Integrating sustainability with business strategy – the Swedish chemical industry

Abstract: This thesis aims to investigate perceptions of sustainability in relation to business strategy within the Swedish chemical industry. To this end, a survey was distributed with the assistance of industry organization Plast- och Kemiföretagen to companies that are part of the Responsible Care® program. A second purpose of the study is to explore critical factors when implementing an integration of sustainability with business strategy. To do this as well as dig deeper into a couple of questions raised in the survey, a qualitative study was carried out at Akzo Nobel business unit Pulp and Paper Chemicals (operating under the brand name of Eka Chemicals). Semi-structured interviews were performed with seven company representatives from different organizational levels, to explore critical factors identified in a literary study. From the survey, it could be concluded that the studied companies considered sustainability as an important issue today and with growing importance for the future. It was also observed that sustainability is currently not an issue at the core of business strategy, as 35% of respondent companies did not think that top management handled issues related to sustainability. Enhanced reputation and cost reduction/resource efficiency were seen as the primary creators of business value when addressing sustainability. Additional top motivating forces to consider sustainability were legislative demands and company core values. From the literary study a model of critical factors when implementing changes in strategy was developed. Four different aspects identified were explored in the semi-structured interviews at Eka Chemicals: change leadership, shared vision, sense of urgency and aligning goals. In that specific setting, the critical factors of having a shared vision and aligning individual, organizational unit and corporate goals were found to exist to a high degree, while the critical factor of change leadership was only partially existent, and a sense of urgency not existent.