globe found that

the responding organizations actually increased their financial investments in

sustainability during the recent recession, and it found that 70% of the respondents

planned to continue to increase their sustainability investments in 2011 and beyond

(MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group, 2011). Statistics

like these show that commitment to sustainability is rising very rapidly; and as it does,

the survival of business organizations will be increasingly influenced by how well

firms can develop the capabilities that allow them to adapt to this sustainability-

infused business environment.


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Integrating Sustainability into Management Is a Coevolutionary Process

Coevolution is a biologically rooted theory demonstrating that interdependent entities

evolve and change in concert with one another over time (Ehrlich and Raven, 1964;

Lovelock, 1979, 1988; Margulis and Hinkle, 1991). Since its inception, coevolution

theory has crossed its biological boundaries into the organizational sciences (Flier,

Van Den Bosch, and Volberda, 2003; Lampel and Shamsie, 2003; Lewin, Long, and

Carroll, 1999; Lewin and Volberda, 2003a; Lewin and Volberda, 2003b; Porter, 2006;

Volberda and Lewin, 2003). Porter (2006) identified six characteristics of

coevolutionary change processes gleaned from the biological, geological, and

organizational literature: specificity, reciprocity, simultaneity, adaptability, boundary

spanning, and permanence. She demonstrated that the relationships between business

organizations and their environments exhibit all six of these characteristics.

Pfeffer (1993) referred to contemporary management theories as a ‘weed patch’ of

contradictory frameworks because, despite their sound intuitive logic and solid

research support, management theories often provide divergent explanations of

organizational survival. Some, such as strategic choice and resource-based theories,

explain how organizational survival is a function of organizational adaptation. Others,

such as population ecology and institutional theories, explain how organizational

survival is determined via environmental selection. Thus, some management theories

suggest that good management is very important for organizational survival, while


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others marginalize its importance (Lewin and Volberda, 2003b; Volberda and Lewin,

2003).

Coevolution theory is now recognized as an overarching theoretical umbrella that

unites these seemingly dichotomous explanations of organizational survival. From a

coevolutionary perspective, there is a perpetual selection-adaptation cycle at work in

which changes in environmental selection criteria are met with organizational efforts

to develop the capabilities to adapt to these environmental changes (Lewin and

Volberda, 2003b; Porter, 2006). Over time, the increasingly complex and rapidly

changing gaggle of selection criteria results in the emergence of new organizational

forms that are more flexible, more change oriented, more innovative, and less

bureaucratically controlled (Flier, Van Den Bosch, and Volberda, 2003; Lewin and

Volberda, 1999; Volberda and Lewin, 2003).

As discussed above, sustainability is a primary contributing factor in today’s

increasingly complex, increasingly turbulent business environment. This means that

sustainability plays a critical role in today’s coevolutionary environmental selection-

organizational adaptation cycles. The message that organizations must be ecologically

and socially responsible in pursuit of economic success is resonating from all corners

of the business environment today, and these calls for improved sustainability

performance mean that today’s organizations must incorporate sustainability values,

strategies, and capabilities into their adaptation efforts if they want to survive.

Coevolution Is a Spiraling Process


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Of the six characteristics of coevolution identified by Porter (2006), the dynamics

between reciprocity and permanence seem particularly important for understanding the

true nature of the current environmental selection-organizational adaptation cycle. By

itself, reciprocity portrays the cycle as a circular process in which environmental

changes lead to organizational adaptations, which lead to environmental changes,

which leads to organizational adaptations, and so on. However, while the two-

dimensional circle of reciprocity may be a reasonable approximation of this

relationship, it does not fully portray the fact that the coevolutionary dance between

organizations and their environments is a process of perpetual change that leaves each

entity permanently changed.

By shifting the image of the coevolutionary relationship between environmental

selection and organizational adaptation from a two-dimensional circle to a three-

dimensional spiral, we can more thoroughly understand the perpetual nature of

coevolutionary change processes. Whereas circular dynamics imply that

organizational selection-adaptation cycles may eventually lead back to the same place,

spiral dynamics (Graves, 1970, 1974; Beck and Cowen, 1996; Wilber 1996, 2000)

demonstrates that the reciprocal environment-organization change process results in

both continuously morphing into something different over time.

