Multiple case study design

The research follows a multiple case study design; one case is embedded, including both the holding company and subsidiaries. As characteristic of an embedded case study, multiple levels of analysis were employed (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2014). One level of analysis was at the level of entity and comparison between entities. The other level of analysis was at the level of

Quantitative

The unit of analysis was the firm, since the focus of the study was corporate sustainability.

Case study research is useful when boundaries between phenomenon and context are

indistinct, and thus it is preferable to study the phenomenon within its context (Yin, 2014). The complexity paradigm, as well as the corporate sustainability focus, meant that it was important to consider the firm as embedded in multiple containing systems, since interaction between and across multiple levels of system is central to corporate sustainability (Baets & Oldenboom, 2009; Chapman, 2016; Espinosa & Walker, 2011; Peter & Swilling, 2014; Wells, 2013). It was important that the research design emphasised contextuality. The ability of case study

methodology to deliver contextual knowledge is a key advantage (Flyvbjerg, 2006; Stake, 2006;

Yin, 2014), whereas:

“Great distance to the object of study and lack of feedback easily lead to a stultified learning process, which in research can lead to ritual academic blind alleys, where the effect and usefulness of research becomes unclear and untested. As a research method, the case study can be an effective remedy against this tendency” (Flyvbjerg, 2006, p. 6).

The contextuality of knowledge is important when studying complex systems which are

dynamical in nature and display ontological plurality, therefore needing contextual descriptions:

“The remarkable feature is that when we move from equilibrium to far-from equilibrium conditions, we move away from the repetitive and the universal to the specific and the unique” (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984).

The urgency of addressing corporate sustainability and climate change as super-wicked problems (Mertens, 2015) necessitates an instrumentalist agenda in research. Another

advantage of a case study approach is that it allows for contextually relevant research outputs that can assist in enhancing the corporate sustainability initiatives of the cases and similar institutions (Yin, 2014). Case studies have been widely criticised for a lack of generalisability (Flyvbjerg, 2006) - single case studies “involve the error of misplaced precision” and lack a means of comparing the data results in the studies, having “such a total absence of control as to be of almost no scientific value” (Campbell & Stanley, 1963, p. 6).³ However, the ontological

status of social phenomena and complexities associated with socio-economic and

environmental phenomena (Baets & Oldenboom, 2009; Chapman, 2013; Wells, 2013) make rich, context-specific knowledge important (Chapman, 2016; Geertz, 1973). Analytic

generalisation theory can be used to generalise from case studies (Eisenhardt, 1989; Scapens, 1992; Stake, 2006; Yin, 2014).

A multiple case study design was selected to facilitate a comparison between the process of emergence across two organisations, and between an organisation and its subsidiary. This served to explicate key processes, conditions and patterns of coherence (i) within each

organisational setting and (ii) from interactions between a firm and its subsidiaries. Stake (2006) recommends that a minimum of four cases are selected to ensure sufficient interactivity

between programmes and situations when conducting multiple-case study research. This was achieved through comparisons between two local cases together with comparisons between three international cases.

Firm selection

The firms were selected using a paradigmatic case sampling method, a form of purposive sampling (Palys, 2008) where a case is selected as an exemplar of a particular class of phenomenon. The sampling process was commenced in South Africa and then extended to Namibia. Since the research design required a survey to be rolled out across the entire population of managers, the study required a substantial commitment of time, which made gaining access challenging. By selecting multiple cases and an embedded case the researcher was able to both compare multiple firms and explore how emergent processes differed across parent company and subsidiary.

A large Namibian financial services group, with subsidiaries in Botswana and Zambia, was selected due to having actively introduced organisational development initiatives explicitly based on a complexity paradigm⁴. These initiatives were sponsored at the highest level in the organisation and had been implemented prior to the research being conducted. The

4 Complexity-based organisational development initiatives were based on the work of Laloux (2014). This was characterised as an exemplar due to the complexity approach adopted and explicit application of these methods to the area of corporate sustainability.

complexity initiative had resulted in the integration of sustainability into the business strategy and in a comprehensive culture change initiative with participation across the business. This provided an excellent context in which to study emergence in corporate sustainability.

Another firm selected is a subsidiary of a South African financial services group with a regional footprint, which is considered an exemplar for corporate sustainability, as evidenced by

multiple sustainability awards and achievements, as well as featuring in case studies in international publications⁵. It has a history in South Africa of progressive corporate

responsibility initiatives spanning several decades. Attempts to gain research access to the holding company were unsuccessful, limiting the research to the group’s Namibian subsidiary.

It was of interest to consider the subsidiary of a group which is widely recognised for sustainability practices in South Africa.

The Namibian holding company was studied at the levels of holding company and subsidiary, whilst the subsidiary of the South African financial services organisation was only studied at the level of the subsidiary. This provided the opportunity for the perspectives of both the holding company and subsidiary to be considered in the research. The study thus has the features of both an embedded case and multiple case design.

Research ethics

The research design and implementation were guided by the University of Cape Town Commerce Faculty Ethics in Research Policy. This involved ethical permissions from each organisation, as well as employees participating in the quantitative and qualitative data collection. Organisational permission was negotiated through an executive sponsor at each firm, as recommended by Creswell and Plato Clark (2010), and non-disclosure agreements to protect the anonymity of data and to ensure that trade secrets and sensitive commercial information were protected were signed by the researcher. Participants in both the quantitative and qualitative strands of the research received advance written communication in which the

5 To protect the anonymity of the organisation, the publications are not cited. In 2017, the Group, which is headquartered in South Africa, was included in the FTSE4Good Index and Dow Jones World Sustainability Index and achieved an “A” for performance on the South

background to the research, the expectations from participants and the ethical considerations were outlined. Consent for participation was obtained electronically in the online survey, and a letter of consent was signed by each interviewee. Anonymity of data was assured through rigorous research protocols pertaining to secure handling and disposal of research data.

Approvals for the research protocol were given by the Commerce Faculty in Research Committee of the University of Cape Town on the 4^th of April 2016.