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A Strategic Approach to Social Sustainability - Part 2: A
Principle-based Definition
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Authors:
Merlina Missimer*
Academic Degree: PhD.
Affilitation: Blekinge Institute of Technology
Address: Department of Strategic Sustainable Development, Blekinge Institute of
Technology, 371 79 Karlskrona, SWEDEN.
Phone: +46 455-38 56 80, Fax: +46 455-38 55 07, Email: merlina.missimer@bth.se
Karl-Henrik Robèrt
Academic Degree: Professor
Affilitation: same as above
Address: Same as above
Phone: +46 708-55 94 00, Fax: +46 455-38 55 07, Email: karl-henrik.robert@bth.se
Göran Broman
Academic Degree: Professor
Affilitation: same as above
Address: Same as above
Phone: +46 455-38 55 04, Fax: +46 455-38 55 07, Email: goran.broman@bth.se
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* Corresponding author
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A Strategic Approach to Social Sustainability -
Part 2: A Principle-based Definition
Merlina Missimer
PhD, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden.
mis@bth.se, Corresponding author
Karl-Henrik Robèrt
Professor, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
khr@bth.se
Göran Broman
Professor, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
gbr@bth.se
ABSTRACT
The vast and growing array of concepts, methods and tools in the sustainability field
imply a need for a structuring and coordinating framework, including a unifying and
operational definition of sustainability. One attempt at such framework began over 25
years ago and is now widely known as the Framework for Strategic Sustainable
Development. However, as with the larger sustainability field, the social dimension of
this framework has been found to not be sufficiently science-based and operational
and thus in need of further development. In this two-part series an attempt at a
science-based, operational definition of social sustainability is presented. In part 1 a
systems-based approach to the social system was presented, based on extensive
literature studies as well as conceptual modelling sessions using the Framework for
Strategic Sustainable Development as the guiding structure. The focus of that study
was on the essential aspects of the social system that need to be sustained, namely
trust, common meaning, diversity, capacity for learning and capacity for self-
organization. The aim of this second paper is to identify and present overriding
mechanisms by which these aspects of the social system can be degraded, thereby
finding exclusion criteria for re-design for sustainability. Further literature studies,
conceptual modelling sessions and initial testing of this prototype with partners in
academia, business and NGOs were performed. Based on the understanding of the
essential aspects of the social system and the identified overriding mechanisms of
degradation of these, a hypothesis for a definition of social sustainability by basic
principles is presented. The proposed principles are that in a socially sustainable
society, people are not subject to structural obstacles to: (1) health, (2) influence, (3)
competence, (4) impartiality and (5) meaning-making. Overall, the two papers aim to
provide a hypothesis for a definition of social sustainability, which is general enough
to be applied irrespective of spatial and temporal constraints, but concrete enough to
guide decision-making and monitoring. It is also a further development of the social
dimension of the FSSD, which practitioners and researchers have requested for some
time and can act as a support towards better integration of social sustainability in
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many other fields, e.g., sustainable product innovation, sustainable supply chain
management, sustainable transport system development, and others.!
Keywords: strategic sustainable development; social sustainability; social system;
systems thinking; sustainability principles.
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1. Introduction
Sustainable development (SD) has been a prominent part of the global political
discussion for almost 30 years (World Commission on Environment and
Development, 1987; United Nations, 2015). Today, there is a vast amount of
definitions, terms, approaches, concepts, methods and tools. For overviews, see the
papers by Hopwood et el. (2005), Glavik and Lukman (2007), Lozano (2008), Ben-
Eli (2012), Chasin (2014), and Amini and Bienstock (2014). Yet, the field is still
often criticized for its vagueness (e.g., Jacobs 1999, McKenzie 2004, Ben-Eli 2012)
and a clearer approach has been requested (Huesemann 2001, Robèrt et al. 2002,
Johnston et al. 2007, Marsden et al. 2010).
Paper 1 (Missimer et al., in this issue) of this two-part series started out with
presenting the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) as a useful
approach to dealing with this challenge. Its usefulness is due to:
o The systems approach, which helps prevent sub-optimization, where a solution
to one issue may otherwise cause other issues somewhere else or later on in
time.
o Its scientific basis, which utilizes the most relevant, cross-culturally reliable
and up-to-date knowledge to understand systems and make decisions.
o Its principle-based definition of success, which allows for a clear definition of
the goal of sustainability that is not just based on current trends, can be agreed
upon even by large groups of people and still be supplemented with more
context-specific goals.
o The sustainability principles being phrased as constraints for re-design, thus
allowing for creativity and innovation for the systematic re-design which our
human structures need; and
o The ability of the framework to strategically make use of supplementary
support for sustainable development when necessary. Once the FSSD has been
used to identify the big-picture gap to sustainability, and to develop an
overriding strategy to bridge the gap, rational choices of more specific
methods and tools for the development of indicators, monitoring, decision
support, cross-sector community building, and communication can be made. !
However, it has also been acknowledged that the social dimension of the FSSD needs
further development (Missimer et al., 2010; Missimer 2013). This underdevelopment
of the social dimension of sustainability is also prevalent in the larger field of
sustainability (Littig and Griessler 2005, Kunz 2006, Colantonio et al. 2009, Cuthill
2010, Dempsey et al. 2011).
Missimer et al. (in this issue) built on this assessment of the FSSD and used
conceptual modelling, i.e., modelling of concepts found in literature using the
structure of the FSSD as a lens. More specifically, this means that extensive literature
reviews were conducted, key concepts distilled and then the five levels of the FSSD
were used to understand the relationships of these key concepts from a strategic
sustainable development perspective. This approach allows the systems perspective
on planning to evolve from a dynamic and iterative dialogue between the system
level, which describes the system of study, and the success level, which describes the
goal or purpose in the system. It is this iterative ‘ping-pong’ between levels that was
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the base of the conceptual modelling. Paper 1 presented the final version of multiple
iterations of this dialogue at the systems level and presented the following aspects of
the social system as essential to sustain (they cannot be systematically degraded) from
a social sustainability point of view: trust, common meaning, diversity, capacity for
learning and capacity for self-organization. The aim of this second paper is to
identify and present overriding mechanisms by which these aspects of the social
system can be degraded, and to formulate operational sustainability principles as
exclusion criteria for redesign of society towards social sustainability.
