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‘Activists in a Suit’: Paradoxes and Metaphors in Sustainability Managers’ Identity Work

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An Erratum to this article was published on 29 June 2017

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Abstract

Both sustainability and identity are said to be paradoxical issues in organizations. In this study we look at the paradoxes of corporate sustainability at the individual level by studying the identity work of those managers who hold sustainability-dedicated roles in organizations. Analysing 26 interviews with sustainability managers, we identify three main tensions affecting their identity construction process: the business versus values oriented, the organizational insider versus outsider and the short-term versus long-term focused identity work tensions. When dealing with these tensions, some interviewees express a paradoxical perspective in attempting to accept and maintain the two poles of each of them simultaneously. It emerges in particular that metaphorical reasoning can be used by sustainability managers in varied ways to cope with the tensions of identity work. We read these findings in light of the existing literature on the relation between paradoxes and identity work, highlighting and discussing their implications for both research and practice.

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  • 29 June 2017

    An erratum to this article has been published.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Professor Sierk Ybema and Professor Stefan Sveningsson for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

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  1. Department of Social and Political Sciences, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Conservatorio 7, 20122, Milan, Italy

    Luca Carollo & Marco Guerci

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  1. Luca Carollo
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Correspondence to Luca Carollo.

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The original version of this article has been revised: The layout of the column sub-headings in Table 3 has been corrected.

An erratum to this article is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3615-2.

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Carollo, L., Guerci, M. ‘Activists in a Suit’: Paradoxes and Metaphors in Sustainability Managers’ Identity Work. J Bus Ethics 148, 249–268 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3582-7

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