Sustainability Management in an Organizational Context: Interrelating Sensemaking, Narratives, and Strategic Decision-making

Historically, it makes sense for organizations, particularly those surrounded by extremist approaches to sustainability, to prioritize evolutionary and instrumental decision logics. These logics reinforce immediate financial gains from investments on social and environmental spheres. However, this attitude is insufficient for meeting relational and spacetime requirements that are inherent in the strategic and systematic management of sustainability pillars (economic, environmental, and social). To cope with this challenge, customized and interrelated decisions are required to consider individuals and different time scales. Based on the contributions of the sensemaking and narrative approaches, this study sheds light on the alternative senses of the decision-making process and presents them in different frameworks.