Making Sense of Responsibility in Rural Sustainability Work

1 Introduction

Echoing international demands for sustainability raised by the UN (United Nations) and the EU (European Union), Swedish state authorities are increasingly demanding that different parts of the public sector contribute to a more sustainable future (European Commission 2020; SOU 2014). Public-sector organizations, such as public housing companies, need to adapt their operations to national visions, strategies, and goals, for instance, aiming to limit climate impact and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. In this case study, we analyze how such demands are unfolding in the sustainability work taking shape in a public housing company operating in a rural municipality in southern Sweden.

Theoretical and societal debates on sustainability often apply multiple, even contradictory, definitions of sustainability (Åhlfeldt 2019). Sustainability is often defined in terms of economic, ecological, and social dimensions (Edwards 2019). In some cases, the ecological dimension is seen as fundamental; in other cases, sustainability is assumed to be possible only at the intersection of all three dimensions (see Rosen 2018). Sometimes, sustainability is also assumed to include other dimensions, such as cultural and political dimensions (Monriel-Hernández et al. 2024) .

In the article, the term “sustainability work” refers to everyday activities within the company intended to contribute to the translation of a sustainability agenda. Locally, sustainability is often conceptualized by adapting it to the needs and opportunities of existing practices (Keskitalo and Andersson 2017). By being open to local interpretation, sustainability is frequently subject to criticism for drawing on vague definitions (Epstein and Buhovac 2010; Lee and Hageman 2016; Lind and Mjörnell 2015). However, this tendency to be vague has also been portrayed as beneficial, as it makes the sustainability concept malleable and open to reinterpretation (Meadowcroft 2013).

Rural municipalities often lack policy documents and expertise regarding sustainability issues in welfare organizations providing services (Sävje and Baars 2022). Making sense of local demands for sustainability then commonly becomes a matter for single organizations and their employees. Local conditions, needs, and opportunities influence the sensemaking process, shaping how people in these organizations think and act (Flyvberg and Richardsson 1998). Limited economic resources have been presented as a main challenge in rural municipalities, commonly resulting in a need to prioritize what are considered core activities - such as property management - over sustainability work (Sävje and Baars 2022). When making sense of sustainability, employees also must deal with contradictions between different sustainability dimensions (Biermann, Kanie, and Kim 2017; Fenton 2016; Gustafsson, Hedström, and Vasilev 2018). In rural municipalities, investments in economic growth may need to be prioritized, despite being at the expense of ecological sustainability goals (Sävje and Baars 2022).

Previous research has also identified the importance of management in local sustainability work (Epstein and Buhovac 2010; Frandsten, Morsing, and Vallentin 2013; Lee and Hageman 2016; Searcy 2012). Here, we acknowledge that these studies identify the importance of a specific management ideal in countries such as Sweden (cf. Sandberg and Targama 2007); in many ways, this recalls the discussion of governmentality, and demands for softer forms of governance intended to create intrinsic motivation in employees (Foucault 2003; Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006). Management, in this case, is supposed to influence employees’ mindsets and values, rather than directly controlling their behavior in detail (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2012; Kunda 1992).

While research on Scandinavian working life in general often stresses the importance of responsible, committed, and active employees (Hameduddin and Lee 2021; Kilhammar and Ellström 2015; Tengblad 2010; Wickelgren et al. 2012), studies specifically addressing demands for sustainability have also shown that employees’ involvement, as well as their mindsets and behaviors, influence the process and outcome of organizational sustainability initiatives (Ghavempour and Vale 2019; McClinchey 2021; Schulz-Knappe et al. 2019; Toolis 2021; Yamin et al. 2019). In this process, managers are presented as key resources in realizing the ideal of responsible, committed, and active employees (Jönsson and Strannegård 2009).

In this article, we focus on how employees providing welfare services set out to take responsibility for initiatives intended to contribute to a sustainable future. The article examines how employees make sense of sustainability (cf. Weick 1995, 2001) as they internalize sustainability work in their everyday work practices. We ask ourselves how managerial aspirations trickle down, and to what extent employees are malleable when they set out to take responsibility in such sustainability initiatives (cf. Hansen Löfstrand and Jacobsson 2022). As previously stated, employees play vital roles in local sustainability work. Previous research has, however, paid little attention to how employees try to act as subjects developing their work practices in a more sustainable direction (see Badenhoop 2018; Mulcahy and Healy 2023; Rose 2023; Tetiana, Miniajlo, and Miasoid 2021). This article helps fill this gap by exploring how employees make sense of their own responsibility to turn demands for sustainability into action in everyday work practices surrounded by rural challenges.

