| Summary: | This paper explores a small business’s sustainability orientation through a case study, by identifying leadership and organization characteristics of the business that contribute to the sustainability orientation. The studied case is a small hardware store. The case is explored primarily through interviews and supported by in-store observations. It looks into four service areas of the business, and captures the perspective of owner, staff, customers, neighboring businesses as well as a licensee. Led by a notion developed early on in the research and reinforced by case data, business characteristics related to social interactions between the business and its customers are found to be a third dimension in the business’s sustainability orientation in combination with leadership and organization. This study puts forward the importance for small, sustainability-oriented businesses to engage in social interactions, as this is found to have the potential to strengthen the triple bottom line of the business along with leadership and organization.In order to create a deeper understanding of the case we characterize leadership, organization and social interaction impacts on the sustainability orientation of a small business. This contributes to broaden CSR theory in very small businesses and serve as a basis for practitioners. This study aims at particularizing aspects of a small business’s sustainability orientation. While it is not claimed that the results of this case study are broadly generalizable, learnings are transferrable to other like contexts.
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