Institutionalized: Organizational obstacles to communicating sustainability

Abstract

This paper narrates two types of institutional obstacles to advocacy of sustainability. The authors' experiences as advocates for sustainability curriculum and programming at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology demonstrates two impediments to communication that can be generalized to other institutional contexts. Differences in values and language practices among advocates and audiences can preempt both the implementation of sustainability proposals and full sharing of the objectives that define them. The contested meanings of “sustainability” in academic and managerial discourse communities contribute in particularly important ways to these failures.