Corporations work to reduce their negative impacts on the environment and society by adopting Sustainable business (SB) practices. Businesses create competitive advantages via practices such as waste minimization, green product design, compliance with regulations, and stakeholder relations. Normative models indicate that businesses should adopt similar sustainability practices, however, contingency theory suggests that effectiveness of practices depends on the context of the business. The literature highlights the importance of organizational culture as a moderating variable between SB practices and outcomes, however this link has not been empirically examined. This thesis presents the development and testing of a theoretical model, using configuration theory, that links SB practices, organizational culture, and financial performance.

Published frameworks were utilized to identify SB practices in use, and the Competing Values Framework (CVF) to identify dimensions of culture. Data from 1021 Corporate Sustainability Reports from 212 companies worldwide was collected for computerized text analysis, which provided a measure of the occurrence of a specific SB practice and the four dimensions of the CVF. Hypotheses were analyzed using cluster, crosstab, and t-test statistical methods.

The findings contribute significant insights to the Business and Sustainability field. Firstly, clustering of SB practice bundles identified organizations at various levels of SB practice awareness. The spectrum runs from a compliance level of awareness, to a set of organizations aware of the importance of culture change for sustainability. Top performing clusters demonstrated different priorities with regards to SB practices; these were in many cases, related to contextual factors, such as location or sector. This implies that these organizations undertook varying sustainability strategies, but all arrived at some successful level of sustainability. Another key finding was the association between the highest performing SB practice clusters and a culture dominated by Adhocracy values, corroborating theories presented in the literature, but were not empirically tested before.

The results of this research offer insights into the use of text analysis to study SB practices and organizational culture. Further, this study presents a novel attempt at empirically testing the relationship between SB practices and culture, and tying this to financial performance. The goal is that this work serves as an initial step in redefining the way in which businesses adopt SB practices. A transformation of SB practice adoption will lead to major improvements in sustainability strategies, and subsequently drive change for improved corporate sustainability.

This study develops a theoretical model that explains how leaders come to adapt their leadership behaviors to achieve follower effectiveness. Mindfulness theory suggests that mindful individuals are better able to engage in self-regulation and I consider empathy, response flexibility, and emotional regulation as three self-regulatory processes in particular which likely impact the leader-follower relationship. I suggest that leaders who have the ability to self-regulate in these three ways will be better able to engage in leadership behavior characterized by adapting or flexing the specific types of leadership they demonstrate according to the needs of the situation and what their followers most require at a given time to perform at their best. When followers receive the type of situationally-appropriate support in the form of leader behavior, they are more effective (e.g. have higher job performance and extra-role performance). I validate a new trait and state measure of workplace mindfulness with multiple samples and utilize this new scale to collect data from leaders and followers from a government organization to test the theoretical relationships proposed in this study. I utilize an experience sampling methodology (ESM) design over 10 days to investigate the within-leader variation among variables in the study given theory suggesting the dynamic nature of the mindfulness, self-regulation, and situational leadership constructs which may not adequately be captured when data are collected at one point in time. Finally, I introduce organizational constraints as a moderator of the relationship between leader mindfulness and leader self- regulation in order to understand how stressors and strains outside the control of a leader may overload a leader’s ability to ultimately self-regulate his/her behavior.

Researchers lament that feedback interventions often fail. Traditional theories assume a cognitive relationship between the receipt of feedback and its impact on employee performance. I offer a theoretical model derived from Affective Events and Broaden and Build Theories to shed new light on the feedback-performance relationship. I bridge the two primary streams of feedback literature-the passive receipt and active seeking-to examine how employees' affective responses to feedback drive how they use feedback to improve performance. I develop and test a model whereby supervisor developmental feedback and coworker feedback seeking relate to the positivity ratio (the ratio of positive as compared to negative affect), enabling them to be more creative and thus improving their performance. I test my model using Experience Sampling Methodology with a sample of MBA students over a two week working period.