1.1. Defining Sustainability
It should be pointed out that the whole process of attempting an operational definition
of sustainability starts out from a normative stance (a value statement). The
Brundtland definition of sustainability - “… development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) is in this paper
taken as a basis for such a normative stance. Wanting this to happen cannot be
derived from scientific knowledge or proven right or wrong by scientific methods.
That this is at all desirable is a normative stance that each person needs to decide for
herself/himself to embrace or not.
Once this normative stance is accepted, scientific knowledge and scientific methods
can be used to draw conclusions: “if this is what we want, on what conditions can it
be achieved?” Given that humans are dependent on the ecological and the social
system to meet our needs, what are the essential aspects of the ecological and social
systems that need to be sustained (or restored) in order to not systematically
undermine the capacity of people to meet their own needs, now and in the future.
And, what are the overriding mechanisms by which these essential aspects can be
degraded?
Sustainability is thus about the elimination of mechanisms of systematic degradation
of essential aspects of both the ecological and the social system. Since thresholds in
complex adaptive systems are difficult to identify, it makes sense to define
sustainability this way - to not have a basic design and operation of society that
implies a systematic deviation from the above-mentioned desirable state. This
provides boundary conditions for redesign of our currently unsustainable basic design
and operation of society, as a frame for any vision without being prescriptive at the
level of detail, the scenario level, within the boundary conditions. Defining
sustainability through such basic boundary conditions allows for and can even
stimulate innovation.
1.2. Is a Single Definition Appropriate?
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A common argument as regards especially social sustainability is that vagueness and
a pluralism of definitions are appropriate and preferable over a single definition,
because of the complexity of the topic and that therefore a common definition is
impossible or undesirable (McKenzie 2005, Kunz 2006, Dempsey et al. 2011,
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Boström 2012). Proponents of this stance (e.g., Lehtonen 2004, 211) argue that
“different geographical and temporal scales as well as situational contexts require
their own frameworks, which do not necessarily provide a coherent picture, but a
mosaic of partly contradicting views of reality”. They propose that sustainability can
only be defined in a local context through participatory processes, with engagement
from all stakeholders (Davidson 2009, Dempsey et al. 2011).
The arguments can be challenged on several grounds. Jacobs’ (1999) criticism, that
vagueness allows unsustainable action to be couched and presented as sustainable,
holds also for social sustainability. Another challenge comes up with context-specific
definitions. Acknowledging that in many ways humanity has become a global
network, if actions in one area of the world can have large effects in areas far away
from the location of action, are then many context-dependent definitions created by
smaller communities enough to ensure that larger sustainability problem are not
created somewhere else?
Furthermore, similar arguments were used to discourage attempts to find a definition
of ecological sustainability to support structuring of analyses and planning. Counter to
these arguments, the existing definition of ecological sustainability of the FSSD has
shown to be operational at any scale, irrespective of the specifics of activities in
different organizations and regions (e.g. Broman and Robèrt, in this issue).
The sustainability principles of the FSSD are designed to be generally applicable and
at the same time concrete enough to guide analyses, planning, innovation and
selection, design and a coordinated use of supplementary concepts, methods and
tools. The approach to define success in a complex system in this way, i.e., by basic
principles or ‘boundary conditions for redesign’, effectively addresses also the
conservative bias that is sometimes leveled at the social sustainability field (e.g
Marcuse 1998). As the state of sustainability is defined by principles rather than the
specifics of a scenario, it is not in fact a conservative state to maintain a certain
configuration; nor does it exclude a participatory approach to defining what an
organization or a community wants together. Well thought-through boundary
conditions, applied in a participatory manner, allow and encourage groups,
organizations and communities to create visions together and cooperate in non-
prescriptive manners to work towards the principle-framed visions. As long as visions
(maybe described as scenarios) remain within principled sustainability boundaries, a
participatory approach is possible and can be very useful. In fact, processes to co-
create visions within boundary conditions, and to plan ahead towards such visions,
should also contain an openness to develop and sharpen the boundary conditions
based on data from real-life learning experiences. This is indeed the way the phrasing
of all the sustainability principles of the FSSD have evolved, through many iterations,
as evident from many peer-reviewed scientific publications.
Others also advocate against context-specific definitions. Hodge and Hardi (1997, 10)
argue that a clear conceptual framework is vital for assessment purposes as it helps to
identify relevant indicators that can be adjusted to a specific context if needed.
Partridge (2005, 4) summarizes
“It is not necessarily useful to only think of sustainability as context-
dependent. While it is useful to apply the idea to a particular object
(like forestry, fishing or human wellbeing for example), I want to
suggest that the real potential of sustainability as an idea is as an
integrating framework – a means for considering the relationships
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between different dimensions, rather than just assessing the
sustainability or otherwise of a single element.”
Finally, the fact that a complex goal in a complex system may be difficult to derive,
e.g., defining sustainability in the social system, is not a satisfactory rational for not
trying. Even a failure in this regard, would produce some learning. It is based on these
arguments that the research set out to derive a set of social sustainability principles.
