Corporate sustainability actors often work in office-based settings, spatially and symbolically removed from the ecosystems their work seeks to protect. Management scholars emphasize ecological embeddedness—long-term, place-based immersion in ecosystems—as foundational to ecological sensemaking and sustainable practice. How, then, does ecological orientation emerge without sustained immersion? Drawing on in-depth interviews with sustainability professionals, we examine retrospective accounts of formative experiences with biodiversity and nature. We introduce ecological light bulb moments (ELBMs): vivid, direct or mediated encounters with biodiversity and nature, retained for their emotional intensity, sensory vividness, and cognitive salience. The ELBMs serve as enduring interpretive anchors influential in shaping ecological commitments, even without sustained ongoing immersion in professional work. We contribute to theory by extending ecological embeddedness beyond continuous immersion to include episodic, symbolic, and affective experiences, and by theorizing—drawing on the retention component of sensemaking—how retained experiences may condition early stages of meaningful ecological sensemaking despite professionals’ spatial and symbolic distance from ecosystems.
Quaye et al. (Thu,) studied this question.