Designing an Organizational Sustainability Model with a Grounded-theory Approach (Case Study: Petrochemical Companies Located in Mahshahr Special Economic Zone)

Today, sustainability is a serious concern of many countries. Many changes in the business environment have changed the functioning of organizations, and in fact, the excellence and sustainability of organizations in the current complex and changing conditions requires the use of a new attitude in formulating organizational strategies. The most important current management challenge of organizations is to achieve organizational sustainability and then balanced movement towards improvement and excellence. Sustainability is related to the organization's ability to monitor opportunities, changes in trends, and risks in the external environment, and its purpose is to create a balance between the financial, economic, social, and environmental interests of the organization in the long term. On the one hand, the ever-increasing economic, social and environmental challenges and on the other hand, the neglect of the sustainable approach to the organization in internal studies, the author decided to provide a framework and model for organizational sustainability by conducting a qualitative study based on the Grounded-theory strategy. For this purpose, an open and semi-structured interview was conducted with 17 managers and experts of petrochemical companies located in Mahshahr Special Economic Zone and university faculty members who were selected by purposeful sampling until reaching theoretical saturation. The analysis of the interviews was done based on three types of open, central and selective coding, and then the organizational sustainability model was designed. Evaluation and refinement of the model was done by a group of experts using the Delphi method. The results of the analysis of the interviews based on Grounded Theory resulted in 174 concepts, 13 categories and 4 core categories. The results showed that managers can by recognizing the factors affecting organizational sustainability (Social pressures, environmental and economic issues), and strengthening the attitude of employees, choose strategies for producing green products and planning, research and development to achieve sustainability and its promotion. The implementation of organizational sustainability will lead to beneficial results and consequences for the people, the owners and the government.