2. Methods
The two tandem papers of this study aim to provide a prototype of a new approach to
social sustainability within the FSSD. As described in Paper 1, the methods employed
were mostly literature studies and conceptual modelling (Robinson 2006, Brooks
2007, Kotiadis and Robinson 2008, Jaccard and Jacoby 2010) using the FSSD as a
structuring lens. Specific focus was on the system and success level of the FSSD and
the overall research was guided by the idea to allow the systems perspective on
planning to evolve from a dynamic and iterative dialogue between these two levels of
the FSSD. It is this iterative ‘ping-pong’ between levels that was the base of the
conceptual modelling.
As mentioned, a unique aspect of the FSSD is that any definition of success is
required to be within basic sustainability principles. The principles for ecological
sustainability were derived by asking the following question: by what overriding
mechanisms, upstream at the level of first approximation in chains of causality, do
human activities set off the myriad of downstream impacts that will destroy the
ecological system? Literature studies provided empirical knowledge of the
functioning of the ecosystem and the sustainability challenge in this regard (level 1 of
the FSSD). This knowledge together with conceptual modelling sessions with groups
of experts lead to a first attempt to come up with overriding mechanisms of
degradation that would explain ecological unsustainability. A myriad of downstream
impacts were clustered in a few upstream first-order mechanisms. Thereafter, a “not”
was inserted for each mechanism to form first-order sustainability principles,
designed as exclusion criteria for redesign. Next the generality of this attempted
principled definition of ecological sustainability was tested on more empirical data of
the ecosystem and the sustainability challenge related to it. Also the utility and
usability of the definition were tested in real-life application of the FSSD with various
organizations. All of this gave rise to a new and more refined definition, which was
tested again, and so on. For a further description of the FSSD and its application, see
Broman and Robert (in this issue).
It was found, during the learning process, that to be functional within the FSSD, the
set of basic principles for sustainability must have the following characteristics (e.g.
Ny, 2009)
• Necessary for sustainability, i.e., to avoid imposing unnecessary requirements and
to avoid confusion over elements that may be debatable.
• Sufficient for sustainability, i.e., the principles taken together should cover all
relevant aspects.
• General, i.e., people from various societal sectors and scientific disciplines should
be able to understand and use them.
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• Concrete, i.e., capable of guiding problem solving and innovation.
• Non-overlapping, i.e., mutually exclusive to facilitate comprehension and
monitoring.!
The aim for the derivation of the social sustainability principles was to follow a
similar approach.
2.1 Literature Review
After the initial literature review described in Paper 1, it became obvious that the
dynamics of trust needed to be better understood. This term returned frequently, and it
was obvious that it is key for healthy social systems. Key literature in the field was
surveyed (e.g., Luhmann 1979, Giddens 1984, Baier 1986 , Luhmann 1988, Coleman
1990, Giddens 1990, Giddens 1991, Putnam 1993, Fukuyama 1995 , Mayer et al.
1995, Kramer and Tyler 1996, Miztal 1996, Hollis 1998, Sztompka 1999, Warren
1999, Gambetta 2000, Luhmann 2000, Putnam 2000, Cook 2001, Lahno 2001 ,
Fukuyama 2002, Hardin 2002, Nyquist Potter 2002, Uslaner 2002, Caldwell and
Clapham 2003, Ostrom et al. 2003, Rothstein 2005, Tilly 2005, McLeod 2006,
Castelfranchi and Falcone 2010) and the vast amount of literature from different
disciplines that discuss the benefits of trust underscored the importance of this
element. This study led to the conclusion that the topic of focus for sustaining trust
should be trustworthiness (see the reasoning in, e.g., Meijboom 2008). This, in turn,
led to a search for theories of trustworthiness, specifically the kind of theories that do
not only discuss trustworthiness at a general level, but provide empirical evidence for
a list of elements of trustworthiness. The elements were especially important for the
understanding and subsequent modelling of mechanisms of destruction of trust. The
literature search for theories of trustworthiness was conducted using google scholar
with the search term “allintitle: trustworthiness”. Articles with seemingly relevant
titles (e.g. trustworthiness in the sense of validity of results was excluded) were
skimmed to look for theoretical constructs of trustworthiness. If no theoretical
construct was presented as a base for the article, the article was excluded. Once a
construct was mentioned more than 3 times it was more deeply investigated. This
process led to three theories chosen for their wide use and empirical support presented
in the results section (see section 3.1.2 -3.1.4).
This theoretical understanding led to a first round of modelling to derive a first set of
social sustainability principles focusing on the erosion of trust. This first set was then
checked against the other essential elements identified in paper 1 - common meaning,
diversity, capacity for learning and capacity for self-organization and whether the
attempted principles also covered the mechanisms of destruction for those elements
(which required further literature review, e.g. to understand the nuances of ‘a sense of
meaning’). Finally, the set of candidate principles was checked against the five
criteria which boundary conditions need to adhere to to be useful for backcasting and
redesign for sustainability, i.e., necessary, sufficient, general, concrete and non-
overlapping (see above).
2.2 Conceptual Modelling
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The conceptual modelling took place in numerous workshops with the authors of this
paper. In addition, the modelling was expanded and improved via a dozen workshops
with a diverse and large group of participants from different sectors and disciplines –
natural scientists from different disciplines, social scientists from different disciplines,
managers in business and municipalities as well as politicians. The main objective
was to find and test generic mechanisms and principles, beyond the differences in
norms and values that the various groups bring. The different backgrounds were
required to make sure that the terms and aspects from literature, modelled along the
FSSD structure, were understood across disciplines and perceived as generic or basic.
This approach follows from the long-term objective of FSSD-informed work: to co-
create, across sectors and disciplines, strategic transitions to towards sustainability.
