Natural Resource Management in the U.S. Arctic: Sustainable Organizing Through Communicative Practices

Abstract

This study advances a theoretical framework of sustainable organizing, grounded in the communicative practices of key organizational actors. I situate this study in the enactment of natural resource management (NRM) in the U.S. Arctic, drawing on qualitative fieldwork and in-depth interviews. The theoretical framework hinges on four iterative sensitizing concepts—stakeholder embeddedness in local–global ecologies, constitutive role of d/Discourse, rhetoric–practice tensions, and systemic risk–resilience—that guided data analysis. Findings revealed that participants communicatively constituted NRM in terms of structural challenges and best practices. NRM’s structural challenges were rooted in discursive closure of key perspectives through past events, routinization, and design; othering of important stakeholders; and framing institutional tension as conflict. Nevertheless, participants emphasized key decision-making, relationship-building, and risk-managing clusters that enabled NRM best practices benefiting both human and natural stakeholders. The empirical study thus extends the proposed theoretical framework by demonstrating context-specific practices that enact sustainable organizing.