Numerous studies attempt to operationalize sustainability and seek to characterize objective, or at least standardized, metrics of sustainable conditions and/or operations. In this paper, we suggest that sustainability is better viewed as an emergent quality, defined in terms of specific institutions and situations. Observations from the water sector suggest that sustainability is not merely a matter of -bolting on technologies‖, but a complex synthesis of institutional factors, social value perspectives, technologies and engineered artifacts, and natural or environmental conditions. The pursuit of sustainability appears to involve a process of broad-scale organizational transformation, a transformation that can vary significantly from utility to utility. Owing to this contingent quality, we suggest that sustainability is productively understood as a narrative construct. We illustrate how two types of discourse are particularly critical to the establishment and perpetuation of meaningful sustainability programs in water utilities and municipalities: (1) constitutive discourse, which frames and enables new ways of conceiving a particular state of affairs; and (2) transactional discourse, which provides a medium for participatory deliberation and enables the sharing of instructions and information necessary to carry out a transformation from the status quo to an envisioned future state. Although physio-chemical properties, ecological processes and thresholds, and technological factors must inform deliberations, we suggest that the realization of sustainability is at base a narrative enterprise. Observations articulated in this essay were derived through an ensemble research approach including a targeted literature review, a three-phase survey of 18 U.S. water utilities, and a workshop with water sector professionals, regulators, and experts in sustainability and organizational change. OPEN ACCESS
There is great interest within the water sector regarding the prospect of sustainable operations. Water utilities tend to be conservative entities characterized by organizational inertia, making achievement of sustainable operations a challenge of cultural transformation. We suggest that the construct of "wicked" problems provides a useful heuristic for leaders and other champions attempting to transform water utility culture to achieve sustainable operations. We observe that the cultural transformation toward sustainable water operations seems to be facilitated through the exercise of particular leadership traits, including the ability to craft and communicate a sustainability narrative, willingness and ability to diffuse authority, and an adaptive or learning-oriented outlook. Based on literature review and case research with US water utilities, we identify factors that can act either to enable or constrain efforts to transform utility culture so as to be more amenable to sustainable operations. We explain how each of these factors pertains to the circumstances of water utilities and provide a matrix with which utility leaders and sustainability champions can enact a plan of organizational transformation. We conclude by outlining research topics that flow from our arguments and observations. KEYWORDS organizational culture, organizational transformation, sustainability, transformative leadership, wicked problem Nature and Culture 7(3), Winter 2012: 285-313 © Berghahn Journals
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