Firms face growing pressure to measure and disclose their sustainability performance, yet credible sustainability metrics remain scarce because sustainability initiatives often operate under significant uncertainty. We argue that two forms of uncertainty—effect uncertainty (whether an initiative produces its intended outcome) and measurement uncertainty (the accuracy and stability of quantification)—fundamentally shape the credibility of sustainability metrics. We introduce a credibility-centered roadmap that helps managers diagnose these uncertainties, select metrics that fit the informational context, reduce uncertainty where feasible, communicate remaining uncertainty transparently, and pause quantitative disclosure when precision cannot be responsibly claimed. The roadmap recognizes that credibility depends on aligning disclosure with what can be responsibly known rather than choosing the "right" metric in the abstract. Using carbon offsets as an illustrative domain where both uncertainties are exceptionally high, we demonstrate how misaligned metrics can unintentionally mislead stakeholders and why process metrics, qualified outcomes, or strategic silence may be more credible than precise quantitative claims. By adopting this structured approach, organizations can design sustainability metrics that more accurately reflect what can be known, avoid overstating confidence, and strengthen stakeholder trust.
As organizations face growing pressure to address sustainability challenges and commit to digital transformation, "digital sustainability"-the strategic use of digital technologies to advance sustainable development-has emerged as a promising management paradigm. However, fully realizing this potential requires a vision that integrates sustainability principles from the outset, accounting for both the positive and negative impacts of the affordances of digital technologies on environmental protection and social justice. We develop a framework that conceptualizes digital sustainability as a process of intertwined co-transformation, and detail four possible digital sustainability "pathways": reducing, removing, drifting, and derailing. We illustrate these with the empirical example of blockchain in the voluntary carbon market, a domain marked by ambiguity over "what technology makes possible," where techno-enthusiast advocates champion blockchain's potential, while management practitioners warn of risks and negative outcomes. Our framework contributes to digital sustainability research and practice by unpacking how (un)desirable digital sustainability outcomes emerge from the interaction between the technical and social dimensions of technology-how technological properties are mobilized to address sustainability-related managerial problems. In doing so, it provides a thinking tool to support organizations in anticipating and navigating their own digital sustainability pathways.
This special issue of the Academy of Management Perspectives explores the emerging concept of digital sustainability, which integrates digital transformation and sustainability as two "intertwined" imperatives for modern organizations. Organizations are facing mounting pressure to embrace both digital technology and sustainability goals, but the convergence of these agendas remains undertheorized and underexamined in research. In this editorial, we define digital sustainability as the symbiotic pursuit of digital transformation and sustainability performance for the long-term viability of an organization-that is, as the organization's capability to successfully configure, deploy, and govern digital infrastructures and practices so as to create, capture, and distribute value in ways that are compatible with ecological limits and social justice. The contributions in this special issue examine digital sustainability through multiple conceptual lenses-functional, systems, problematizing, and reflexive perspectives, or a combination thereof-highlighting both its transformative potential and its inherent tensions. Collectively, the articles compiled here demonstrate that outcomes depend not on technology alone but crucially also on governance, organizational capabilities, and institutional context. By consolidating emerging knowledge and outlining future research directions, this collection positions digital sustainability as a central challenge-and opportunity-for scholars, managers, and policymakers alike.
This paper explores how entrepreneurial legacies can have broader social impact beyond the identity of founders, the organization that they created, or their own philanthropic activity. Thus, we illustrate how, in the South African context, social entrepreneuring may be understood as the values-driven, relational brokering of societal legacies amongst a variety of entrepreneurs. At the heart of the layered legacies of Robbie Brozin, cofounder of Nando's, lie his personal values, the organizational values of Nando's, and South Africa's constitutional values. Through our analysis of Brozin's legacies, inspired by Levinasian ethics and Ubuntu principles, we can rethink how social entrepreneuring comes about, how it is nurtured, and the social impact it can have. Social entrepreneuring is an ethical-relational accomplishment, which requires engagement with histories and material realities on individual, organizational, and sociocultural levels. In practice, this means that our understanding of social entrepreneurship could extend beyond empowering individuals with a stated social purpose, to include the creative brokering of values-driven relational legacies on various levels of society. In this context, policy and practice should focus less on empowering individuals, and more on understanding and supporting the relational texture of social entrepreneurship, and the entangled legacies it responds to and recreates.
Though often invoked as a source of continuity, identity, and strategy, legacy remains conceptually underdeveloped and practically elusive. Leaders frequently grapple with how to preserve what matters from the past while enabling renewal, especially during succession, pivots, market disruption, or institutional change. Without understanding what legacy is, and how it functions and can be managed, organizations risk clinging to outmoded practices-or, conversely, discarding their most valuable identity anchors. We address this gap by advancing our understanding of legacy as a co-constructed process embedded in relationships, artifacts, and intergenerational meaning-making. Across nine contemporary research examples, we explore how legacy operates at individual, organizational, and societal levels, and how it can serve as an asset, a liability, or a paradox, simultaneously enabling continuity, triggering conflict, and motivating prosocial change. Drawing on diverse theoretical lenses and settings-from family firms in Honduras to multinational corporations in Sweden; from faith-based entrepreneurship to state-owned enterprises in post-Soviet Russia-we show that legacy is a symbolic and material force that influences strategy, innovation, ethics, and governance. Our integrative framework reveals how legacy can be cultivated, reinterpreted, or retired-and how organizations can deliberately manage legacy to foster stewardship, prevent inertia, and build trust among stakeholders.
This paper explores how the legacy of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) can simultaneously offer advantages and impose constraints, shaping a firm's strategic development over time. Using the transition from Communism in Central and Eastern Europe as a backdrop, we examine the case of Sberbank, a Russian SOE. In particular, we show how legacy artifacts rooted in the firm's historical circumstances and experiences shaped Sberbank's approach to the present and the future, operating as both a positive inheritance and a negative burden. As a positive inheritance, Sberbank's SOE legacy provided significant market dominance inherited from its historical role under state ownership, giving it a competitive edge in the post-Communist era. However, persistent interference and strong entanglements with the state constrained Sberbank's strategic autonomy substantially. Drawing on interviews, archival materials, and a comprehensive database of corporate communications, we show how Sberbank's management engaged with this challenging legacy. Their main strategy was to incorporate new initiatives that allowed them to decouple and address the negative aspects of state involvement while capitalizing on the market advantages inherited from their past. This study highlights how the concept of legacy is central to understanding how non-family businesses, and especially SOEs, navigate the tension between inherited strengths and constraints in their strategic evolution.