This study aims to deepen our knowledge of how employees constitute themselves as responsible subjects addressing different sustainability initiatives in a rural setting. The following research question guided the analysis:

1. How do employees make sense of themselves as responsible actors capable of responding to managerial aspirations for the sustainability of the services they deliver?

2 Theoretical Framework

Previous research shows how employees’ internalization of stakeholders’ demands in organizations is usually a messy process rarely proceeding according to plan (Bruskin 2019; Carollo and Guerci 2017; Schwarz, Bouckenooghe, and Vakola 2021). This also appears to be the case when responsibility for different sustainability measures is on the agenda (Arnold et al. 2022). The fact that responsibility is often confused with accountability may explain some of this messiness. This confusion represents a failure to distinguish between the obligation to perform a task satisfactorily (responsibility) and the obligation to ensure that the task is done satisfactorily (accountability) (Bergsteiner 2012; Grafström, Göthberg, and Windell 2010; McGrath and Whitty 2018).

In addition, responsibility is a multifaceted concept with several dimensions. The temporal dimension of responsibility refers to the past and/or the future, meaning that people can take responsibility for something either that has already happened or in anticipation of consequences. The socio–technical dimension implies that responsibility is constructed and enforced mostly by socio–technical devices, such as regulations, rankings, and sustainability reports. The relational dimension acknowledges that responsibility involves various relations among actors (Arnold et al. 2022), also reflecting different ways of introducing responsibility. Some define responsibility as being assigned to an actor (Lindholm 2003). In this article, we lean toward responsibility as being assigned to employees by management, but we recognize that it need not necessarily be imposed top–down. Responsibility can also be created in response to, for example, local needs and expectations on site or employees’ own values (Bergsteiner 2012; Bergsteiner and Avery 2011; Johansson 1998). We also acknowledge that responsibility can vary between employees and groups in an organization (Arnold et al. 2022; Johansson 1998). Employees can sometimes regard responsibility as desirable, meaning that they want to become involved; at other times, employees can experience responsibility as burdensome, wanting to avoid it (Grafström, Göthberg, and Windell 2010; Hällsten 2003; Rupp et al. 2018).

The introduction of organizational initiatives often entails a desire for employees to actively internalize and engage with different managerial aspirations (Hansen Löfstrand and Jacobsson 2022). Managers delegating responsibility can encourage employees to develop new self-images and perspectives on work, leading to commitment and new ways of acting (Andersson and Tengblad 2015; Stockhult 2005; Wickelgren et al. 2012). However, employees do not always act in line with governance attempts. Some researchers have argued that resistance is a natural and legitimate response to any such change, and a way of processing managerial ideas. Accordingly, resistance has also been described as a sign of engagement (Ford and Ford 2010; Ford, Ford, and D’Amelio 2008), allowing us to understand resistance among employees as contributing to the process of internalizing responsibility.

As we explore how employees respond to governance attempts (cf. Foucault 2003; Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006), we acknowledge that subjects are not passively formed, but actively change and reproduce themselves in social interactions shaped by different social settings (Terkelsen 2009). We also acknowledge that the emergence of responsibility for sustainability initiatives among employees requires that they consider prioritized actions meaningful and legitimate (cf. Abrahamsson and Andersen Aarum 2005). In other words, becoming responsible actors must make sense to employees (cf. Weick 1995, 2001). Sensemaking is a process that seeks to enable action by creating plausible interpretations of something new and elusive. The plausibility of various interpretations is tested in interaction with others and through action. The outcomes of such testing determine whether an interpretation is accepted, changed, or rejected in favor of more plausible interpretations (Anacona 2011; Christianson 2019). Sensemaking and action are thus intertwined as our perceptions and understandings affect how we act (Christianson 2019).

In the analysis, Weick’s (1995, 2001) concept of sensemaking is influenced by Foucauldian conceptualization of power. Sensemaking can be considered the founding concept of the analysis, as it begins with the wider exploration of how respondents perceive their own responsibility to act, in other words to be or become responsible subjects. This part of the analysis lays a foundation for the analysis, before invoking Foucault’s conceptual apparatus to capture aspects of power. We acknowledge that employees’ responses to management are a matter not only of governance, but also of subjectification and self-formation (Foucault 1982). As Arnold et al. (2022) have stated, responsibility implies responsibilization, a constitution of the self. As employees make sense of themselves as responsible actors, they will try to define themselves as subjects conducting themselves in accordance with new purposes (Carpenter 2020; Foucault 1982). Foucauldian elements make it possible to analyze not just the delegation of power, but also the internalization of governance among the employees who become subjects of governance. When doing so, we acknowledge that the power relation between managers and employees is dynamic (Foucault 2002), not fixed and hierarchal (cf. Weber 1971).

