Sustainability Leader's Micro-Practices for Embedding Sustainability

Despite growing attention to sustainability, there is still limited understanding of what sustainability leaders actually do and how they seek to embed sustainability in practice. This study explores the micro-practices sustainability leaders use to embed sustainability by shaping understanding and stimulating action within organizational change. The study drew on an in-depth single case study of a real estate company recognized for its sustainability commitment. Data were gathered through individual interviews and two feedback sessions with sustainability leaders and analysed inductively using a constructivist thematic approach. Ten micro-practices emerged across three themes: Framing Sustainability for Strategic Influence, Communicating Sustainability Across Boundaries, and Making Sustainability Meaningful and Relational. The findings reveal how sustainability leaders draw on situated micro-practices, including discursive and material forms, to adapt messages and connect sustainability to organizational and societal realities. Theoretically, the study advances understanding of sustainability leaders as distributed actors within practice by specifying their detailed micro-level work to influence sustainability embeddedness through sensemaking and sensegiving. Empirically, it provides evidence of how these micro-practices are enacted by sustainability leaders in a South African case context. The study deepens our understanding of how sustainability embeddedness is situated and socially constructed through micro-level practice.MAD statementThis paper aims to make a difference by bringing attention to the often unseen work through which sustainability is embedded. It challenges the tendency to view sustainability change primarily through formal structures, plans and leadership positions. Instead, it conceptualizes sustainability work as situated, socially accomplished practice through which sustainability leaders shape meaning, influence action and make sustainability matter in everyday practice.