Robert Perey

This Special Issue utilizes a transdisciplinary lens to analyse how environment-related problems are being framed and communicated in different settings

Traditionally, wasted resources are considered a burden that imposes a cost on organizations. However, ecological sustainability principles underpinning the linked discourses of industrial ecology and the Circular Economy conceptualize waste as intrinsically valuable. Our research identified exemplar business organizations that had each changed their business models to resolve the tension of waste as a burden and/or resource. Synthesizing these cases, we found these organizations applied systems thinking to reframe their product and service offerings and developed material circular flows in their business models. Analysis of how our exemplar organizations changed their business models to tackle pressing sustainability issues and to resolve the burden–resource tension show that the focus of change is on reconceptualizing their understanding of the role of waste in the value chain of their products and services. This altered understanding of waste as a resource across their value networks initiated negotiations with their existing suppliers to also modify their supply chain practices.

This paper closely examines how a particular individual makes sense of sustainability and how detailed analysis of enactments of sustainability at the individual level can contribute to understanding organisational-level enactment of sustainability practices. Taking a narrative approach, this paper selects and analyses one interview to understand how that person is responding to sustainability initiatives in her organisation. The findings suggest that the complex processes of meaning construction that underpin the enactment of sustainability involve identity validation, narrative support and reduction of polysemy. The paper argues that to boost the chances of success when implementing sustainability, organisations need to establish discursive space to engage with and support these three processes of sense-making. Methodologically, the paper demonstrates how a single interview/narrative can be analysed to progress the understanding of a complex, ambiguous and paradoxical problem like sustainability.