An Inconvenient Truth: How Organizations Translate Climate Change into Business as Usual

“Certainly, businesses can successfully engagewith relatively tame environmental problems that are resolvable through technical activities that also support profitability (Rittell & Webber, 1973).”

“Environmental studies, economics, finance, development studies, public policy, and management are covered (Wright & Nyberg, 2017).”

“Previous research shows how the pursuit of distant sustainable futures poses a signi fi cant challenge for organizations in general and corporations in particular (Augustine et al., 2019; Gümüsay & Reinecke, 2022; Slawinski et al., 2017; Slawinski & Bansal, 2015; Wright & Nyberg, 2017).”

“However, despite advances in energy efficiency and the adoption of renewable energy sources (Wright and Nyberg, 2016), technological, industrial, and organizational innovations have not led to a decrease in the consumption of natural resources (IPCC, 2022; Jackson, 2021) still less to an…”

“…with any new business opportunities (Stevens et al. , 2015), and a stable high-performance level regulates decision-makers’ attention to explorative innovations as the high performance relaxes the focus of attention on activities associated with the short-term return (Xu, Zhou and Du, 2019).”

“Wright and Nyberg (2017) similarly find that organisational efforts to reduce climate impact often lose momentum over time.”

“…both movements themselves (Michels, 1911; Staggenborg, 1988) as well as organizations attempting to pursue movement-backed objectives (Augustine, 2021; Dobbin & Kalev, 2021; Wright & Nyberg, 2017), which often end up in de-coupling their espoused pursuits from their actions (Crilly et al., 2012).”

“Several studies have found that organizations tend to fall back on old detrimental knowledge as they tackle grand challenges (e.g., Wright and Nyberg 2017; van Wijk et al. 2020).”

“There has, in recent years, been (mostly unrealized) talk of transforming business to deal with climate change in particular [13].”

“The policy effects and a broader purpose of firm will modify systemic resilience (Wright and Ryberg 2017).”

“Future research will need to take into account the varied challenges that may derail companies’ integration trajectories, complementing research on other ways in which companies fail to maintain a long-term commitment (Wright & Nyberg, 2017).”

“In their study of corporate efforts to tackle climate change, Wright and Nyberg (2017) show how environmental initiatives are often off to a good start but fall flat as other priorities take over.”

“Climate change is one of the most important grand challenges (GC) of our time (Wright & Nyberg, 2016).”

“Public agencies or isolated actors cannot generate change or tackle non-compliance issues on an ad-hoc, case by case basis; new forms of regulation are needed to trigger systemic effects that cannot be obtained through disjointed efforts (Wright and Nyberg, 2017).”

“Wright and Nyberg (2017), for their part, argue that corporations use framing (orienting the debate on an issue in a certain way), localising (making the conceptual frames relevant for local contexts) and normalising (realigning practices and activities with dominant organisational discourses) to…”

“A growing body of research makes the case for market-level reforms to drive companies to adopt divergent change (Wright and Nyberg 2017, Battilana et al. 2023, Kaplan 2023).”

“One prominent angle in academia considers such issues as wicked problems (Bebbington & Larrinaga, 2014; Wright & Nyberg, 2017), with some of them, like climate change, being promoted to super wicked problems (Lazarus, 2009).”

“…shareholder interests, and the context of business operations affect organizational CSR practices (Reid & Toffel, 2009; Vashchenko, 2017; Wright & Nyberg, 2017), and that executive perceptions of CSR are deeply rooted in personal and or‐ ganizational beliefs and values (Beschorner &…”

“Current debates on the relationships between climate change and development policies are highlighting their possible linkages in various ways (Käkönen, Lebel, Karhunmaa, Dany, & Try, 2014; Wright & Nyberg, 2017).”

“…impact of greenwashing actions on green and non-green employee behaviors and the factors influencing their indirect connection (tahir et al., 2020; Wright & nyberg, 2017). therefore, this study strives to extend the current greenwashing literature by investigating how perceived greenwashing…”

“Wright and Nyberg vehemently warn that our society will meet self-destruction if business continues its current practice of converting grand environmental challenges into “ the more familiar and less threatening discourses of profit maximization and shareholder value ” (2017, p. 1657).”

“This embraces completely the notion of meeting the needs of today without sacrificing tomorrow ’ s and contrasts starkly with short-term corporate profit-taking (Wright and Nyberg, 2017) and decision-maker tenures based in four-and six-year political cycles (M ¨ andmaa et al., 2020; Schulze, 2021).”

“These tensions provoke inner conflicts and ethical dilemmas, prompting them to continuously reflect upon the purpose of their work (Brès et al., 2019; Wickert & de Bakker, 2018; Wright & Nyberg, 2017).”

“For example, consumers are increasingly paying attention to the social (Amis, Mair, & Munir, 2020; Crane et al., 2022) and environmental (Wright & Nyberg, 2017) flipsides of the products they buy, despite the availability of cheaper alternatives on the market.”

