Individual competencies for managers engaged in corporate sustainable management practices Renate Wesselink a, * , Vincent Blok b, 1 , Sebastiaan van Leur b, 2 , Thomas Lans a, 3 , Domenico Dentoni b, 1 a Wageningen University, Education and Competence Studies, P.O. Box, 8130, 6700 EW Wageningen, The Netherlands b Wageningen University, Management Studies, Social Sciences Group, P.O. Box, 8130, 6700 EW Wageningen, The Netherlands article info Article history: Received 15 October 2013 Received in revised form 30 October 2014 Accepted 30 October 2014 Available online xxx Keywords: CSR competencies CSR managers CSR practices Sustainability competencies abstract Corporations increasingly acknowledge the importance of sustainable practices. Corporate social re- sponsibility is therefore gaining significance in the business world. Since solving corporate social re- sponsibility issues is not a routine job, every challenge in corporate social responsibility requires its own approach; and management competencies are crucial for designing appropriate approaches towards the realization of sustainable solutions. On the basis of seven corporate social responsibility competencies synthesized from the extant literature, this research provides an empirical analysis of which of these competencies managers need in order to achieve corporate social responsibility goals within their specific context; and at which specific stage of the implementation process. The data sources are in- terviews with corporate social responsibility managers e whose positions and circumstances share many similarities e at four large multinational enterprises. The empirical analysis reveals that managers undertake four corporate social responsibility core tasks: I) orientation, II) reaching common ground, III) performing pilot projects, and IV) embedding results. Within the context of the analysis, the compe- tencies: Systems Thinking, Embracing Diversity and Interdisciplinarity, Interpersonal Competence, Action Competence, and Strategic Management were found to be necessary. The Embracing Diversity and Inter- disciplinarity competence was identified as the most relevant. This study contributes to the corporate social responsibility (education) literature by introducing an empirical test of which competencies are considered necessary for managers in various stages of corporate social responsibility implementation. Linking these competencies to core tasks makes them more concrete and increases the chances of interpreting them unambiguously, which in turn can aid learning trajectories in both business and education. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is gaining significance in the business world, as corporations increasingly recognise the importance of ethical and responsible business practices to their survival and legitimacy (Dunphy et al., 2003). CSR is a business approach to sustainable development wherein companies voluntarily integrate environmental, social, and economic concerns with their business strategies e and into their interactions with stakeholders e in a quest to contribute to society in a sustainable way (Dahlsrud, 2008). This definition emphasises the voluntary nature of CSR, in that businesses engage in CSR-related activities that go beyond compliance to laws and regulations; such voluntary activities have the potential to increase the competitiveness of companies. However, since these activities can be abandoned at any time (Lozano, 2012), it is critical that they be embedded in orga- nisations. In order to distinguish CSR from sustainability in this article, sustainability is defined as the ultimate goal of society at large (Marrewijk and Werre, 2003), whereas CSR concentrates on the contribution of companies to achieve said sustainability goal, for instance by balancing people, planet, and profit in their business practices (Kaptein and Wempe, 2002). * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ31 (0) 317 484833. E-mail addresses: Renate.Wesselink@wur.nl (R. Wesselink), Vincent.Blok@wur. nl (V. Blok), Sebastiaan.vanLeur@wur.nl (S. van Leur), Thomas.Lans@wur.nl (T. Lans), Domenico.Dentoni@wur.nl (D. Dentoni). 1 Tel.: þ31 (0) 317 483623. 2 Tel.: þ31 (0) 317 484833. 3 Tel.: þ31 (0) 317 488639. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.093 0959-6526/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e10 Please cite this article in press as: Wesselink, R., et al., Individual competencies for managers engaged in corporate sustainable management practices, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.093