The Role of Place in Sustainability

In this article, co-authors Arno Kourula, Panikos Georgallis, Irene Henriques, and Johanna Mair reflect on the inspiration behind their research article, “Introduction to the Special Issue on the Role of Place in Sustainability: Key Trends and Agenda for Future Research,” published in Organization & Environment.

Many sustainability issues are global, but does this mean that sustainability solutions are placeless? Or are they, instead, place-bound? The special issue on “The Role of Place in Sustainability”, developed in conjunction with the 2022 Conference of the Group for Research on Organizations and the Natural Environment, grapples with this and related questions on the role of place in sustainability.

The editorial article extends the insights from the special issue articles and the broader literature on place and sustainability. The concept of “place” in sustainability is multidimensional, encompassing not only physical locations but also the human and social experiences tied to physical locations. Place is not only a context for business activity, but it is itself continuously shaped by interactions between organizations and their environment.

Research on organizations, management, and international business has recently emphasized the interconnected and global nature of sustainability challenges, and the need for different actors—including for example governments, multinational enterprises, and social movements—to come together to address them. Yet, research also shows that the impacts of challenges such as climate change and subsequent action to address them are highly localized. In other words, sustainability is not “placeless.”

In contrast to recent research that has emphasized the global in addressing sustainability challenges like climate change, this issue revisits the local by focusing on place. We show evidence that research on place and sustainability has been on the rise, and present four special issue articles which draw on diverse contexts—ranging from the Tibetan Plateau to the city of St. Gallen, and from Vancouver Island to the south of France.

Collectively, the special issue articles show how organizations that deeply engage with their local environments and integrate ecological knowledge can drive more effective and enduring sustainability outcomes. They also discuss how diverse constituents with different roles and identities can jointly achieve sustainable placemaking. However, this local focus that makes for successful initiatives may also sometimes limit the ability to transfer sustainability practices to other places.

Relatedly, sustainability practitioners often struggle with the dilemma of “scaling deep” versus “scaling out.” Scaling deep involves intensifying sustainability efforts within a local context, ensuring that these efforts are rooted in place and involve deep understanding of the local context. This involves, for example, engaging with local communities, respecting indigenous knowledge, and adapting sustainability strategies to fit the unique cultural and ecological conditions of each place. Scaling out, on the other hand, involves expanding these practices geographically. This may involve developing strategies that are flexible enough to adapt to different local contexts while maintaining core sustainability principles.

In the editorial, we offer a plea to move beyond the dichotomies that currently dominate scholarly discourse—such as the contrast between universal and pluriversal approaches, and the choice between scaling deep versus scaling out. Instead of treating these as mutually exclusive options, researchers should focus on how these perspectives can be integrated. Central to such an agenda is, we suggest, the need to expand the concept of sense of place to consider the plural “sense of places”— combining experiences from multiple places and contextualizing individual places in relation to others.

Finally, we propose a research agenda on how organizations operate within, with, across, and beyond local environments. Our aim is that this editorial, and the future research it inspires, will help foster sustainability that resonates deeply within local communities while echoing across the world.