This dissertation examines change towards sustainability in three types of organizations: corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and universities. Following the introduction, each of these organizational types is treated in a separate manuscript, with a conclusion that integrates the manuscripts and poses new questions about the role of organizational change in meeting sustainability goals. The introduction surveys the evolution of organizational change research, including its applicability to sustainability. The rich theoretical literature on organizational change reveals four themes germane to these manuscripts: (1) typologies of change, (2) drivers of change, (3) degree of change, and (4) pace of change. The most relevant typologies are social cognition, and cultural (Kezar, 2001); the drivers (triggers) of change are identified as broad in scope, yet all related to the same end goal of sustainability; the degrees of change are best explained within Dunphy and Stace's (1993) typology as "incremental adjustments" and "modular transformations," but these efforts fall short of "fundamental" changes; finally, the pace of change is identified as possibly too slow to meet sustainability stressors. The first manuscript is an investigation of corporate sustainability reporting over the past decade (1999-2009), during which the number of corporations reporting on sustainability indicators has grown exponentially. Using quantitative content analysis, this study examines commonly reported core environmental indicators as specified by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The concept of improvement is measured among these commonly reported indicators, and in the years 2006-2009, the majority of companies showed improvement in energy consumption, water usage, carbon emissions, and Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) emissions. Further, the manuscript links changes in sustainability indicators over time with changes in financial indicators, strengthening the "business case" for sustainability. The second manuscript examines decision-making in SMEs in the fuel industry (service stations and small oil companies). In-depth interviews with service station owners, oil company owners, and others in the fuel industry in Michigan are used to examine decisions about whether to install biofuel (ethanol and/or biodiesel) infrastructure as part of the overall product mix. Results indicate that decision biases resulting from representativeness, availability, and overconfidence in part characterize decisions by these organizations. Manuscript three explores the evolution of sustainability within an environmental stewardship initiative at a large midwestern university through a series of in-depth interviews with faculty, staff, and student employees. The success of the broader initiative is examined through the theoretical framework of Lipsky's (1971 & 1980) street-level bureaucracy model, which is applied and extended from governmental agencies to the university setting. The study concludes that members of the University's street-level bureaucracy embody the primary characteristics of Lipsky's model, suggesting wider applicability.The final manuscript concludes the dissertation with a discussion of the degree, pace, and direction of sustainability change among the three preceding manuscripts. It is argued that each of the change processes explored in this research fail to achieve "fundamental" change, and thus the difficult process of fundamental change should be elevated to, in the language of David Orr's (2002) four challenges of sustainability, a fifth challenge on which other sustainability challenges depend.
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