Abstract
Sustainability is a complex challenge, and a very topical one during this climate crisis. Day nursery managers in a group of nurseries with the same sustainable ethos, policies and procedures appeared to introduce sustainability initiatives with variable success. This research set out to understand why there were differences, and as a result make some recommendations for what could be done to improve day nursery managers sustainability. 4 focus groups and 22 interviews were held with nursery managers from October 2022 to January 2023, using semi-structured pre-communicated questions. The empirical information gained was thematically analysed (Braun & Clarke, 2022) and then abductively analysed through the lens of sensemaking and sensegiving theory (Cristofaro 2022; Weick, 1995 and Perrow (1996).Key findings revealed that nursery managers approached sustainability differently. Their perceptions and sustainability actions were impacted in varying ways which were collated into the themes of scarcities, the journey, learning, and compliance. A taxonomy of sustainability was created to support nursery managers to engage in more comprehensive discourse going forward.
The managers used predominantly immanent and prospective sensemaking (Sandberg & Tsoukas, 2014) and both sensemade and sensegave in collaboration with their stakeholders including colleagues and those accessing their settings. Managers’ sensemaking and sensegiving developed over time (Turner et al., 2023) for example, with successive discourse with their line managers and colleagues, and during mentoring, coaching and training sessions, thus managers observed that those managers who had been in the exemplar organisation for longer were further along the sustainability journey. New insights into the links between the managers individual frameworks, provocations and daily actions with their opportunities to sensemake and sensegive led to recommendations on how managers might improve their day-to-day and future sustainability actions.
| Date of Award | 6 May 2026 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
|
| Supervisor | Matthew Anderson (Supervisor), Le Bo (Supervisor) & Stephen Williams (Supervisor) |
Cite this
- Standard