Making sense of sustainability work: A narrative approach

Corporate sustainability is a priority for organisations, but the nature of the enabling intraorganisational 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.