In the analysis, we also pay attention to how the rural context conditions the sensemaking process and how employees may make themselves into responsible subjects (cf. La Fuente et al. 2022; Van Renswouw et al. 2023). In practice, making sense of concepts such as sustainability is seen as a process that occurs over a long period, and that is repeatedly adapted to suit different interests and actors constituting the local context (Béland et al. 2022; Morris and Lancaster 2006; Seppälä et al. 2023). By looking at the local significance of these interests and actors, it is possible to identify key power relations and to recognize how power relations differ between contexts (cf. Franzén 2010). The context thus consists of premises for how employees should or even can behave in different places, shaping their working selves, who they are at work, and how they understand their working identities (Halford 2008).

3 Setting and Methodology

4 Results

Management of the public housing company emphasized that sustainability work was nothing new in the company’s operations. Addressing sustainability issues was presented as something they had been doing for a long time and had mastered: “We have done a lot of things for a long time, but maybe we haven’t talked about them as sustainability,” said one manager. Management intended to capitalize on strategies and practices that were already in place, and also to develop the company’s sustainability work. Management’s ambition was to do this by adopting a bottom–up approach, and they were eager to state that “everyone [in the company] should play their part.” Employees were thus expected to engage in sustainability work but were not instructed how to do so. As one manager put it, it was “up to each property manager to bring sustainability into the work.” Management relied on employees’ own capacity to contribute, expecting them to have the ability to act independently. Such an approach was crucial to the management of the company, as illustrated by one manager stating that:

People in our company have far-reaching responsibilities. The beauty of it is that you are responsible for doing something. It is easy to see problems that someone else must solve, but in our organization, you are responsible for constantly improving.

There were sustainability goals in the company, but management expressed a high level of confidence in the employees by stating that it was “better to describe the goal than to describe in detail how to get there.” This meant that there was openness to employees taking different paths to achieve the sustainability goals that had been set. At the same time, strategies were used to encourage employees to become involved in sustainability work, such as education activities. Thus, management tried to steer employees to take responsibility and engage in sustainability activities. When investigating how employees responded to these managerial aspirations and made sense of themselves as responsible actors who could contribute to sustainability work in the company, two main modes of responding were identified: while some employees struggled to make sense of responsibility, others recognized already existing responsibility in their everyday work practices. These two modes of responding are elaborated on in Sections 4.1 and 4.2.

5 Discussion

This article has investigated sustainability work in a public housing company in a rural municipality. The way company management avoided direct and detailed control of employees’ behaviors and instead relied on employees’ independence and capacity to contribute and engage in sustainability work relates to the Foucauldian concept of governmentality (Foucault 2003; Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006). The article shows how employees make sense of themselves as responsible actors (cf. Weick 1995, 2001) capable of responding to managerial aspirations for sustainable welfare services in a rural setting, that is, the article identifies how they make themselves into responsible subjects in relation to different sustainability initiatives (cf. Foucault 1982). The results identify two main modes of responding to management aspirations, which can also be linked to the emergence of two types of subjects.

Some employees, mostly administrative staff, made themselves into struggling selves as they worked hard to make sense of their responsibility. Others, like the property managers, emerged as habitual selves making sense of their responsibility by recognizing existing ways to contribute to sustainable development in their everyday work. The habitual selves found it easy to internalize and ultimately translate the company’s governance into action (cf. Czarniawska and Joerges 1996). These employees did not have to make sense of anything new or elusive (cf. Anacona 2011), as they made sense of themselves as responsible actors by linking their responsibility to existing habits and well-institutionalized ways of working. As Table 1 illustrates, we can also identify varieties of these two types of subject in the results. Overall, the results depict four different responses to management aspirations, illustrating a wide range of ways to make sense of responsibility (cf. Johansson 1998).

The habitual selves primarily consisted of property managers or other staff who conducted work through local practices outside HQ, while the struggling selves worked in the office inside HQ. However, the table also shows that the analysis identifies further nuances both within and across each of these different subjects. Independently of employees’ main response to management aspirations and their everyday work practice, they could, for instance, assume a critical approach or move on to take sustainability initiatives of their own. A critical approach might easily be mistaken for resistance, but in the case of the habitual selves, we should emphasize that the employees instead emerge as subjects contributing to sustainability initiatives, although they could become critical (cf. Rolandsson 2023). In turn, the struggling selves manifested their critique by calling for directions. Their response can thus be seen as a sign of engagement or a way to manage their struggle to make sense of their responsibility (cf. Ford and Ford 2010; Ford, Ford, and D’Amelio 2008).

