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Lost in Translation?: How Corporate Sustainability Goals are Translated into Business Operations
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Stockholm Business School.
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Stockholm Business School.
2023 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Working with sustainability in contemporary society is rather prevalent. There are expectations from wider society that organizations implement sustainability practices. As this is an imperative both important for organizations themselves and wider society, we seek to further understand the process of implementing sustainability goals. Researchers have studied the phenomenon of decoupling, that refers to the disconnects between disclosure and actual performance. Previous studies are limited in terms of whether there are signs of decoupling from setting a sustainability goal, to translating it into practice. Thus, the aim in this study was to extend the field of corporate sustainability and decoupling by gaining a greater understanding if and in that case where organizational disconnects occur in the translation process of sustainability goals. The concept and theories that this study has been drawn upon are decoupling, and relevant literature connected to corporate sustainability practices, its issues and barriers to implementation. A qualitative multiple case study was approached, and 12 semi-structured interviews, at seven different companies from four different industries, were held with employees working with sustainability. The interview data was analyzed through a thematic approach. The findings in this study shows that potential signs of decoupling are distinctive, and might occur due to lack of measurements, supplier dependency, diverted resource allocation, setting too ambitious goals and due to a combination of fuzzy goals and lack of understanding sustainability. Implications for further research is to explore decoupling by focusing on goals with an expired timeline, as this will contribute with definite answers of where and why decoupling occurs.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 54
National Category
Economics and Business
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-240780OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-240780DiVA, id: diva2:1944500
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Available from: 2025-03-14 Created: 2025-03-14 Last updated: 2025-03-14Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf