Sarah Ivory
University of Edinburgh
Legitimising sustainability: how practitioners gain legitimacy for sustainability within their organisation
While sustainability in business is gaining attention, there is a paucity of research addressing how and why practitioners legitimise sustainability within their organisations. Framed around Suchman’s (1995) ‘conformance, selection, manipulation’ legitimising strategies, empirical evidence from 51 Heads of Sustainability around the world addresses this gap. Legitimising individuals are found to be empowered, business-astute, and persistent, undertaking actions including networking, strategic framing, and differentiating legitimising strategies. They rely on conformance with existing short-term profit-maximisation most commonly, but many also select ‘amicable venues’ such as groups and projects, to legitimise other aspects of sustainability, often combining a number of different ‘selection’ strategies simultaneously. Some manipulation of entire organisational populations is evident, however this is more limited. Interestingly, a number of individuals display a complex interplay of three strategies. Preliminary evidence suggests a potential cycle of legitimising, whereby conformance forms the basis for selection, which forms the basis for manipulation.
Biography
Sarah Birrell Ivory began her career in the private sector, co-founding a company based in Singapore and Indonesia. She then undertook a pro bono placement at an international aid agency, working on their climate change response. Moving back to academia, she worked at the University of Edinburgh as a Research Fellow, focusing on business and climate change, as well as corporate sustainability. She designed and taught undergraduate, MSc and MBA courses. Sarah is also the Study Guide author and Unit Chair for a distance MBA course entitled ‘Corporate Sustainability’ based at Chifley Business School.
Sarah has a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) from the University of Melbourne, an MBA from Melbourne Business School and an MSc (By Research) from the University of Edinburgh. She was awarded the prestigious Rupert Murdoch Fellowship to pursue her studies at Melbourne Business School.
Sarah’s PhD explores how and why individuals legitimise corporate sustainability within their organisations. She will submit in December 2013, and aims to return to a career in academia thereafter.