After the core group came up with a candidate set and felt ready for testing the
hypothesis, the group was widened to the next circle. The researchers in the core
group wanted to know if the phrasing was understood as intended by other researchers
from other disciplines. Criticism and new ideas and references were collected, which
led to more modelling and an adjusted hypothesis, again assessed by the above five
criteria. Then the next circle was addressed. The final circle for testing included
people from business, municipalities and other practitioners. The aim was to see how
the proposed principles were understood by them, whether the proposed principles
triggered ideas that were felt to be helpful to identify current problems as well as
future solutions from a strategic sustainability perspective in the respective
organizations, i.e., whether the principles work as intended, and whether the
practitioners agreed that the principles are ‘necessary’, ‘sufficient’, ‘general’,
‘concrete’ and ‘non-overlapping’
This process model: (i) having a core team understanding exactly what the objective
is, i.e., designing a framework for strategic sustainable development that is generic
across disciplines, sectors, norms and values, yet detailed enough to be operational,
(ii) reaching out to get criticism from larger and larger groups to test the generic
qualities of the hypotheses, but (iii) without losing track of the original idea of the
framework, was also used in the consensus work in earlier iterations of the FSSD. It
was also applied for consensus work regarding various specific topics, such as energy,
agriculture, etc. See Robèrt (2002) for more elaboration on this.
Throughout this process another modelling process took place; namely the kind of
modelling where the researchers would take contemporary social issues and test
whether they could be clustered under the derived mechanisms of destruction. In this
way, unemployment, e.g., could be understood as a combination of an obstacle to
health, meaning the lack of basic economic means to take care of oneself, and an
obstacle to meaning-making, meaning the individual lost their role and with it their
sense of place in the world. This kind of modelling served to make sure that the
mechanisms of destruction did really cover contemporary social sustainability issues.
2.3 Circles of Participants
The hypothesis derived from literature studies resulted in workshops, moving from
the core to the periphery of the widening circles of colleagues, peers and experts. A)
The core group was constituted by the authors of this paper. B) The next circle
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included colleagues in the sustainability group at Blekinge Institute of Technology
(BTH) comprised of researchers with backgrounds in business administration,
anthropology, product development, etc., and students from the Master´s in Strategic
Leadership towards Sustainability with backgrounds from a wide array of disciplines.
C) The next circle included external scholars across various disciplines, e.g. Political
Science (Scholars from the Quality of Government Institute at Gothenburg
University), Business, Management and Organizational Dynamics (Scholars from
Acadia University in Nova Scotia and the University of Pennsylvania), Design
(Scholars from the Strategic Innovation Lab at the Ontario School of Arts and
Design), Computer Science (Scholars from Otago Polytechnic's College of Enterprise
and Development as well as the University of Toronto), Modelling (Scholars from
Lund University), Green Chemistry (Scholars from Carnegie Mellon University and
Brunel University). D) The outermost circle included people from municipalities and
other public organizations, e.g., representatives from the Municipality of Karlskrona,
Landstinget Blekinge, Stockholm Läns Landsting, from various businesses including
Aura Light International, Max Hamburgerrestauranger, Scandic Hotels, Sleep Well,
The Human Element, Stockholms Hamnar, Riksbyggen, Skanska, Vasakronan and
other practitioners, e.g., practitioners from The Natural Step international network.
The details of the methodology for the entire research project, which these papers are
a part of, can be found in Missimer 2015.
3. Results
As described in the methods section, the essential elements identified in paper 1 (trust,
common meaning, diversity, capacity for learning and capacity for self-organization)
were taken one by one and explored more deeply to understand and derive mechanism
of destructions for these. The vast literature on trust made it a good candidate to start
with in the modelling process before cross-checking against the other essential
aspects. This is also the order in which it is presented in this section.
As pointed out, describing an iterative process in a linear fashion of a paper can be
challenging. Due to this, it is sometimes necessary to also discuss the reasoning for a
particular result in this section.
3.1 Principles for Social Sustainability derived from Trust
Meijboom (2008, 91) defines trust as an
“attitude towards (collective) humans that enables an agent to cope
with situations of uncertainty and lack of control, by formulating a
positive expectation towards another agent, based on the assessment
of the trustworthiness of the trusted agent”. He adds (ibid, 28) that
“trust includes a sincere belief about the trustworthiness of the trusted
agent that is informed by the available evidence. However, trust is
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more than cognitive, more than a mental conviction based on the
available evidence. It further includes an emotional component”.
For Lewis and Weigert (1985) trust is characterized by a “cognitive ‘leap’ beyond the
expectations that reason and experience alone would warrant – they simply serve as
the platform from which the leap is made” (971).1 Mayer et al. (1995) incorporate the
emotional component by adding a vulnerability component defining trust as the
willingness of a trustor to be vulnerable to the actions of a trustee based on the
expectation that the trustee will perform a particular action. They argue that “making
oneself vulnerable is taking risk. Trust is not taking risk per se, but rather it is a
willingness to take risk” (Mayer et al. 1995, 712). Thus, trust is defined as an attitude
that enables an agent to cope with situations of uncertainty and lack of control, by
making themselves vulnerable based on positive expectations towards another agent,
derived from the assessment of the trustworthiness of the trusted agent. Bews and
Martins (2002, 14) describe trust as a dynamic phenomenon that unfolds over two
stages. The first stage depends on ‘pre-trust’ conditions; the second depends on the
perception of trustworthiness of the person to be trusted. This second part continues
throughout the length of the relationship, while the first is of shorter duration.
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3.1.1. Trust Necessitates Trustworthiness
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As trust has a strong emotional component and involves a cognitive leap it is not
something that can be controlled or forced, but must rather be invited and earned.
This explains the strong focus on trustworthiness in the definitions above. Meijboom
et al. (2006) discuss this in relation to consumer trust:
“You cannot make others trust you. This, however, does not imply that
[….] trust is an unmanageable problem. It shows that we had better
approach the issue from the question of why a consumer would trust
someone else. If we do so, we notice that trust raises the question
whether the other person is worth being trusted. This emphasizes that
lack of trust is a problem of the one who wants to be trusted rather than
of the trustor (432).”