“Boundary spanning activities typically involve different forms of knowledge translation (Hassenteufel and Zeigermann 2021; Leith and Vanclay 2015; Wright and Nyberg 2016).”

“…shift as changes in the moderating factors occur, for example, if a new CEO is appointed (i.e., a shift in sustainability commitment) (Stubbs, 2019; Wright & Nyberg, 2017); when feed-back, criticism, or new insights lead to adaptation or reactions (strategy–practice alignment; Hengst et al., 2020;…”

“Prior research can be roughly divided into studies addressing grand challenges through either governmental regulations and transnational agreements (Schüssler et al., 2014; Wright & Nyberg, 2017) or situated local initiatives (Mair et al., 2016; Porter et al., 2020).”

“…motivated CSR may prove a very limited tool for addressing larger societal challenges (Gao & Bansal, 2013; Gond et al., 2009; Hahn et al., 2014; van der Byl & Slawinski, 2015) that involve real trade-offs between economic growth and its material consequences (Kaplan, 2020; Wright & Nyberg, 2017).”

“…by global realities, such as the climate crisis, the adverse impacts of corporate operations on local communities, and the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, have brought about a paradigm shift in business environments (Juergensen et al., 2020; Nicoara et al., 2019; Wright & Nyberg, 2017).”

“The impetus for banks to embrace sustainable practices is often driven by the willingness of companies to align with global and regional environmental and climate change policies and agreements (Wright and Nyberg 2017).”

“Thus, effective decision-making and problem-solving strategies to address such challenges are not only valuable but also timely (Markman, Waldron, Gianiodis, & Espina, 2019; Wright & Nyberg, 2017).”

“However, research has demonstrated that such strategies have little sustainability effects, often or even remain symbolic and revert to business as usual rather than signifying a long-term oriented organisational commitment to green innovation (Hahn et al. 2014; Wright and Nyberg 2017).”

“Yet, as the broader literature on hegemony and corporate responses to climate change underscores (cf: Mildenberger, 2020; Mitchell, 2009; Wright & Nyberg, 2017), corporations are adept at continually contesting and redefining responses to climate change.”

“…into two camps: political economy approaches that stress the urgent need for broader structural transformation to have any hope of addressing the scale of the current crisis and which highlight the limits of ‘corporate solutionism’ (Banerjee, 2012; Wittneben et al., 2012; Wright and Nyberg, 2017).”

“However, the organisational literature mostly focuses on business-as-usual solutions (Nyberg and Wright, 2020; Wright and Nyberg, 2017), compromise-building processes (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006 [1991]) and reformist ecological critiques (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005 [1999]) without studying the…”

“While George et al. (2016) demonstrate how management scholars can contribute to solving such challenges, we agree with Wright and Nyberg (2017) that we have a responsibility to engage with such issues, particularly as many of the organisations that we research play a significant role in global…”

“For instance, the challenge of working with sustainability paradoxes led to the abandonment of the paradoxical frame and to the adoption of a business case frame in firms with explicitly stated sustainability commitments (Hestad et al., 2020; Wright & Nyberg, 2017).”

“…organizational theory (Jarzabkowski et al., 2021; Nyberg and Wright, 2022); a reconceptualization that shifts scholars and practitioners beyond business-as-usual responses (Wright and Nyberg, 2017) in ways that enable us to address complex societal challenges such as sustainability and inequality.”

“…disclosure (Hahn et al., 2015; Hsueh, 2019; Knox-Hayes & Levy, 2014; Kolk et al., 2008), and by engaging with Corporate Climate Initiatives (Coen et al., 2022; Wright & Nyberg, 2017)—especially the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project; Haque & Ntim, 2018; Hsueh, 2017; Kuo & Chang, 2021).”

“Descriptive realism is about an ‘ inconvenient truth ’ that businesses do not care about responsibility and may well prefer to engage in irresponsibility as more pro fi table (Wright and Nyberg 2017, 1633).”

“Conversely, an example of a “wicked” problem might be the climate crisis, where the problem is systemic on a planetary scale, there are disparate sets of societal values that direct action, and many actors are needed to resolve the problem (Whiteman et al., 2013; Wright & Nyberg, 2017).”

“Thus, in line with Wright and Nyberg (2017), we coded data by having two sensitizing principles in mind: variety is the foundational platform of capturing complexity and indicates the number of elements in an organization’s internal or external environment.”

“Moreover, the acceptance of the GC agenda can be undertaken at the rhetoric and discursive framing level, while the commitment to tackling the challenge can become diluted as stakeholders realize the cost and sacrifice that it can demand from their business (Wright and Nyberg, 2017).”

“Since the societal and environmental beneficial impacts of carbon mitigation will not be perceived in the short term, companies may feel less inclined to make the big investments required to mitigate emissions (Slawinski et al., 2017; Wright & Nyberg, 2017).”

“Economic activity is the main driver of the current transgression of Earth system boundaries (Steffen et al., 2015; Wright & Nyberg, 2017), and therefore, business ethics research, which is essentially concerned with questions of justice in the context of business (Böhm et al., 2022), should…”