Sustainability is in the eye of the follower : Involving followers in cooperation for strategic sustainable development

Abstract: As the signs of the impending ecological crisis become more apparent, the issue of sustainability comes to the forefront in many studies. However, there appears to be a substantial lack of focus on the individual level which can be considered a major shortcoming due to the fact that sustainability can only be obtained through joint efforts of each and every person. A significant part of sustainability work lies on the shoulders of companies and organisations as they are not only legally obliged to reduce the environmental footprint of their activities but also bear a huge responsibility in the face of the whole society. As employees often carry the main burden when it comes to implementing new initiatives, we decided to gain a better understanding of their perspective. In the presented research we explore the sensemaking of employees in relation to sustainability in order to determine their role as followers in company’s or organisation’s sustainability work. Our ambition for the research was to contribute to closing the gap in existing studies by suggesting a theoretical model which would describe various roles which employees enact when faced with sustainability issues. We carried out a qualitative study based on an inductive approach and case study research method. For the purpose of the study we conducted interviews and analysed data looking for recurrent themes, patterns and more importantly variations in the ways employees make sense of sustainability. As a result, we presented four roles which employees enact in the context of sustainability, namely movers and shakers, happy campers, truth-seekers and distant observers, and provided the description of main distinctive characteristics inherent in these roles.