Many authors agree with this statement and claim that the essential factor in creating
trust is actually trustworthiness (Hardin 1996, Tullberg 2008).
The understanding of the importance of trustworthiness lead to search for theories of
trustworthiness as elaborated in the methods section, the results of which are
presented below.
3.1.2. Components of Trustworthiness
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According to!Mayer et al. (1995), trustworthiness is made up of three components:
Ability/Competence: Ability is the group of skills, competencies, and characteristics
that enable a party to have influence within some specific domain.
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1 For support on the emotional component also see (Jones 1996; Lahno, 2001). !
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Motivation of Benevolence: A Motivation of Benevolence is the extent to which a
trustee is believed to want to do good to the trustor.
Integrity: Integrity is the consistency in the other party in adhering to espoused
values and the acceptability of these values (Mayer and Norman 2004).
These three components have since been validated empirically (e.g., Schoorman et al.
1996, Engelbrecht and Cloete 2000, Bews and Martin 2002, Mayer and Gavin 2005,
Colquitt et al. 2007) and adopted in subsequent models (McKnight et al. 1998; also
see Colquitt et al. 2007). Finally, they have been found to be the most recurrent
factors in trustworthiness studies (Roy and Shekhar 2010).
3.1.3. Trusting Teams - Fundamental Interpersonal Relations
Orientation
Another theory of inter-personal trust is the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations
Orientation (FIRO) (Schutz 1958, 1992, 1994), which has a long track-record of being
practically used in high-performance teams, e.g., squad teams in the army and alike.
According to FIRO, three dimensions of reciprocal interpersonal relations are
necessary and sufficient to explain well-functioning teams based on trust and
trustworthiness, namely if each group member feels that he/she is…
1. Being Significant … opposed to feeling unimportant, meaningless, and of no
value.
2. Being Competent… opposed to feeling inept and unable to cope.
3. Being Liked…opposed to feeling unappreciated.
…the level of trust is high and the group functions well in tough situations.
3.1.4. Creating Trust through Trustworthy Institutions
The above components of trust and trustworthiness are discussed in connection to
inter-personal trust. Rothstein (2005) as well as Wollebaeck and Selle (2008) believe
that, at a societal level, institutional trust is by far the most important predictor of
social (generalized) trust. Rothstein (2005) argues that because institutions design the
rules and incentives, which govern behaviour at the individual level, it is the
institutional design that is the leverage point for fostering trust or mistrust within a
society. He argues that specifically (i) effective and (ii) impartial governmental
institutions that implement public policy lead to trust-generation in citizens.
The role of public institutions is so important because they are responsible for the
governance of the entire system and they are key in creating social norms around
interaction. Rothstein and Stolle (2008, 444) explain that “states, for example, enable
the establishment of reliable contracts between citizens in that they provide
information and monitor legislation about contracts, and enforce rights and rules that
sanction lawbreakers, protect minorities and actively support the integration and
participation of citizens”. Institutions fall as key actors at level 1 of the FSSD.
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However, their behavior can support or not support compliance with the sustainability
principles at level 2.
Having explored trust and trustworthiness at various scales of social systems and
presented them briefly, the next section moves on to attempt a first set of social
sustainability principles.
3.1.5. Deriving Principles
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As a reminder, for sustainability principles to work in the FSSD, they need to be
necessary, sufficient, general, concrete and non-overlapping. They should also be
phrased as exclusion criteria for re-design. The latter implies that they represent basic
upstream mechanisms of destruction, in this case basic upstream mechanisms to
destroy the essential aspects of the social system, equipped with a “not”.!
As one of the criteria for the principles is being ‘general’ (to be applicable in any
arena, at any scale, by any member in a team and all stakeholders, regardless of field
of expertise, to allow for cross-disciplinary and cross-sector collaboration) some
abstraction was needed to fit this requirement. Both FIRO and Mayer et al.´s
components for trusting groups and trustworthiness presented above, operate at an
interpersonal, not a global, social level. These were therefore extrapolated to a higher
level without the essence being lost, as follows.
For FIRO, e.g., one can note that an individual cannot expect to be seen as
‘significant’, ‘competent’ and ‘liked’ in person by people who do not know anything
about the individual. However, one can have the general stance that every human
being ought to be respected as a person. The concrete expression of that would be to
respect the right of each individual to uphold health, i.e., to avoid injury and illness
(physically, mentally and emotionally) in the short and long term.
Being ‘significant’ is also a doubtful expression in the larger social context; you
cannot say about people you do not know anything about that they are significant.
But you can claim their right to have an impact in this context. The best translation to
the larger social system might then be influence, which is a more generic term
regardless of scale of the social system.
The term competence seems to be applicable to both the smaller and the larger system
and therefore does not need to be changed.
A similar abstraction can be done for Mayer et al.´s principles. While competence can
remain, ‘benevolence’ might be hard to assess at a scale larger than social systems
where people know each other. Benevolence at a higher level, similarly to ‘being
liked’, might be expressed as respecting the right of each individual to uphold health.
‘Integrity’ in the Mayer et al. meaning (consistency based on espoused and acceptable
values) sticks out a bit. For one, the aspect of consistency falls at the strategic
guidelines level of the FSSD. However, the aspect of acceptable values remains. This
will be returned to below.
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14
Trustworthy institutions as a mechanism to create trusting social systems are
described as effective (meaning competent at achieving their goals) and impartial
(Rothstein 2005). This mirrors the aspect of competence mentioned before and adds
the aspect of impartiality.
This is also supported by research around equality and trust. Wilkinson and Pickett
(2009) show that trust is higher in more equal societies2. Although equality and
impartiality are not equivalent, this supports the importance of impartiality as a design
principle as partiality is a way to create high levels of inequality.
In summary, the reasoning on trust leads to a first hypothesis for a definition of social
sustainability:
In a socially sustainable society, people are not subject to structural
obstacles to …
SSP 1. …health.