Spiral dynamics, developed by Graves (1970, 1974) and further expanded by Beck

and Cowan (1996) and Wilber (1996, 2000), says that changes in human

consciousness result from spiraling coevolutionary processes. According to the theory,

life conditions are always getting more complex. These increasing complexities of life

create new cultural, psychological, cognitive, and biophysical problems that cannot be


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solved at the current level of human consciousness. Thus, a higher level of

consciousness emerges to deal with these new problems. According to spiral

dynamics, higher levels of consciousness naturally emerge in order to help humans

adapt and survive life’s changes. Human consciousness coevolves as humans develop

more complex mental models of the world that allow them to handle new problems.

This means that the spirals are open systems where new ways of thinking will emerge

as life conditions get more complex. In this regard, the spiraling process is virtually

infinite in nature.

According to the theory, each coevolving shift in human consciousness is

accompanied by a shift in core value systems. Each of these value systems represents a

specific biophysical-psychological-spiritual-cultural relationship that responds to

changing, complex environmental conditions. These value systems shape the decision

making of individuals, organizations, and cultures. They are organized in hierarchical

tiers along the rising spiral, with each new value system including and transcending

the ones below. The lower tier value systems (tier one) reflect fundamental human

needs, and the upper tier value systems (tier two) reflect the wholeness of existence.

Whereas tier one value systems are somewhat static in nature, tier two value systems

represent a flow of transformational spirituality that is holistic and integral. After the

humanistic needs of the first tier values are met, humans begin to question the

fundamental assumptions about how they see the world. According to Beck and

Wilber (2008), the first 100,000 years of human existence have been spent in tier one

value systems, but they believe the cutting edge of humanity today is taking the

‘momentum leap’ to second tier values that Graves (1974) predicted years ago. In a


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coevolutionary shift of this magnitude, past success will not guarantee future success.

Rather, the new life conditions warranting such a shift will require new ways of

thinking, paradigm shifts on the part of individuals, organizations, and societies in

order to adapt and survive.

As demonstrated above: (1) sustainability is at the heart of the current transcendence

of humankind from tier one to tier two in the spiral, and (2) organizations that survive

this transcendence will do so because they have the capabilities to adopt the new

values, new ways of thinking, and new ways of doing things that are necessary for

them to make the fundamental economic, social, and ecological transformation to a

tier two value system. Further, the spiraling dynamics of coevolutionary change

strongly suggest that the transcendence to a more sustainable tier two state of being for

organizations will result in the emergence of more complex, flexible organizational

forms capable of facilitating this transformation.

Spiraling Toward Sustainability-Based Management Is a Spiritual Journey

Thus, organizational survival in today’s sustainability rich, spiraling coevolutionary

business environment will require organizations to make the deep paradigmatic shifts

necessary for transforming themselves into sustainable organizations. Such shifts will

need to be based on a core belief in the sanctity of nature and humankind, including

future generations. Research by Bansal and Roth (2000) and Egri and Herman (2000)

suggest that when strategic leaders in organizations hold deep core beliefs such as


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these, their organizations are more likely to institute shared sustainability-centered

ethical systems.

Many have suggested over the years that sustainability-based ethical systems are

spiritual in nature. Spiritual fulfillment is a higher-level (tier two) aspiration (Wilber

(1996, 2000) that is a uniquely human characteristic. Spirituality is generally defined

in the literature as relating to the search for meaning in people’s lives (Driver, 2007;

Gull and Doh, 2004). When people speak of being spiritually fulfilled, they use terms

like purpose, joy, happiness, love, peace, creativity, and beauty. Pruzan and Mikkelsen

(2007) interviewed 31 spiritually motivated executives and found that things like love,

caring for others, purpose, compassion, divinity, and service were primary motivators

for these executives.

As mentioned earlier, Arburdeen (2008) and Chopra (2001) both describe the rising

sustainability consciousness as a spiritual phenomenon. Naturalist and conservationist

Aldo Leopold (1949) said over 60 years ago that adopting the ‘land ethic’ would

require humans to take a more spiritual view of their relationships to each other and to

nature. Pioneer ecological economist E. F. Schumacher (1973, 1977) echoed this

sentiment, saying that a societal shift toward sustainability represents a shift to a

higher (tier two) level of human consciousness that is more organic, more inwardly

focused, more heartfelt, and more spiritual. In the same vein, ecological economist

Herman Daly (1977) said that pursuing sustainability requires realizing that a belief in

a high quality of life for posterity is the highest of humankind’s ethical and spiritual

aspirations (its ‘ultimate ends’). Thus, we contend the upward transformation to more


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sustainable management systems requires that organizations develop sustainability-

based spiritual capabilities.

