Quantifying Oatly's Green Ambitions: Sustainability and the Quest For
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Quantifying Oatly’s Green Ambitions: Sustainability and the Quest for Transparent Business Behavior A case study exploring the interconnection between corporate social innovation and life cycle assessments 102851: Jonas Fribo-Søndergaard 102777: Loris Spasojevic Supervisor: Jacob Hasselbalch Department of Organisation Copenhagen Business School May 15th, 2020 Master Tesis MSocSc Organisational Innovation & Entrepreneurship Pages: 105 Characters: 240.050 15.05.2020 Copenhagen Business School 1/136 15.05.2020 Copenhagen Business School Acknowledgements A few people deserve an extra thank you for making this thesis possible. A special thank you to Abigail from Oatly for being accommodating, genuine and helpful throughout the full process. Your insightful answers provided us with inspiration and an appetite for a comprehensive exploration of novel approaches to sustainability. And to Martin from Oatly, your perspectives on anti-bureaucratic marketing were uplifting and an essential aspect of achieving transparency. To both of you, thank you for setting aside time for us and our interview; we know how busy you are with the current expansion and growth. Thank you to Michael for letting us into your office and translating your quantitative domain for two social science students. Your position and reflections posed new ideas and meaningful discussions. And to Etty from Carbon Cloud, for explaining how companies’ approach LCA’s and how your solution differs from the conventional ones, and most importantly, thank you for enduring an hour in the hottest study room the CBS library has to offer. Lastly, of course, a thank you to Jacob, our supervisor. No words wasted, precise and valuable feedback. Your direct and constructive manner helped us stay on track and not get lost in the unavoidable complexity that arrives with writing a thesis. With gratitude, Jonas & Loris 2/136 15.05.2020 Copenhagen Business School Abstract Purpose: With a single-case study on Oatly, this paper aims to examine how a life cycle assessment (LCAs) can help facilitate Corporate Social Innovation (CSI) in a purpose-driven company. The thesis contributes to research on organisational innovation and develops a novel theory on the development of sustainability strategies with quantitative methods. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is an in-depth single-case study of Oatly. Primary data was collected with Oatly's sustainability expert, Damberg and creative director, Ringqvist. Furthermore, we completed interviews with Israeli, a representative of Oatly's LCA partner, Carbon Cloud. Lastly, to deep dive into LCAs, we were able to interview Hauschild, a renowned quantitative sustainability professor at Danish Technical University. Our study is inductive and uses qualitative data to explore how actors shape the underlying mechanism of sustainability strategies. Findings: This project can provide research on the collaborative effects of LCA and CSI. Thus, with novel theory, we can suggest that the cooperative results of LCA and CSI can help companies integrate social innovation into their strategy and operations, which subsequently could help a company either maintain or gain a competitive advantage through sustainability. The LCA metrics were able to facilitate an increased level of institutionalisation of CSI at Oatly. Our research provides awareness of the underlying mechanisms and the conditions that encourage sustainable corporate development. Research implications: We have conducted a contextual study of the case company Oatly and the important actors involved. As a result of this, we are unable to objectively generalise on corporate implementation of sustainability practices, based on the conceptual consequences of our research. We've identified the need for standardisation of simplified LCA that apply to corporate logics. A lack of standardisation increases the risk of misleading data and biased agendas. Further research may validate our framework on CSI and LCA, and look to explore potential methods of standardisation. Originality/value: The current research is novel because neither an empirical or a theoretically grounded conceptual framework has been suggested to examine how corporate social innovation and life cycle assessments relate to each other, and whether the theories provide a combinative value. With our study, we hope to shed light on the importance of sustainable governance, and the facilitation of a corporate culture that empowers quantification tools. 3/136 15.05.2020 Copenhagen Business School Table of contents Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................. 2 Abstract ................................................................................................................................................ 3 Table of contents ................................................................................................................................. 4 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 7 Problem statement ....................................................................................................................................... 9 Purpose of Research ................................................................................................................................................. 10 Literature review and theoretical framework................................................................................... 11 Setting the stage: Current research on Oatly .......................................................................................... 11 Outlining the definitions ............................................................................................................................ 13 Sustainability ............................................................................................................................................................ 13 Eco-efficiency ........................................................................................................................................................... 14 Life Cycle Assessment ............................................................................................................................................. 15 Corporate Social Innovation ..................................................................................................................................... 15 Moving Beyond Compliance: Bridging Business and Society ............................................................... 16 Corporate Social Innovation ..................................................................................................................... 18 “Innovation” instead of “Responsibility.” ................................................................................................................ 19 Institutionalising Corporate Social Innovation ......................................................................................................... 21 A Company Culture for Corporate Social Innovation .............................................................................................. 22 Innovative niches ........................................................................................................................................ 24 Eco-efficiency.............................................................................................................................................. 26 Foot printing: Why is it essential for the EU and the food industry? ....................................................................... 28 Life Cycle Assessments .............................................................................................................................. 30 A brief history of LCA ............................................................................................................................................. 30 ISO Standards ........................................................................................................................................................... 31 LCA as a managerial tool ......................................................................................................................................... 32 Techno-politics and implications of corporate LCAs ............................................................................................... 39 Food and agriculture: LCAs ..................................................................................................................................... 42 The theoretical linkage between Life Cycle Assessments and Corporate Social Innovation.............. 43 Methodology ...................................................................................................................................... 45 Research Paradigm .................................................................................................................................... 45 A content-based literature review approach ........................................................................................... 47 4/136 15.05.2020 Copenhagen Business School The single-case study ................................................................................................................................. 48 Primary data collection ............................................................................................................................