(This means that people are not exposed to social conditions that
systematically undermine their possibilities to avoid injury and
illness; physically, mentally or emotionally, e.g., dangerous working
conditions or insufficient wages.)
SSP 2. …influence.
(This means that people are not systematically hindered from
participating in shaping the social systems they are part of, e.g., by
suppression of free speech or neglect of opinions.)
SSP 3. …competence.
(This means that people are not systematically hindered from
learning and developing competence individually and together, e.g.,
by obstacles for education or insufficient possibilities for personal
development.)
SSP 4. …impartiality.
(This means that people are not systematically exposed to partial
treatment, e.g., by discrimination or unfair selection to job positions.)
Structural obstacles describe social constructions - political, economic and cultural -
which are firmly established in society, upheld by those with power (political,
economic or other forms), and which are, due to a variety of dependencies, difficult to
overcome or avoid by the people exposed to them.
3.2. Principles for Social Sustainability derived from the Other Essential
Aspects
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2 Measured by income equality.
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15
Paper 1 also identified common meaning, diversity, capacity for learning and capacity
for self-organization as essential aspects to sustain in the social system. The question
is now whether the above-proposed principles are sufficient also as regards these
aspects.
3.2.1. Common Meaning
As pointed out in paper 1, humans are a meaning-making species and therefore by
default create a sense of meaning. A sense of meaning is strongly linked to the
individual’s mental and emotional health (Klinger 1998) and structural obstacles
acting to suppress meaning-making, could therefore be understood through the
mechanism of not respecting the individual’s right to uphold health.
However, basic principles, designed as boundary conditions for redesign, should
address primary and not indirect effects. If structural obstacles are primarily perceived
as being in the way of meaning-making this needs to be addressed in its own right.
From the point of view of social capital and keeping a society together, common
meaning was also an essential aspect identified in paper 1. The importance of
common meaning is also supported by the aspect of integrity mentioned by Mayer et
al., i.e., consistency based on espoused and acceptable values. It is defined as
standards of behavior, and rings very close to a common meaning in the sense of
having decided together what is important in a group of people or society at large.
The importance of common meaning expressed as purpose is not the least evident
when looking at sub-systems. In a complex system with independent agents, these
agents have many choices regarding what sub-system to affiliate with. A reason for
existence may be serving a particular function, serving a function particularly well or
having some other attribute that attracts people. This echoes the argument for a strong
purpose in organizations in order to ensure their survival (e.g., Collins and Porras
2002).
Therefore another social sustainability principle is added to the list.
In a socially sustainable society, people are not subject to structural
obstacles to …
SSP 5. …meaning-making.
(This means that people are not systematically hindered from creating individual
meaning and co-creating common meaning, e.g., by suppression of cultural
expression or obstacles to co-creation of purposeful conditions.)
3.2.2. Diversity
!
Diversity is mentioned in the literature as an aspect of adaptive capacity. In a social
system, we are interested in diversity as regards characteristics such as gender, age,
personality, skills, etc. It is diversity in this regard that “provides a mix of components
!
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16
whose history and accumulated experience help cope with change, and facilitates
redevelopment and innovation following disturbance and crisis”(Folke et al. 2002,
19).
So, would this kind of diversity be assured through the above-mentioned social
sustainability principles? We believe so. If people in general are not systematically
hindered from influencing the social systems they are part of and from developing the
competence they like, and if they are not systematically exposed to partial treatment,
all the individual differences have opportunity to show up at the system level. It does
not seem that another sustainability principle needs to be added to ensure diversity in
the system.
3.2.3. Capacity for Learning
Learning is also mentioned as an aspect, which enables flexibility and development.
This aspect seems to be covered by the principle around competence as learning
comes through the individuals into the system. In addition, continued competence
development includes the ability to learn and remain competent even as the
environment changes and the definition of structural obstacles to competence
therefore includes the barriers of development and learning.
Even though learning is a natural individual trait, the organizational learning literature
comes to the conclusion that organizational or communal learning does not come
naturally to us. To learn as a system we need to learn together. Lageroos (2004, 321)
in this same vain comments, that
“learning can be stifled and the traditional patterns of an advanced
social system often do just that. As systems age, they tended to solidify
protocols that once worked, but may no longer work because the
environment has changed or because the protocol has become
corrupted over time without anyone noticing. Yet, the people who
achieved power by the old system naturally tend to believe in it. “
However, the above social sustainability principles can address these issues. The
principle around influence allows individual learning to transfer to the system level
and the principle around impartiality ensures that everyone´s ideas in the learning
process are valued in an impartial way. The principle around meaning-making ensures
that there is no systematic hindrance to the process making sense of the world
together and in the process learn from it. Overall, this should ensure that learning can
emerge at the system level.
3.2.4. Capacity for Self-organization
!
The last essential aspect of the social system, coming from the literature, was that of
self-organization – the ability of the system to organize itself without a pre-
determined intent and structure. In a social system this would refer to individuals
being able to organize themselves into different structures to address a certain goal.
All living systems are naturally self-organizing in their healthy form. This implies that
as long as the above social sustainability principles are complied with, particularly no
!
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17
structural obstacles to influence, competence and impartiality, there should be no
reason why groups of people would not be able to do so.
This concludes the investigation for upstream mechanisms of destruction of the
essential aspects of the social system identified in paper 1.
3.3. A zero Hypothesis for Social Sustainability Principles
!
Based on the work above, five social sustainability principles can be arrived at,
although further refinement on specific wording may be required for next iterations.
In a socially sustainable society, people are not subject to structural
obstacles to …
SSP 1. …health.
SSP 2. …influence.
SSP 3. …competence.
SSP 4. …impartiality.
SSP 5. …meaning-making.
