IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ausman/v46y2021i4p740-760.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Making sense of sustainability work: A narrative approach

Author

Listed:
  • Tim Williams
  • Melissa Edwards
  • Tamsin Angus-Leppan
  • Suzanne Benn

Abstract

Corporate sustainability is a priority for organisations, but the nature of the enabling intra-organisational activities, processes and managerial agency is not well understood. In this study, we examine the activity and agency of corporate sustainability managers through a narrative approach and the novel theoretical lens of ‘sustainability work’: purposeful and strategic activities to shape the social-symbolic context such that social and environmental outcomes are prioritised. Analysing how individuals across a range of diverse organisations and industries frame their activity, we identify three overlapping and co-occurring broad subsets of sustainability work: goal-directed, other-directed and self-directed. Through our notion of sustainability work, we contribute by recasting managerial agency in the enabling of sustainability as occurring in the social-symbolic realm and highlighting the implications in both theory and practice for the professionalisation of sustainability. JEL Classification: M10, M14

Suggested Citation

  • Tim Williams & Melissa Edwards & Tamsin Angus-Leppan & Suzanne Benn, 2021. "Making sense of sustainability work: A narrative approach," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 46(4), pages 740-760, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:46:y:2021:i:4:p:740-760
    DOI: 10.1177/0312896220978447
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0312896220978447
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0312896220978447?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corporate social responsibility; corporate sustainability; professionalisation; sensemaking; work;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M10 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - General
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:46:y:2021:i:4:p:740-760. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.agsm.edu.au .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.