Abstract for: Sustainability in practice: a case study on the interrelations between symbolic initiatives and employee engagement

Operationalizing sustainability in a corporate context remains challenging in practice. Literature suggests that employees are pivotal in fostering organizational goals. In this context, there is increasing academic interest in investigating how employees’ engagement is affected by their perceptions of the sustainability efforts and commitments demonstrated by their firms. However, the dynamic nature of employee’s perceptions and their engagement in sustainability is still underexplored from a system’s perspective. Therefore, based on the qualitative analysis of 45 in-depth semi-structured interviews and qualitative survey responses, this research explores the causal links that support the proliferation of symbolic sustainability activities in the case company, and how such structures affect employee engagement in the topic. This is achieved through qualitative System Dynamics (SD) modeling, using Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD). The results of this study will contribute to the fields of corporate sustainability and organizational behavior by offering insightful perspectives on the causal structures potentially inherent to sustainability transformations.