Naturalizing Sustainability: How Industry Actors Make Sense of a Threatening Concept

Abstract In this chapter, we examine the interplay between external legitimacy judgments, internal identity beliefs, and conceptions of sustainability. Based on observation at industry events and interviews with key stakeholders, we examine how organizational actors interpret the concept of sustainability in civil aviation, an industry subject to intense legitimacy threat for its environmental impact. We find that the concept of sustainability is interpreted through a process of naturalization, by which conceptual ties to past practices are forged, and the concept becomes corrupted. We describe three mechanisms (relabeling, bundling, and zooming out) through which concept naturalization occurs, and we show how this process creates resonance between sustainability and an industry ethos, which captures the aspirations, ideals and values of the industry.