Abstract
Implementation of sustainable development goals has long caused a challenge for all stakeholders due to the complexity occasioned by the ever-evolving society, the problems facing the transient society and the level of addressing the problems. As such, strategy has become an elemental tool for survival of organizations with a need to better understand how strategy is done, the participants involved in the doing of strategy, how the said participants go about carrying out the doing of the strategy, the tools incorporated and overall impact in the designing of strategy. Research has shown that external actors play a substantial role in the adoption of corporate sustainability strategies. However, how the dynamic between internal and external actor’s influences the translation of sustainability strategies into sustainability outcomes is not yet fully understood. The intention of this study was to help bridge the knowledge gap on the attributes and discursive strategies that extra-organizational actors, in particular consultants, embody and how this is relevant in the translation of sustainability strategies into corporate outcomes, in addition to expounding knowledge on the legitimation of sustainability practices. This study draws on strategy-as-practice theory and the sociological construct of the Simmelian stranger to investigate these questions, exploring the sustainability praxis and practices that are of current relevance within corporations. The study positions strategy as practice theory as the ideal approach to address the complexity occasioned by sustainability, which makes it challenging to translate externally generated sustainability guidelines into corporate strategies. In addition, the Simmelian stranger, a concept rooted in classical relational sociology, has been used to understand consultants’ attributes and characteristics as special social actors who are neither internal nor external actors to institutions. There exist various forms and types of identities beyond institutional identity, in particular, social identity, that do not feature prominently in organizational strategies' discourse, but nevertheless influence which actors are granted access to selective types of discourse. Certain actor identities within their social actor network have been touted as displaying great power to mediate strategy discourse, specifically consultants and distinctly sustainability consultants. However, the how and the why these actors can wield such discursive power in relation to their counterparts remains yet unexplored. Simmel’s stranger addresses various forms and types of identity by approaching identity through a relational aspect, whereby “nearness” and “farness” is addressed through discursive social distance, which determines who is admitted to various types of discursive events. In practical application to the institutional context, this then determines agency, as those identities that maintain a degree of “farness” are seen to have the relational attributes of mobility, abstraction and objectivity relative to their counterparts.The study defined sustainability stakeholders both internal and external to organizations within sub-Saharan Africa. The data collection combined semi-structured interviews—including consultants, government practitioners, and industry (corporate) actors—with a netnographic analysis of LinkedIn profiles. The netnography focused on sustainability professionals operating in sub-Saharan Africa during the post-Millennium Development Goals period (2015–2022), contributing to the triangulation of data sources.
Data analysis followed a sequential explanatory approach, combining grounded theory to identify recurrent sustainability praxis and practices, with critical discourse analysis to explore their implications for stakeholders’ identities, agency, and roles within sustainability. The study identified key sustainability stakeholders’ identities as critical for legitimizing sustainability strategies by influencing the co-enactment of multiple strategies, demonstrating the strategic reflexivity needed for multi-stakeholder collaboration. Actors embodying multiple identities, both internal and external to organizations—particularly sustainability consultants—play a central role in moderating discourse through their devolved agency. These consultants transcend traditional organizational boundaries, acting as hybrid actors neither fully internal nor external. Additionally, sustainability identities and the activities of these extra-aggregate actors have the greatest impact on achieving intended sustainability outcomes.
Key findings include: (1) legitimization of sustainability strategies requires moving beyond moral legitimation to harmonize diverse stakeholder goals, enhancing collaboration; (2) simultaneous co-enactment of sustainability and mainstream organizational strategies is achievable through reconciliation of tensions via strategy reconciliation techniques; (3) sustainability stakeholders’ identities shape the co-enactment of strategies and enable strategic reflexivity; and (4) hybrid actors with multiple identities significantly influence sustainability discourse and outcomes.
This study expands Strategy-as-Practice theory’s understanding of individual actors and micro-level acts by revealing how strategies are enacted through complex, multiple actor identities and reconciled with mainstream organizational priorities within multi-stakeholder contexts. It also contributes to corporate sustainability literature by broadening the concept of legitimacy and emphasizing the pivotal role of hybrid sustainability actors in shaping sustainability practices and outcomes.
| Date of Award | 16 Jun 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Diego Vazquez-Brust (Supervisor) & Hamid Foroughi (Supervisor) |