The development of spiritual capabilities involves the development of both ‘spiritual

intelligence’ and ‘spiritual capital’. Gardner (1993) said that human intelligence is

multifaceted, with each person having different intelligences that coexist and develop

relatively independent of one another. Most common among these human intelligences

is rational intelligence, generally referred to as IQ (intelligence quotient).

Theoretically, a high IQ reflects a high ability to solve logical problems. Goldman

(1996) demonstrated that emotional intelligence (EQ) is as important as IQ. EQ is a

measure of people’s awareness of other people’s feelings as well as their own. As

such, it is the source of human compassion, empathy, and motivation. EQ has been

shown to be especially important within the business context. For example, Walter,

Cole, and Humphrey (2011) report that a strong research link has been established

between EQ and effective leadership attitudes and behaviors.

In the past decade or so, spiritual intelligence (SQ) (Zohar and Marshall, 2000;

2004) has gained attention. This is the intelligence that humans use to solve problems

of value and meaning. It is a means of integrating internal and external experiences,

which facilitates this problem solving (Hyde, 2004; Vaughan, 2002), and it enables

humans to adapt to coevolving life conditions (Beck and Wilber, 2008). SQ helps put

human behaviors and lives within a larger context of meaning, and thus it serves as the

foundation of both IQ and EQ. Unlike other species, human beings search for meaning

and value in what they do because they are driven by questions regarding why they

exist and what their lives mean. Humans have a longing to feel a part of a larger


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purpose, something toward which they can aspire. SQ allows them to be creative, to

use their imaginations, and to change their rules. It allows them to think out of the box

and to play with the boundaries of their existence. It is this transformative

characteristic that distinguishes SQ from IQ and EQ. Whereas both IQ and EQ work

within the boundaries of the situation, SQ allows individuals to question whether or

not they want to be in the situation in the first place. SQ facilitates the dialogue

between reason and emotion, between mind and body. It provides the ability to

integrate all the intelligences. Thus, it is a transcendent intelligence (Sisk and Torrance

(2001) that enables the paradigm shift from tier one to tier two values (Graves, 1970,

1974; Beck and Cowan, 1996; Wilber, 2000).

As managers within the organization increase their levels of SQ, this becomes

transformative for the organization. This transformative process is a critical adaptive

mechanism for coevolving to tier two values according to Beck and Wilber (2008).

The result of the transformation is the creation of spiritual capital, a kind of wealth

earned by acting not out of short-term bottom-line gain, but by serving fundamental

human needs. This facilitates the creation of shared values that serve both

organizational and societal needs (Porter and Kramer, 2011). This type of wealth helps

to create a sustainable world while nourishing and sustaining the human spirit. In

essence it exists in the soul of an organization, defining its fundamental core values

and purpose (Zohar and Marshall, 2004), and thus it provides the foundation for

implementing an organizational vision of sustainability.

As managers develop high levels of spiritual intelligence and spiritual capital, they

learn to nurture, renew, and sustain the core purpose of the whole human enterprise.


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The spiritual capabilities they glean from this become the glue, the cultural foundation

that binds people together. They provide organizational members with a moral and a

motivational framework, an ethos, a spirit. This spirit transcends, sustains, and

enriches both material capital and social capital. In other words, it embeds the

organizational culture with spirit (Zohar and Marshall, 2004). Further, this spirit can

enhance managers’ understanding and commitment to a core value of sustainability.

The transformative powers of spiritual capabilities can give managers the deeper

insights they need to understand why contributing to humanity’s efforts to “meet the

needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to

meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development

1987:8) is critical for their organizations’ survival.

Spiritual Capabilities and Sustained Competitive Advantage

Let us briefly review. There is a rising global consciousness that centers on creating an

ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable world for current and future

generations. This rising sustainability consciousness with its tier two value systems that

support environmental and social responsibility is deeply penetrating the business

environment, meaning that business organizations are now faced with the need to craft

efficient and effective sustainability-based strategic management systems that support

their efforts to earn profits in socially and ecologically sensitive ways. Sustainability is a

concept with deeply spiritual roots. Thus, integrating sustainability into strategic

management systems requires that organizations develop spiritual capabilities (spiritual


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intelligence and spiritual capital) that support and enhance their ability to achieve

competitive advantages.