For each of these principles one can then derive questions that allow organizations to
understand their current contribution to un-sustainability and plan to eliminate it.
Below is an example set of what kind of questions may be asked based on the SSPs.
SSP1: What practices contribute to structural obstacles to peoples’ health?
• Are there health and safety concerns for employees? For example, excessive
working hours, unsafe or unhealthy work environments, harassment and abuse of
workers, and forced labor/child labor.
• Are there contributions to insufficient living standards? For example,
compensation/wages that do not allow for a basic decent living and prohibitive
pricing of basic goods.
SSP2: What practices contribute to structural obstacles to peoples’ influence on
systems they are part of?
• Are there practices that suppress employees´ influence within the organization?
For example, no formal mechanisms to report up the command-chain, no
acceptance of whistle-blowers and no bargaining rights.
• Are there practices that suppress, or rely on the lack of opportunity to express, the
communities´ opinion in relation to our work? For example, no formal
mechanisms for the communities to give opinion and influence the aspects of the
business that affect them.
• Are there practices that suppress, or rely on the lack of opportunity to express, the
communities´ opinion in relation to our activity in their community? For example,
!
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18
reliance on political regimes that engage in suppression of free speech and does
not have free elections.
SSP3: What practices contribute to structural obstacles to peoples’ competence?
• Are there insufficient learning or development mechanisms within the
organization? For example, lack of opportunities for competence development,
lack of mechanisms for organizational learning and development and no
development talks.
• Are there practices that rely on, or promote, lack of education and competence
development in the surrounding community? For example, operating in regions or
countries that do not support educational development.
• Are there practices that promote false understanding? For example, false
information and false advertising.
SSP4: What practices contribute to structural obstacles to peoples’ impartial
treatment?
• Are there practices of discrimination? For example, gender, racial or other
discrimination.
• Are there practices that promote economic inequality? For example, extreme
differences in income within the organization.
• Are there reliance on political regimes that support impartial treatment? For
example, reliance on political regimes that engage in discrimination, engaging in
corruption and relying on corrupt regimes.
SSP5: What practices contribute to structural obstacles to peoples’ meaning-making?
• Is there lack of clarity within the organization? For example, lack of a clear
purpose of the organization and lack of clear roles and responsibilities for
individuals.
• Is there disrespect of employees’ meaning-making? For example, not allowing a
particular cultural expression in the workplace.
• Is there disrespect of the community’s meaning-making? For example, disrespect
of local culture and reliance on political regimes that engage in suppression of
cultural expression.
• Is there reliance on practices that alter meaning-making subversively? For
example, aggressive and misleading advertising.
• Are leaders inconsistent in relation to the purpose of the organization? For
example, not ’walking the talk’ and thereby putting a meaningful purpose in
doubt. !
4. Discussion
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19
The research set out to derive useful social sustainability principles. The end result
was a first hypothesis of five social sustainability principles to be used within the
Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development. This section focuses on
discussion and insights as regards the original aim and the FSSD approach and is a
complement to the discussion in paper 1 of this two-part series.
!
An assessment against the characteristics for sustainability principles to be useful
within the FSSD, i.e., for backcasting planning and redesign for sustainability (see
Section 2), reveals the following: The research has built a logical argument for why
these principles are necessary. Furthermore, having pursued extensive literature
studies, the research at this point did not reveal any aspects related to complex
adaptive social systems and social sustainability that could not be sub-ordered to the
five principles, or fit elsewhere in the five level model of the FSSD. This implies that
the current principles are sufficient based on current understanding. However, the
FSSD has always and will always be subject to continuous development, so future
modelling and action research may call for amendments. This has also been the case
for the ecological principles as the current wording of the three ecological principles
has evolved over time to be more and more precise and helpful for backcasting
planning and redesign. The principles are also meant to be general in that they are
applicable to any group, organization or community and yet concrete enough to guide
planning, innovation and action, as well as selection, development and a coordinated
use of supplementary methods, tools and other forms of support. The results of the
action research with various practitioners (see Missimer et al. 2014) support the new
principles’ applicability along those lines. Finally, they are meant to be non-
overlapping in the sense that all aspects of one are not also covered by another. The
research presented in this paper has made a theoretical argument for this. The action
research seems to also support the notion that the principles are indeed non-
overlapping, as the practitioners did not seem to have major difficulties in
brainstorming violations and clearly grouping them under one principle rather than
another. Preliminary data from action research also point at a possibility to develop
non-overlapping sets of indicators under each principle.
It is important to re-iterate some essential nuances of the approach.
The term “no structural obstacles” in each of the principle is key to understanding the
approach. The focus is intentionally not on, e.g., health or influence per se, but about
whether there are structural obstacles in the way of achieving them. There can still be
sick and un-influential people in a very solid and vital social system for as long as
their misery is not being caused by structural obstacles. This nuance is closely related
to the next.
Boundary conditions are about phrasing what must inevitably be part of something
referred to as “success”. But understanding the boundary conditions for success is not
the same as reaching success. You may understand the principles of success without
necessarily reaching it. In addition, you may fill the boundary conditions with
contents including other aspects of success.
Boundary conditions are designed to address problems and guide solutions at a high
enough system level to be generic, while still being operational. As such they should
be inclusive to cover all things that are relevant to discuss, so as to not forget essential
aspects. But they should not contain such aspects, so as to not become prescriptive
and undermine innovation in the contextually different environments of organizations
!
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20
and regions. This leads also to a re-emphasis of a point made in Paper 1. The FSSD is
not a substitute for other approaches or insights from the social sciences regarding
individual and collective wellbeing. It is merely a framework based on a systems-
science understanding of the social and ecological system and how human activity
may be eroding it and thereby undermining the possibility for individual and
collective wellbeing.
