**6.1 Limitations**

The findings and theoretical and practical implications presented in this chapter need to be considered in terms of the limitations inherent to the adopted research design. There are three limitations the need to be considered. Firstly, the qualitative research design adopted in this research means that the findings and implications cannot be readily generalised to other firms in the finance industry or to other industries. Secondly, the data gathered for this research were from the sample firms' annual report documents only, and the data contained in the array of other official communications (e.g., sustainability reports, integrated reports, public relation announcements, website content, etc.) was not considered for this research. Thirdly, the data gathered for this research was from a limited (but exhaustive) sample of nine B-Corp certified firms from a single industry setting whose annual report documents were published in English. This limitation means that the sustainability-focussed KM systems of firms that publish their annual report documents in other languages are not represented in this research.

### **6.2 Future research opportunities**

Given the findings and limitations of this research, seven avenues of future search into sustainability-oriented KM system are apparent. In terms of the insights into the effective management of sustainability knowledge described in the previous section, three avenues of future research appear promising. Firstly, future research should explore the stakeholder management techniques with which firms of this type engage so thoroughly with their supply-chain and strategic partners. Secondly, future research should seek a finer-grained understanding of the organisational culture-fostering activities that the firms' top-management engaged in so as to widely spread sustainability knowledge and principles throughout their organisation. Thirdly, future research should seek to explore the specific ways in which sustainability knowledge can be applied to all aspects of modern business, as it appears that the sample firms in this sample utilised such knowledge in every aspect of their operation. In terms of the limitations of this research, four avenues of future research into sustainability-oriented KM systems are apparent. Firstly, and in order to capture a wider array of sustainability data than that published in a firm's annual report document alone, future search should seek to gather and analyse secondly data from a wider range of firm publications (e.g., sustainability reports, integrated reports, public relation announcements, website content, etc.). This will increase the quantity, quality and timeliness of firm data in this regard, and provide the basis for more detailed analysis of firms' sustainability-oriented KM systems. Secondly, and in order to generate a finer-grained understanding of the elements that make up a sustainability-oriented KM system, the collection and analysis of primary data is warranted. Primary data gathered from a range of key firm informants (e.g., senior executives, CEOs, etc.) would be particularly useful for verifying and expanding on the findings presented in this research. Thirdly, the

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**Author details**

Timothy Donnelly and Mark Wickham\* University of Tasmania, Australia

provided the original work is properly cited.

\*Address all correspondence to: markwickham@hotmail.com

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

*Knowledge Management and Its Role in Strategic Sustainability Management in the Finance…*

use of longitudinal data in the adopted research design would provide insights into how the discussed KM system elements develop and change over time. Given the overall context of rapidly changing competitive environments, analysis of firms that have been effective in this regard over the long term would provide valuable insights into how firms are able to adapt these complex processes as required. Lastly, this research should be replicated in other industry settings in order to provide a finer-grained understanding of how the discussed concepts and elements change

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87156*

and adapt to different competitive challenges.

*Knowledge Management and Its Role in Strategic Sustainability Management in the Finance… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87156*

use of longitudinal data in the adopted research design would provide insights into how the discussed KM system elements develop and change over time. Given the overall context of rapidly changing competitive environments, analysis of firms that have been effective in this regard over the long term would provide valuable insights into how firms are able to adapt these complex processes as required. Lastly, this research should be replicated in other industry settings in order to provide a finer-grained understanding of how the discussed concepts and elements change and adapt to different competitive challenges.
