Sustainability in Business - Plan or Action? Implication of Construal Level Theory into Company Perspective

Lucie Dudáková

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Sustainable development is increasingly included into business statements and reports, yet sustainability principles are rarely implemented in the core business activities. Such incongruence is similar to the incongruence described by the attitude to behaviour gap for sustainable behaviour vastly studied by consumer behaviour researchers. However business theories are lacking in recognizing and understanding this phenomenon. The present study aims to bring the recognition of the attitude to behaviour gap in business perspective by translating the most recent theory on the topic, the Construal Level Theory.It identifies that due to a conflict of short term and long term business goals and incapability of human brain to easily switch between the two goal dimensions, the choice of managerial decision is biased according to the manager´s focus on either strategic planning or on operational planning.An experimental research was designed focusing on Czech conventional crop farmers with private businesses with regards to the fact that agriculture is one of the main players directly influencing overall sustainability development.Furthermore, managers of privately owned companies are likely to have the main decisive power within the company. The farmers were manipulated into focusing on either strategic or operational planning and the attitudes, estimated actual choice and their interaction were studied.The findings revealed that there is a support of the presence of attitude to behaviour gap in fulfilling long-term strategic goals. However the results are inconclusive. One of the findings reveals that even the overall attitude is more positive for facilitating the operational goals than facilitating the strategic goal.This paper brings valuable insights into the problem of attitude to behaviour gap for sustainable business behaviour and, with the discussed improvements, itlays out a sound base for further research of this important topic.Double degree.

Keywords

Construal level theory, attitude to behaviour gap, strategic management

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 10. 5. 2017

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: Ing. Lenka Platilová Vorlíčková

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Economics and Management

Master programme / field:
Economics and Management / Economics and Management