Sustainable Development in an Age of Disruption

Abstract

Sustainable development research has moved from the margins to the mainstream of management studies. The Academy of Management Discoveries has even dedicated one of its special issues to the Sustainable Development Goals. Even though sustainable development is mainstreamed, I argue in this Guidepost that we need to rethink sustainable development given the massive disruptions the planet and society are currently undergoing. Business has reached its planetary limits to growth and is both contributing to experiencing inflections in technological and social systems. Sustainable development researchers need to reconsider what is being researched and how. In this Guidepost, I offer some recommendations of what these technological and social disruptions mean to the contexts researched, the theories employed, and the methods applied.