Shazia Karmali
University of Victoria
Shazia Karmali is a third year PhD Candidate at the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria, in Victoria British Columbia, Canada. Her research interests include social issues in management and ecological sustainability, with a particular interest in tensions between economic and social and/or environmental outcomes.
Her research has been published in Advances in Health Care Management and she has presented her work at the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada Conference in Montreal, Quebec where she won Best Paper in her division, the Western Academy of Management Conference in San Diego California, and most recently at the European Group for Organization Studies in Helsinki, Finland.
Ecological sustainability and organizations: A paradox perspective
At the core of research on organization and the natural environment (ONE) is tension. How tension is conceptualized, and whether competing alternatives are viewed as separate or interrelated, has profound implications for theory and practice. Drawing on paradox literature, especially the seminal work by Smith and Lewis (2011), we examine how ONE research has conceptualized tensions. We categorize dominant win-win approaches as dialectic, trade-off and instrumental stakeholder theory approaches as dilemmas, but find little evidence of paradox perspectives. We examine adaptive and maladaptive responses to tensions, and suggest that further research promises novel insights for engaging with tensions within ONE. Utilizing a paradox perspective opens avenues for sustainability research to bring opposing tendencies into close proximity, challenge traditional boundaries, and question the dichotomous separation between economic and ecological sustainability. Resulting immersion in opposing forces requires that academics and practitioners reexamine where conceptual and ultimately management and policy boundaries are drawn.