%C Hamburg, Germany
%D 2020
%K discourse, grand narrative, narrative identity, identities, sustainability
%T Sustainability managers, facilitators and champions and a collective identity of becoming more sustainable in response to sustainability goals
%B Proceedings of the 36th European Group for Organizational Studies Colloquium
%V 36
%S EGOS Colloquium
%I European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS)
%L discovery10103728
%A N Sergeeva
%A SD Green
%O This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
%X Sustainability discourse pervadessocial, economic and politicalsystem. There has been a boom
of recent research into sustainability, covering different research questions and themes. Yet
there still remains little empirical research which explores the way sustainability is promoted
in the policy discourse and how it is interpreted in practice by individuals and firms. We adopt
narrative identity work to examine the ways in which sustainability managers in the UK
construction sector construct different self-identities in response to the grand narrative of
sustainability promoted at the sector. Based on conducted workshop with 15 participants and
subsequent narrative interviews, we demonstrate how these different self-identities and a
collective identity arise and inform responses to the grand narrative of sustainability. We
highlight narrative identity work as central to the enactments of responses to the sustainability
discourse