Abstract
Board directors' perceptions of sustainability are essential to their decision-making. Each director engages with other board members and executives in and out of board meetings, for agenda items or being immersed in private and group discussions. A director’s perception of sustainability priorities can bring about high-quality board consensus and facilitate organizational decision-making for optimal performative outcomes. Businesses and service organizations’ accountabilities are increasingly critical to ensuring collaborative investments and equitable transition toward achieving environmental and social sustainability. Yet each board and organizational context is unique. This study captures insights from 24 one-to-one interviews with board directors about their understanding of ESG (environmental, social, governance) as sustainability. Interpretive thematic analysis is used to analyze 516 themes and develop an evaluation framework of board director perceptions of sustainability with five characteristics at individual, board, and stakeholder levels. This novel framework is a step toward filling the gap for board evaluations to more formally incorporating sustainability accountabilities. The findings offer propositions for better aligning directors’ perceptions toward a shared understanding of ESG as sustainability. In conclusion, directors do have very different perspectives of ESG as sustainability priorities in their organizations and there remain opportunities for achieving multi-level integrated holistic understanding and accountability.