Crafting Sustainable Identities: Sustainability as a (Real?) New Paradigm of Living and Working Together

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past decade, the sustainability issue has gained more and more legitimacy and appeal.
However, many critical scholars are now claiming that we should be suspicious about the “sustainability” phenomenon, and see it as another fashionable asset, ad hoc created just for giving current organizations, communities, and lifestyles a positive—if somewhat superficial—status-enhancing image (Alvesson, 2014; Greenwood, 2007; Banjeree, 2008).
In the present Special Issue, we advance the hypothesis that sustainability framework might radically change the relationship between business, environment, and society only on the condition that individual and collective identities are radically reshaped around its core values: intergenerational equity, social generativity, and participation. Such a process is neither linear nor simple, but it requires us to embrace conflicts, paradoxes, and contradictions that are at the basis of the sustainability idea, which is about managing tensions among different domains (social, environmental, economic, human), short- and long-term orientations, and conflicting needs of stakeholders (Ivaldi et al., 2019; Galuppo et al., 2019; Hahn et al., 2018; Galuppo et al., 2014).
Looking at sustainability through the “identity” perspective means considering it not as something that people or communities have or do not have, but rather as something that they are (or they strive to be), enables them to relate to others, informs their assumptions, values, and behaviors inside different contexts (e.g., work and education organizations, communities) and constructs their identity work, i.e., the process of forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening, or revising the constructions that are productive of a sense of coherence and distinctiveness (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003).

The aim of this Special Issue is to look at sustainability from the “identity” perspective, nurturing reflections about the following questions:

• How and under which conditions do sustainability values, ideas, and rules become incarnate in individual and collective identities?
• What identity work can trigger this process?
• Which educational and transformational approaches and methods can be used to shape sustainable identities? How can they be evaluated?
• What relations between sustainable individual and collective identities can be traced?

Specifically, this Special Issue aims to explore and discuss contributions related to:

• Work/professional identity and sustainability: how do people develop sustainable working and living and embrace sustainability in shaping their identity at work?
• Community identity and sustainability: how does sustainability contribute to reframing the way people interpret and relate to places, territories, and contexts of life?
• Organizational identity and sustainability: how do organizations and managers review their roles and concrete practices towards a longer-term and more ethical approach towards people and the planet?

The Guest Editors would like to invite original research (both quantitative and qualitative), reviews, theoretical frameworks, methodological reflections, case studies, and protocols, from all disciplines, that critically explore the way in which people, organizations, and societies define and redefine their identity on the basis of sustainability orientations and values.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except for conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process.

Dr. Laura Galuppo
Dr. Silvia Ivaldi
Guest Editors

References:

1. Alvesson, M. (2014). The triumph of emptiness. Oxford: Oxford University press.
2. Banjeree, S. B. (2008). Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Critical Sociology 34(1), 51-79.
3. Galuppo, L., Gorli, M., Scaratti, G. Kaneklin, C. (2014). Building social sustainability: multi-stakeholder processes and conflict management. Social Responsibility Journal, 10(4). 685-701.
4. Galuppo, L.; Kajamaa, A.; Ivaldi, S.; Scaratti, G. (2019). Translating Sustainability into Action: A Management Challenge in FabLabs. Sustainability, 11, 1676
5. Greenwood, M. (2007). Stakeholder Engagement: Beyond
the Myth of Corporate Responsibility, Journal of Business Ethics, 74, 315-317
6. Hahn, T., Figge, F., Pinkse, J., Preuss, L. (2018). A Paradox Perspective on Corporate Sustainability: Descriptive, Instrumental, and Normative Aspects. Journal of Business Ethics, 148(2), 235-248.
7. Ivaldi, S., Bertè, F., Sorgi, S., Scaratti, G. (2019). Toward a Sustainable Future: The Case of the Municipality of Milan. Sustainability, 11, 876.
8. Sveningsson, S., & Alvesson, M. (2003). Managing Managerial Identities: Organizational Fragmentation, Discourse and Identity Struggle. Human Relations, 56(10), 1163–1193.

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

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