27/08/2026
Varmt välkommen på disputation i företagsekonomi då Kristin Caravelli-Svärd lägger fram sin avhandling "UN/SUSTAINABILITY - Why Business Sustainability Efforts are Systemically Insufficient". 11 september, 2026 kl. 13:00 i Erlandersalen (11D227)
Despite decades of growing attention to sustainability, business efforts remain systemically insufficient in addressing ecological degradation and social harm. This thesis asks why. Rather than treating sustainability as an ambiguous ideal, attention is shifted to unsustainability as what can be observed and explained: the ongoing reproduction of harmful systemic outcomes. Companies are understood as embedded in wider economic, institutional, social, and biophysical systems rather than as isolated actors.
Drawing on four studies in sustainable business model research and sustainable service research, the thesis develops a relational conceptualization of unsustainability from a company perspective. On this basis, it identifies five systemic mechanisms that generate and reproduce unsustainability: unsustainable paradigm, multipolar traps, destructive competition, narrow boundary perspectives, and information and feedback gaps.
Using systems thinking from a company perspective, the thesis explains why sustainability efforts may remain insufficient even when they are well intended. It offers a framework for understanding how company activity relates to wider system conditions and what must be addressed for more meaningful change to occur.
Länk till avhandlingen:
https://kau.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A2089235&dswid=7613
