When Sustainability Meets Reality: A Study of Means-Ends Decoupling in Fast-Food Chains in Gothenburg, Sweden

Abstract

In recent times being environmentally responsible has become a global phenomenon and the fast-food industry is no less and that is why the fast-food industry is under increasing pressure to reduce its environmental impact. Large fast-food chains often have formal sustainability policies concerning issues such as waste reduction, recycling, energy efficiency and emissions reduction. And therefore, these policies are often presented in reports, websites and internal guidelines, but the challenge is to make them work in practice. Fast-food chains are mainly relevant for studying what happens when corporate sustainability initiatives meet every day operational reality. These chains are surrounded and designed by high customer flow, standardized routines, time pressure, efficiency targets, shift-based work, and frequent reliance on temporary or less experienced employees. Employees and shift managers are expected to, for example, sort waste correctly and reduce food waste, while also having to serve customers quickly, maintain hygiene standards and avoid delays. To examine how fast-food companies manage this tension in practice, this study investigates three fast-food chains in Gothenburg, Sweden. We ask: How and why does means-ends decoupling emerge between sustainability policies and daily practices in fast-food chains in Gothenburg, Sweden? We study this research question based on semi-structured interviews with thirteen participants including frontline employees, shift leaders and shift managers. The study also used secondary data collected from company sustainability reports, websites, and publicly available sustainability documents. Furthermore, the empirical data is analyzed through thematic analysis which is mainly draws on means-ends decoupling literature. This is valuable for our study as our findings show that fast-food companies have sustainability policies and sustainability practices do exist. However, these practices are often incomplete and do not always produce the intended sustainability outcomes. Existing research on corporate sustainability has showed decoupling as a norm and that sustainability implementation requires coordination among all organizational levels. Our contribution to this literature is that we identify four main operational mechanisms that lead to means-end decoupling: operational, structural, organizational and behavioral, these mechanisms consist of several factors. In other words, the study depicts how means-ends decoupling is produced by the usual operating logic of fast-food chains not by the lack of sustainability policies.