Living With Contradictions: The Dynamics of Senior Managers’ Identity Tensions in Relation to Sustainability
Abstract
In this article, we investigate how senior managers located in Northern Europe in the energy and power industry coordinate their recognition of sustainability challenges with other things they say and do. Identity theory is used to examine the fine-grained work through which the managers navigate identities and potentially competing narratives. In contrast with other studies we find that pursuing cohering identities and resolving potential tensions and contradictions does not appear to matter for most of the managers. We explore the dynamics of how managers live with apparent contradictions and tensions without threat to their narrative coherence. We extend existing research into managerial identities and sustainability by showing how managers combine different potentially contrasting identity types, identifying nine discursive processes through which the majority of managers distance and deflect sustainability issues away from themselves and their companies, and, showing the contrasting identity dynamics in the case of one manager to whom narrative coherence becomes important and prompts alternative action.
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Biographies
Stephen Allen is a Lecturer in the Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Group at Hull University Business School. By working at the intersections of ideas about reflexivity, sustainability and leadership his research explores how managers make sense of and take action for sustainability.
Judi Marshall is a Professor Emerita of Leadership and Learning at Lancaster University Management School, which she joined in 2008 having moved there from the University of Bath School of Management. She has been involved in management education for sustainability since the early 1990s, especially developing the master’s programme in Responsibility and Business Practice at Bath. Her publications have spanned managerial job stress, women in management, careers, leadership for sustainability, action research, and more.
Mark Easterby-Smith is a distinguished Professor of Management Learning at Lancaster University, and former president of the British Academy of Management. He has written extensively on management research methodology, organizational learning, dynamic capabilities, and management in China. His current research interests are in the links between organizational learning and dynamic capability within large and small organizations, and the problems of learning and knowledge transfer within international companies.
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Article first published online: April 15, 2015
Issue published: September 2015
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