The Secret Architects of Corporate Sustainability

Abstract: This thesis examines how Big Four sustainability consultants form corporations' sustainability work through a single case study of a Big Four division working with sustainability consulting. As the field of corporate sustainability has evolved dramatically in recent years, it is prominent to believe that the role of consultants has changed since prior scholars examined the area. This thesis aims to contribute to both practitioners and scholars in understanding how the urgent phenomenon of corporate sustainability is shaped. By studying the actions of sustainability consultants through the lens of institutional work, this thesis contributes to academia in three main ways. Firstly, this thesis provides a framework, forming institutions, for analyzing institutions that institutional agents are both creating and maintaining. Secondly, this thesis finds that consultants are not only affecting corporations' sustainability work through technical work, but also through cultural- and political work. Last but not least, this thesis illustrates how sustainability consultants use a hybrid identity to manage the dual aims of creating profit and impact, and show that consultants having been in the industry for long tend to lean more towards the profit side of corporate sustainability.