According to the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm (Barney, 1986; Barney, 1991;

Wernerfelt, 1984), organizational competitive advantages are achieved through the

effective management of internal resources. Firm performance is a function of the types

of resources (tangible and intangible capabilities) developed and exploited by managers

through strategies that accomplish organizational goals. Resources that provide a

competitive advantage to the firm, known as core competencies, must be valuable, rare,

and difficult to imitate, and they must be strategically combined and deployed to build

competitive advantages. Hart (1995) contends that the RBV should be expanded to

include natural resources as sources of sustained cost and differentiation competitive

advantages, and the research of Russo and Fouts (1997) supports Hart’s contentions.

They found that natural resource capabilities can improve both organizational

performance and profitability.

As noted earlier, the spiritual capabilities that support sustainability are intangible. The

aesthetic value of nature and humankind cannot be touched or displayed. However, it can

certainly be experienced, and it can certainly stir the spirit when it is. Researchers from

the MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group (2011) found that

leading firms in the sustainability revolution, such as Unilever, Johnson and Johnson,

New Belgium Brewing, and Proctor and Gamble, place a very high value on

sustainability-based intangibles like these. They found these firms to have deep values for

the conservation of natural resources, and they found that the firms strongly believe that

valuing such intangibles improves their long-term competitiveness. These firms develop


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ways to measure these intangibles, even though such measurements are fraught with

problems that render their accuracy suspect. However, to these firms the measurements,

despite their potential inaccuracies, show that they place a high value on these intangible

capabilities.

Colbert (2004) has extended the RBV framework by examining it through the lens of

complexity theory. He contends that reframing RBV in terms of complex adaptive

systems allows for a more holistic, less reductive examination of some of the most

strategic, yet difficult, aspects of RBV, including causal ambiguity, social complexity,

and system-level resources. Thus, according to RBV, the more causally ambiguous,

socially complex, and holistic the resources, the more difficult it is for competitors to

imitate them, thus offering a sustained competitive advantage to the firm (Barney, 1986;

Barney, 1991; Colbert, 2004; Grant 1991; Reed and DeFillippi, 1990; Schoemaker,

1990).

We contend that spiritual capabilities underpinning sustainability-based core

competencies meet the established criteria for creating sustained competitive advantages

for organizations operating in today’s sustainability-rich business environment. First of

all, they are valuable to the firm. As mentioned above, leaders with deeply held beliefs

that nature and humankind are sacred are more likely to develop sustainability-based

ethical systems to under gird their strategic processes and actions (Bansal and Roth,

2000; Egri and Herman, 2000). Such organizations will be inclined to recognize and

assign power to stakeholders that represent the interests of the planet and its people

(Freeman, 1984; Freeman and Gilbert, 1988; Hart and Sharma, 2004; Starik, 1995; Stead

and Stead, 2000), and organizations that respond to sustainability stakeholder concerns


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will consciously work to develop and improve their sustainability-based capabilities

(Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998).

Secondly, spiritual capabilities supporting sustainability-based core competencies are

currently rare. Organizations today seem to understand well that performing in more

ecologically and socially responsible ways can improve their profitability. Cutting energy

and materials use and creating less pollution and wastes are widely recognized

sustainability-based ways to achieve lower-cost competitive advantages in today’s

business environment, and creating and promoting ecologically and socially responsible

products and services is widely understood to create differentiation-based competitive

advantages for firms. However, few organizations seem to have made the fundamental

transformation from traditional profit-oriented ethical systems to systems driven by

deeply held values for the sacredness of the land and its people. Whereas the profit

motive by itself can allow organizations to save money and sell goods and services by

being more ecologically and socially aware, those rare organizations with a deep

understanding of and commitment to sustainability are more capable of seeing beyond the

current low hanging fruit strategies to a future where fundamental transformational

change at the deepest level of organizational cultures will be required. The respondents to

the survey conducted by the MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting

Group (2011) reported that picking the low hanging sustainability fruit (such as energy

improvements) can take organizations only so far. Tying sustainability efforts to short-

term profits is a good entrée into a broader sustainability commitment, but firms that

never go beyond short-term commitments (called ‘laggards’ by the survey researchers)


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will eventually lose their competitive edge to those who make a deep long-term

commitment to sustainability (called ‘embracers’).

