Personal shapes of sustainability conduct and organisational management control systems

Purpose Organisations, including universities, are under increasing pressure to demonstrate how they contribute to addressing the societal challenge of sustainability in the Anthropocene. This research offers insight into how university employees understand and discharge their sustainability conduct in their work context and within the framework of organisational management control systems. The paper highlights some of the challenges that arise at the point where employees and control systems intersect and the sustainability conduct of employees that follows. Design/methodology/approach The research is a case study of a UK university, with primary qualitative data collected from 36 semi-structured interviews, in addition to secondary data from publicly available reports. Findings The research identifies how personal conduct and actions drive some of the unseen sustainability controls that exist in an organisation. Additionally, the paper highlights some of the daily challenges when interacting with management control systems faced by employees in a university setting. Research limitations/implications The findings of this study would benefit developers and researchers of formal sustainability MCSs, by highlighting some of the “every day” practical challenges facing employees. There is a complex range of interlinked issues to consider when designing formal MCSs. Unseen “informal” activities and action should also be considered when researching and establishing formal sustainability MCSs. Practical implications Employees are conscious about behaving in sustainable ways and conserving resources to minimise waste, but existing formal management control systems are not consistently supporting optimum sustainability practices, decision-making and conduct. Originality/value SST (Stones, 2005, 2015) has been mobilised using the quadripartite framework and conduct analysis, revealing some of the “reasons for conduct” that precipitate sustainability acts and actions. In so doing it has highlighted how, within SST, responsibility and accountability are implicitly present. It has also contributed to the findings by helping to locate examples of how MCSs constrain, direct or enable (intentionally or not) the sustainability behaviours of employees.