Sustainability Work With Tensions in Textile Companies: The Co-Construction of Organisational Narratives and Collective Agency
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Sustainability work requires continuous reflection in a complex system of interconnected and competing demands. To shed light on the complexity and tensions of sustainability work in a controversial field, such as the textile industry, a narrative approach to sustainability work is utilised. The research data consist of individual interviews (21 participants) and four focus-group interviews (16 participants). The use of a narrative analysis reveals three prevailing organisational narratives that illustrate how sustainability work is constantly co-constructed through different organisational representatives and how they act in organisations: (1) the consolidating narrative of prestige, (2) the surrendering narrative of powerlessness and (3) the obscuring narrative of idealism. The study contributes to the extant literature by offering an understanding of sustainability work as consisting polyphonically and as constantly negotiated and evolving, and shows how narrative structures are constitutive of action in this field. It foregrounds the constitutive role of narrative structures, not merely as representational devices but as dynamic spaces through which organisational actors can generate and reduce enduring ambiguities and contradictions.
Source: Organization & Environment
Authors: Tiina Onkila, Suvi Heikkinen, Marileena Mäkelä
Institution: University of Jyväskylä
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,900
OpenAlex ID: W4416127311