Embedding environmental actions in time and space: The evolution of sustainability narratives

This study explores how organizations understand and make sense of their complex relationships with the natural environment. Using a structural approach to organizational narratives and building on an inductive analysis of the environmental discourses of 9 Canadian organizations from 1986 to 2010, we investigate which sustainability paradigm (weak or strong) they embrace when making sense of their interactions with the natural environment. We find that those that embrace a strong sustainability paradigm are better able to draw temporal and spatial connections with the society in which they are embedded. In addition, we find that spanning across spatiotemporal boundaries allow organizations to develop new capacities for learning and change