From Workplace to Home : Translating Workplace Sustainability into Everyday Life

Sammanfattning

While organizations are increasingly investing in sustainability strategies, less is known about how workplace sustainability practices extend beyond organizational boundaries into employees' everyday lives. This study explores how employees at “The Decameron”, a Swedish furniture retailer, interpret and translate workplace sustainability practices into everyday domestic life. Using a qualitative single-case study with eleven semi-structured interviews across organizational roles, the study applies Institutional Theory, the Travel of Ideas framework, Giddens´perspective on self-identity, and Weick´s Sensemaking theory. The findings show that sustainability spillover emerges unevenly across employees and contexts, but shaped by personal values, organizational legitimacy, workplace culture, the domestic setting and everyday routines. While some employees integrated sustainable behaviors into their private lives, others selectively adapted or limited sustainability practices to the workplace. The study demonstrates that sustainability practices are actively interpreted and reconstructed as they move between work and home rather than transferred unchanged. The study contributes to existing research by conceptualizing sustainability spillover as a process of meaning-making and identity construction rather than direct transfer of behavior. The findings suggest that organizations seeking broader societal impact through sustainability initiatives must foster credible and meaningful sustainability practices that employees can integrate into everyday life.