Sustainable work: A conceptual map for a social-ecological approach

Abstract

In this article, we map the concept of “sustainable work” in the international policy and academic literatures. On this basis, we develop a multidimensional framework, arguing that sustainable work needs to integrate ecological and social sustainability, address work beyond paid labour, attend to local and global interdependencies and make its normative foundations explicit. Articulating these sometimes conflicting requirements in a context-sensitive way calls for a (re-)politicization of work. Following a capability-based approach, we argue that the literature on sustainable work should make the case for the democratization of work on multiple levels, to give workers and other stakeholders a voice.