Corporate sustainability is a priority for organisations, but the nature of the enabling intra-organisational activities, processes and managerial agency is not well understood. In this study, we examine the activity and agency of corporate sustainability managers through a narrative approach and the novel theoretical lens of ‘sustainability work’: purposeful and strategic activities to shape the social-symbolic context such that social and environmental outcomes are prioritised. Analysing how individuals across a range of diverse organisations and industries frame their activity, we identify three overlapping and co-occurring broad subsets of sustainability work: goal-directed, other-directed and self-directed. Through our notion of sustainability work, we contribute by recasting managerial agency in the enabling of sustainability as occurring in the social-symbolic realm and highlighting the implications in both theory and practice for the professionalisation of sustainability.

JEL Classification: M10, M14

公司的可持续性是组织的首要任务，但是人们对组织内部活动，流程和管理机构的本质并不了解。在本研究中，我们通过叙事方法和“可持续性工作”的新颖理论视角考察了企业可持续性管理者的活动和代理：旨在形成社会符号环境的有目的和战略性活动，从而优先考虑社会和环境成果。通过分析各种不同组织和行业中的个人如何组织其活动，我们确定了可持续性工作的三个重叠且同时发生的广泛子集：目标导向型，其他导向型和自我导向型。通过我们的可持续发展理念，

JEL分类：M10，M14