Metaphorical Mapping for Sensemaking and Sensebreaking of Stakeholder Relations in Sustainability Frames

Abstract

This article develops a framework for managerial conceptualization of corporate sustainability–stakeholder relationships (CS-SR) for paradoxical frames. The embedded nature of the business case frame for sustainability and aligned CS-SR, and a lack of insight into CS-SR for a paradoxical frame, may impede implementing a paradoxical frame for sustainability. Therefore, this article offers an understanding of structural differences in CS-SR in a business case versus a paradoxical frame for sustainability in terms of agency and communion. It then presents conceptual metaphorical mapping as the cognitive mechanism for managerial conceptualization of CS-SR for a paradoxical frame. Identifying nurturant parenting as an apt metaphorical domain with a conceptually similar relational structure to CS-SR of the paradoxical frame and dissimilar from the business case frame, it presents a model where juxtaposing nurturant parenting with sustainability enables sensebreaking of CS-SR of the business case frame and sensemaking of CS-SR of the paradoxical frame.