The Recursive Production of Unlabeled Social Sustainability

Sammanfattning

Social sustainability remains the least institutionalised pillar of the Triple Bottom Line. While organisations commit to people, planet and profit, the social dimension is consistently less visible and less reproduced in everyday practice than its environmental counterpart. This thesis examines how social sustainability is practised, recognised and reproduced in operational teams of a hospitality organisation, and under what conditions it moves from individual practice to institutionalised practice. Drawing on Giddens' structuration theory, Self-Determination Theory and Communities of Practice, a qualitative single-case study was conducted at The Summer, a Dutch boutique hotel group, through twelve interviews, two observations and internal ESG documentation. The findings show that social sustainability is already practised at the operational level but travels without a name, leaving it dependent on intrinsically motivated individuals rather than on structures that persist independently. The study identifies a recursive dynamic between motivated practice, shared vocabulary and enabling structures as the mechanism through which social sustainability either becomes, or fails to become institutionalised.