Oral Presentation by Luca P. Vecchio¹, Laura Galuppo²
¹ University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy ² Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Italy
TIME: Thursday, 16 July, 14:30 – 16:00
Location: Room 3
Session: 23
Abstract
The literature on organizational sustainability consistently underscores the pivotal role of managerial support in the implementation of sustainability-oriented initiatives (Kutzschbach et al., 2021). While managerial support alone is insufficient to ensure a transition toward sustainable organizational processes, it represents an enabling condition, given the strategic positioning of management in shaping organizational trajectories and decision-making processes. Within this framework, work and organizational psychology has primarily focused on managers’ motivations, attitudes, and cognitions related to sustainability, highlighting factors such as personal values, concerns for organizational image, and beliefs about sustainability as a driver of competitiveness (Kumar et al., 2025). Research has also addressed resistance to sustainability initiatives, often linked to perceived economic costs and limited technical competencies. Finally, scholars have discussed how managers often develop defensive responses to avoid sustainability tensions, particularly those arising from the simultaneous needs of profit maximisation and environmental responsibility (Ferns et al., 2019). The present study shifts the analytical focus from explicit attitudes and decision-making processes to the subjective and affective dimensions of managerial work, with particular attention to how managers live, talk about and interpret sustainability in relation to their role and to the contradictions experienced in addressing people-planet-profit oriented demands. An in-depth interview study was conducted with top managers and owners operating in the logistics sector. The interviews explored how managers gave meaning to environmental sustainability and, crucially, the kind of tensions and contradictions experienced in addressing demands of profit maximization and environmental responsibility simultaneously. Interview analysis aims to investigate managers’ awareness of these contradictions, foregrounding the deep lived experiences of tension, ambivalence, and conflict that shape their sense of professional agency. Particular attention is devoted to how such tensions are psychologically managed through discursive and meaning-making processes and to their implications for managers’ orientations toward supporting or constraining organizational change toward sustainability. The study is ongoing, and preliminary findings will be presented at the conference.