Sustainability management and internal sustainability communication in an MNC: The Millennials’ perspective
Sillanpää, Roosa (2020-03-25)
Sillanpää, Roosa
25.03.2020
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe202003259296
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe202003259296
Tiivistelmä
People are aware of the sustainability issues today and this has also impacted the business
world. Organizations need to consider how they deal with the sustainability aspect and how they
could succeed in managing sustainability through everyday business practices. This is especially
challenging for the MNCs as they have a dispersed workforce and they face different sustainability-related norms in different parts of the world. This thesis focuses on the employee perspective on organizational sustainability management. It is explored how the employees and to be more specific, the millennials, perceive sustainability management and its internal communication in an MNC. Also, it is examined how their expectations and experiences of these areas impact their participation in organizational sustainability-related objectives.
The theory in this thesis consists of the separate chapters on sustainability management, internal sustainability communication, and the millennials’ expectations for these two. The employee perspective and the MNC context are present in each of these chapters. Finally, the theoretical viewpoints are summed up and linked to each other.
The empirical part aims at creating new understandings of the topic area. Therefore, a qualitative research approach was used. The data collection method was a focus group research. There were two focus groups that consisted of 10 participants in total. The participants were millennials who had at least two years of working experience from MNCs. Moreover, this research applied qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis to organize and understand the data collected.
The results of this thesis indicate that the millennials’ expectations for sustainability management and its internal communication do not entirely correspond with their experiences, which has a negative impact on their participation in the organization’s sustainability-related objectives. They would like the sustainability to be more authentic and comprehensive. This includes especially the internal impacts of sustainability management. Also, they consider it to be of high importance that the core of the business is not unsustainable. As it comes to internal sustainability communication, the results suggest that there is a need to improve the visibility and understandability of sustainability as well as its relatedness to one’s job. Thus, there is a call for more communication and the communication processes should be supported in different ways to encourage the millennials to share their views and participate in organizational sustainability.
world. Organizations need to consider how they deal with the sustainability aspect and how they
could succeed in managing sustainability through everyday business practices. This is especially
challenging for the MNCs as they have a dispersed workforce and they face different sustainability-related norms in different parts of the world. This thesis focuses on the employee perspective on organizational sustainability management. It is explored how the employees and to be more specific, the millennials, perceive sustainability management and its internal communication in an MNC. Also, it is examined how their expectations and experiences of these areas impact their participation in organizational sustainability-related objectives.
The theory in this thesis consists of the separate chapters on sustainability management, internal sustainability communication, and the millennials’ expectations for these two. The employee perspective and the MNC context are present in each of these chapters. Finally, the theoretical viewpoints are summed up and linked to each other.
The empirical part aims at creating new understandings of the topic area. Therefore, a qualitative research approach was used. The data collection method was a focus group research. There were two focus groups that consisted of 10 participants in total. The participants were millennials who had at least two years of working experience from MNCs. Moreover, this research applied qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis to organize and understand the data collected.
The results of this thesis indicate that the millennials’ expectations for sustainability management and its internal communication do not entirely correspond with their experiences, which has a negative impact on their participation in the organization’s sustainability-related objectives. They would like the sustainability to be more authentic and comprehensive. This includes especially the internal impacts of sustainability management. Also, they consider it to be of high importance that the core of the business is not unsustainable. As it comes to internal sustainability communication, the results suggest that there is a need to improve the visibility and understandability of sustainability as well as its relatedness to one’s job. Thus, there is a call for more communication and the communication processes should be supported in different ways to encourage the millennials to share their views and participate in organizational sustainability.