Dr. Gavronski is interested in managerial motivations for sustainability. From the moment he found the topic of sustainable operations, he was intrigued by a question. This question is: why rational managers would invest in an externality, such as the natural environment, instead of maximizing the shareholders' profits?
His early research investigated the motivations for ISO 14001 certification for environmental management systems. With his colleagues, he found four sets of motivations: legal, internal, reactive, and proactive. They also investigated how those motivations revealed patterns of strategic operations. They found three types of strategic modes: internal focus, external focus, and holistic. Each of these modes leads to different results for the firm.
He then looked at the organizational learning resources and processes that foster different choices in environmental technologies. With his colleagues, he showed that knowledge and learning influence the choice of "soft" green technologies. On the other hand, other motivations drive the choice of "hard" technologies. They also showed how those learning resources influence green supply management. They found that the three main processes of green supply management (supplier selection, supplier monitoring, and collaboration with suppliers) are not directly related to the plant resources but are mediated to those resources by the green manufacturing capabilities.
Currently, Dr. Gavronski is interested in the relationship between managerial orientation and corporate attention to stakeholders. For example, how the implicit bias in supply managers make them blind to suppliers' bad behaviour, or how the long-term orientation influences the priority given to different stakeholder groups.