4.1 An example of the process for deriving principles
The results presented show only the preliminary final outcome of the modelling
process. Section 2 aimed to describe the process that lead to this outcome in as much
detail as possible; however, an example may serve to illustrate it further. It became
clear from the trustworthiness literature that one mechanism of degradation of trust is
disrespect for the integrity of a person, meaning disrespect of the right of each
individual to avoid injury and illness (physically, mentally and emotionally) in the
short and long term. In earlier phrasing the core research group used ‘integrity’ as the
keyword for this mechanism. In an earlier publication (Missimer 2013, 31) this was
described as in the vein of “the meaning of ‘Unversehrtheit’ in German. The adjective
‘unversehrt’ means without damage, injury or harm.” However, even then it was
already acknowledged that this term could lead to confusion as the term ‘integrity’
was also featured in the trustworthiness literature in the sense of moral connotation
along the lines of honesty and consistency. Still, the research group felt that the focus
on the absence of harm was in line with what was needed. However, throughout the
work with partners, it became obvious that workshop participants continuously got
confused by the word integrity and almost always associated it with the moral
connotation. This led the core research group to decide to abandon that term and
opted to use health instead as the keyword for this mechanism. On the other hand, this
came with the need to specify a more narrow definition of health than, e.g., the World
Health Organization definition, which states that “Health is a state of complete
physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or
infirmity (World Health Organization 2006)”. The WHO definition is wider than the
intended meaning of this mechanism. Using health as the keyword therefore also
comes with some risk for confusion, but the core research group has seen this as the
best option so far, together with a clarification of its specific meaning when this
sustainability principle is first introduced to users of the FSSD, i.e.: in a socially
sustainable society, people are not exposed to social conditions that systematically
undermine their possibilities to avoid injury and illness, physically, mentally or
emotionally. It should also be pointed out, again, that social sustainability does not
mean that all people, or ’as many as possible’, will be healthy or influential, or
competent, etc. The principles are about whether or not power and norms imply
obstacles for health, influence, competence, etc. The term ’structural obstacles to…’
is key to each principle.
Finally, there are many other elements that appear in the literature on social
sustainability. ’Empathy’, e.g., a constitutional element of most peoples’ mental
makeup belongs to the systems level, sits at the first level of the five level model of
the FSSD. To apply this capacity to put oneself in the shoes of other for the sake of
doing good is called the Golden Rule. “Do not do to others what you do not want
them to do you”. This way of applying empathy can serve as an ’acid-test’ on
measures and strategies laid out to approach compliance with the sustainability
!
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21
principles, and thus is a form of strategic guideline which belongs to the third level.
’Transparency’ most likely also belongs to the third level. Further elaborations along
these lines will continue in future research; so will the development of indicators,
under the fifth level.
4.2 Implications of the results
Section 3.3 highlights the many ways our current systems, especially the economic
systems, currently contribute to social un-sustainability and that these are really not
just one-off actions but design flaws of our basic systems. It is clear transformation in
many of these systems is needed and also that transformability as an extension of
adaptability (or included depending on how one defines adaptability) is an important
feature of any system. This is why the FSSD focuses on essential aspects of the social
system to be sustained, not the particular configuration that we have now. In this
sense, the approach does not consider sustainable development as the perpetuation of
the status quo, but as a path towards sustainability, where sustainability is defined by
boundary conditions. Transitioning to compliance with these boundary conditions,
and then to continue, e.g., social, cultural and technical development within those
conditions, is how sustainable development is defined in this approach.
4.3 Validity
A theory is usually tested empirically for validation. Testing for validation is,
however, harder for more abstract higher-level social theories and in dynamic
systems. Blessing and Chakrabarti (2009) discuss the limitations of validating
research that is based on creating something new and then testing it (often referred to
as design (science) research), as it is often difficult to establish whether the desired
effect was created by the specific intervention or another unaccounted for aspect. In
addition, “the context in which the development process takes place changes,
irrespective of the introduction of design support: people learn, markets change,
organizations evolve, new technologies emerge, new knowledge becomes available
and new regulations are put in place” (ibid, 183)”. In that sense, preliminary testing
regarding whether the proposed principles are applicable, understandable, relevant
and helpful to people working in various fields has begun (see Missimer et al. 2014).
It has not yet been tested what the longer-term results would be, which will need a
more rigorous qualitative research approach and is an essential next step to validate
and improve the conceptual model.
5. Conclusion
The social sustainability field is facing numerous challenges regarding vagueness and
lack of actionable approaches, a debate over different sets of values, and sub-
optimization in the solution space due to a lack of systems approaches. Similarly, the
FSSD also lacked a robust approach to the social dimension.
!
!
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22
This research began with the idea that the social dimension of the FSSD could benefit
from further scientific support and elaboration. A prototype based on extensive
literature studies and conceptual mental-modelling sessions was proposed. This
prototype has since been tested with practitioners in various applications (Missimer et
al., 2014). However, it is not possible to claim that social sustainability, even
specifically within the FSSD, has been completely covered and dealt with at this
point. As is common with research including elements of design, it will need testing
and adjustment over time.
The approach presented in this paper attempts to overcome the challenges in the field.
It aims to contribute a definition of social sustainability, which is general enough to
be applied irrespective of spatial and temporal constraints, but concrete enough to
guide decision-making and monitoring. This then can also provide a foundation for
moving many other research and application fields forward as regards social
sustainability, e.g., product-service innovation, supply-chain management and
regional development. Efforts in this regard are already on their way (e.g., Gould et
al. in this same issue, Mesquita et al. 2015, 2016) and in this way the research
presented in this tandem paper is only the kick-start for much more research and
development of practical support in the field of social sustainability.
Acknowledgements
Financial support was provided by the FUTURA foundation and is hereby gratefully
acknowledged. FUTURA was not involved in the study design, the collection,
analysis and interpretation of data, in the writing of the report or in the decision to
submit the article for publication.
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