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Considering the population density of urban areas, their levels of consumption and emissions, their influence on social equality and inclusion, and the resources and power allocated to urban actors, it is important to examine how municipalities organize work as they proceed to implement Agenda 2030 and to what effect. A systematic literature review is used to analyse 77 articles, published between 2017 and 2022, that examine the sustainability activities of municipal actors in Europe. Two themes are identified and explained: a) a paradigm shift in local government; b) the mobilization of socio-technical approaches (e.g., smart cities and regenerative land use). Also, the limitations of the literature and some areas for future research are discussed: research comparing practices across regions and countries; research analysing the interaction of different initiatives within a municipality; and research examining the role of municipal companies.

The aim of this article is to contribute to research on responsible management by developing knowledge on how managing responsibly together in a Top Management Team (TMT) may be accomplished, thus complementing research in the area that focuses on the work of individual managers. To this end, we mobilize the concept of obligation to characterize what emerges as what a TMT needs to respond to. Having followed the TMT for a municipal company working together in meetings over time, we propose that three accomplishments (making the obligation present, making the obligation enable action and accounting for the obligation) shape how an obligation is made to matter. This is no linear process, but rather it unfolds in a series of materializations of the obligation in text and talk, as the TMT goes about its work. The article thus provides a contribution to research on responsible management but also has practical consequences for developing how a TMT works in order to address the urgent demands for change related to sustainable development.MAD statementIn this article, we develop knowledge on how managing responsibly together may be accomplished in a Top Management Team (TMT). Besides adding to the responsible management literature, we also provide theoretical tools that may be mobilized in order to develop the work practices of TMTs that want to contribute to sustainable development.

Municipal companies are important actors in the pursuit of the Agenda 2030 goals and are often formally obliged by their owners to work in this direction. This has however shown to be quite challenging, and managers lack knowledge about how to develop new ways of organizing to meet such responsibilities. The aim of this article is therefore to understand how the work of a top management team in meetings affects the accomplishment of broad responsibility. The analysis, which is underpinned by a communicative constitution of organizing (CCO) perspective, shows how the way specific communicative practices (agendas, minutes, timeslots, turn-taking, and stakeholder voicing) are enacted leads to the re-production of parts of the organization at the expense of the whole, the present at the expense of the future, and profit at the expense of the other dimensions of sustainability. This study contributes to the literature on public management by showing how communicative practices enacted in meetings make certain concerns present and others absent, thereby creating the conditions for the accomplishment of broad responsibility.

Purpose – This article explores how issues of shared responsibility are discursively negotiated within the realmof managing collaborative efforts between organizational actors for sustainable urban development abiding tothe agenda 2030.

Design/methodology/approach – The research explored shared responsibility as localized, micro-discursivenegotiations within and between local organizations in Sweden.

Findings – Analysis displays how speakers’ use of rhetorical resources vacillates along two continuums:the who responsible for sustainability and the discursive construction of agency. This shows that theposition where the actors share responsibility, that is when the actors are constructed as both able andwilling to take responsibility and as sharing a collective identity, is continuously being negotiated incommunication.

Originality/value – The article contributes to literature on collaborative ways of organizing and managingcomplex public challenges. With a focus on the discursive construction of shared responsibility, theconcept of in-here-ness is introduced to denote accepted and assumed responsibility, which may shiftthrough the use of pronouns: from a narrow “I” or “we” of stakeholders to a wider “we” of collaboratingparties. The article further contributes to the empirical field of sustainable development at themunicipal level