Abstract:

Interpersonal skills such as perception are an important topic within sustainability discourse. Additionally, businesses play a key role in the sustainable transition the world is currently undergoing. Through this study, we aimed to investigate how business leaders and decision makers perceive the sustainability performance of the firms they work for and explore how these perceptions align with real-world circumstances. In doing so, we will discover how such interpersonal skills are being utilised within a business context.

'The study was developed using theories such as inner development skills, the Dunning-Kruger effect and Brandlogic’s sustainability IQ Matrix. We followed an inductive interpretivistmethodology to gather qualitative data through a series of interviews. The findings show thatperceptions and their accuracy are quite varied, though participants who reported higher levels of communication from their firm often had more positive perceptions. Furthermore, despite the Dunning-Kruger effect suggesting that education would have an impact on accuracy, we did not find this to be the case, rather participants who demonstrated usage of a variety of inner development skills tended to be more accurate. These findings suggest businesses who wish to improve the perception of their firm should focus on how they communicate their efforts, and those seeking to improve accuracy should focus on development of inner development skills.