All four responses shown in Table 1 can be seen as formations of responsible subjects (cf. Foucault 1982), allowing us to understand how the employees actively engaged in internalizing managerial aspirations for sustainable welfare services (cf. Hansen Löfstrand and Jacobsson 2022). Our results show how employees are not easily malleable in internalizing management ambitions for them to take responsibility in sustainability initiatives. Responsibility was not always self-evident in practice (Hällsten 2003; Grafström, Göthberg, and Windell 2010). From a Foucauldian perspective, subjects must be understood as products of practices and power relations (Foucault 1982). The results illustrate variations in employees’ sensemaking processes, due to variations in rural practices. Looking closer at the results, they not only indicate a rural pattern but also depict the interplay between various practices and relational dimensions of responsibility (cf. Arnold et al. 2022).

We noticed some tension between management and employees at the HQ, where we met the struggling selves, but we also identified agreement between management and employees in the residential areas in the town center, where we met the habitual selves. Furthermore, the analysis identified a vague relation between management and employees in peripheral areas, where the distance from management gave space for autonomous sustainability initiatives. In less prioritized parts of the municipality, employees often engaged in sustainability work by taking initiatives of their own and exploiting their maneuvering room (cf. Terkelsen 2009). This type of subject, the habitual initiative selves, diverges from established discourses about actors in rural areas as being static, obsolete, and regressive (SOU 2014:6).

The results also diverge from a conventional Foucauldian conceptualization of managerial power as urging people to discipline themselves at a distance by putting them in situations in which they do not know whether or when they are being observed (Foucault 1977). Employees working in peripheral areas, beyond the eyes of management in this study, described how it was instead almost impossible for them not to think in terms of sustainability due to, for example, long distances from services and limited budgets (cf. the temporal dimension of responsibility, Arnold et al. 2022). The results relate to previous research, depicting how residents in rural areas tend to act more independently and have a greater commitment to local society (Cras 2017; Cras et al. 2022), and linking concepts such as engagement, creativity, and innovation especially to rural areas (Bjerke and Johansson 2022; DuBois and Pugh 2020; Meili and Shearmur 2019; Wennberg 2019; Wincent et al. 2015).

6 Conclusions

Based on the results, we conclude that the rural context conditions how the employees shape themselves as responsible subjects. To some degree, their way of making sense of themselves as responsible for sustainability initiatives depended on connections with the local communities, beyond the company’s and management’s power strategies (cf. Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006). However, we also conclude that the employees’ sensemaking processes were shaped by various premises, resulting in various responses to management aspirations.

These findings all enabled the article to address a lack of knowledge of subject formations in organizational sustainability initiatives, and to contribute to research on sustainability work in the public sector. Previous studies have mainly addressed subject formations in relation to education (see, e.g., Rose 2023; Tetiana, Miniajlo, and Miasoid 2021) and citizenship (see, e.g., Badenhoop 2018; Mulcahy and Healy 2023). The article also contributes to rural research, as social science studies have traditionally been conducted in urban areas (Pelucha and Kasahov 2019), by suggesting that the way employees constitute themselves as responsible subjects must be understood from a rural perspective. The rural context conditions employees’ behaviors and what actions they consider meaningful (cf. La Fuente et al. 2022; Van Renswouw et al. 2023; Vitiello and Willcocks 2020). Transferability in practice can then be considered most relevant for organizations conducting sustainability work in rural areas. As rural areas are heterogeneous (The Swedish Board of Agriculture 2019), similarities with the current setting and conceptualization of sustainability (see 3.1) are conductive to transferability (cf. Campbell 1986).

Linking the process of subject formation to sensemaking can be seen as a theoretical contribution, as the combination enables sensitivity to a broader range of organizing elements. By allowing the analysis to focus not solely on power issues recognized by the Foucauldian perspective, this enabled the analysis to identify, for instance, how staff in the peripheral and less prioritized parts of the municipality, despite the absence of continuous management and delegation of resources, found it easy to make sense of and internalize sustainability initiatives. I therefore stress the importance of looking into the broader societal context in future research, to explore different types of subject formations dependent on processes beyond managerial measures. It would be particularly interesting to further investigate contextual variations in responsibility between centers and peripheries, linking to discussions and research on local urbanization (Erlingsson et al. 2021).