Thirdly, imitating spiritual capabilities is very difficult to do because they are holistic,

socially complex, and causally ambiguous. The holistic nature of spirituality and spiritual

fulfillment is well established. Recall the earlier discussion that spirituality is a tier two

aspiration that is more holistic and integral than the tier one aspirations below it (Beck

and Wilber, 2008). Driver (2007) refers to spirituality as a ‘developmental gestalt’

centered on humans’ search for lifelong meaning. It is not about seeking temporary

thrills. It is about seeking lasting joy and deep fulfillment from the whole of one’s life.

The search for meaning permeates one’s religious life, organizational life, family life,

social life, recreational life, and so forth. It is an eternal search for one’s soul and true

nature. Although spirituality and religion are not synonymous, many see it as a search for

God, which they see as the ultimate wholeness.

Spirituality is also socially complex. Social complexity generally refers to the fact that

human relationships are highly complex phenomena that are difficult to understand and

systematically manage with any real certainty. Barney and Hesterly (2010) give

interpersonal relationships among managers, the dynamics of an organization’s culture,

and the reputation of a firm with its customers as examples of socially complex factors in

business organizations. As mentioned earlier, spirituality is a human concept that can

touch virtually every aspect of one’s life, and as such it has broad, complex social

dimensions. For example, Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller (2011) demonstrate that

happiness (one of the key outcomes of spiritual fulfillment) is a complex societal value

that manifests itself in numerous ways in most all cultures across the globe.


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Finally, spirituality is clearly causally ambiguous. Causal ambiguity has its base in

bounded rationality, the idea that the ability to make rational decisions is limited because

of imperfect information systems. As the term causal ambiguity suggests, the cause-effect

nature of situations is obfuscated, making them hard to understand and evaluate

rationally. Causal ambiguity exists because problems, ideas, processes, and so forth, are

ill defined and complicated. According to Reed and DeFillippi (1990), causal ambiguity

is a legitimate barrier to imitation of sustainable core competencies. The holistic, socially

complex nature of spirituality renders it causally ambiguous by definition. The meaning

of life is very personal, and yet it is pursued in a world with others who are pursuing their

own meaning. Senge (1990) seemed to understand this when he said that the way to

establish a spiritual relationship between employees and their organizations is to tie

employee visions directly to the shared vision of the organization, allowing employees to

pursue their own spiritual fulfillment via the long-term success of the organizations.

Conclusions

In sum, we know that the rapidly growing global movement to sustainability is putting

pressures on business organizations to earn their profits in ways that contribute to the

greater social and ecological good. It is widely accepted in both academe and industry

that organizational survival now and in the future will depend on firms being able to

efficiently and effectively integrate sustainability into their strategic cores. We along with

others contend that such integration requires that organizations transform to a higher level

of existence based on the belief in the sacredness of humankind and nature. We contend


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that firms operating at this level are prepared to develop intangible spiritual capabilities

that can contribute to the development of sustainability-based core competencies that are

valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate.

Given these contentions, we make the following propositions:

Proposition 1: Intangible sustainability-based spiritual capabilities can contribute

significantly to the development and maintenance of organizational core competencies

that provide sustained competitive advantages that help the firm meet its economic needs

while serving the needs of society and protecting the natural environment.

According to the RBV, proposition 1 can be true only if sustainability-based spiritual

capabilities have value, are rare, and are difficult to imitate. Thus we make the following

propositions:

Proposition 2: Intangible sustainability-based spiritual capabilities are valuable.

Proposition 3: Intangible sustainability-based spiritual capabilities are rare.

Proposition 4: Intangible sustainability-based spiritual capabilities are difficult to imitate.

Further, according to the RBV, proposition 4 can be true only if sustainability-based

spiritual capabilities are holistic, socially complex, and causally ambiguous. Thus we

make the follow propositions:

Proposition 5: Intangible sustainability-based spiritual capabilities are holistic.


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Proposition 6: Intangible sustainability-based spiritual capabilities are socially complex.

Proposition 7: Intangible sustainability-based spiritual capabilities are causally

ambiguous.

As we believe we have demonstrated in the discussion above, the logic and content of

these propositions has a solid foundation in the literature. On the other hand, none of

these propositions have been fully empirically tested. Thus, the next step is to do so. The

answers received should provide important insights in the search for ways to make sure

that sustainability-based core strategic competencies can be sustained in business

organizations.

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