Systemic engagement: How and why companies become agents of positive change for social-ecological resilience, Professor Ralph Hamann

 Abstract

The management literature has given relatively little attention to companies’ embeddedness in social-ecological systems and the potential for companies to have positive environmental impacts. Based on two in-depth case studies of innovative corporate initiatives in South Africa, we define “systemic engagement” as strategically committed efforts to enhance social-ecological resilience, and we identify six dimensions and 15 elements that characterise systemic engagement as a distinct category of environmental responsiveness. Firms’ pre-existing strategic commitments to geographically specific resources, such as suppliers or customers, motivate and facilitate such engagement because they make the case study companies vulnerable to social-ecological risks and also give them influence and ecological sensemaking capabilities. A further motivating factor is limited statehood, which gives rise to the strategic dilemma of either replacing or engaging the state.


Bio: Professor Ralph Hamann is Professor and Research Director at the UCT Graduate School of Business, and he holds a Research Chair at UCT's African Climate and Development Initiative.His research group focuses on organisational innovation and intermediation in social-ecological systems. The basic question: Why and how do organisations – especially businesses – respond to complex social and environmental problems, such as climate change and food insecurity? Among his additional roles, he is Academic Director of the Network for Business Sustainability: South Africa; Chair of the Southern Africa Food Lab; and Director of the Cape Town Partnership. Much of his tertiary training was in environmental science at UCT, and he has a PhD on corporate responsibility in the South African mining sector from the University of East Anglia.