Aligning Enactment Across Climate Regulations, Strategies, and Practice: A Translation Perspective

Abstract

This study examines a problem related to the translation and implementation of sustainability strategies, exploring how strategy travels through different layers. It focuses on a traditional company in the energy sector, studying how regulations are implemented in the strategy and how this strategy is later perceived by employees. Using a qualitative approach, the research combines both primary and secondary data sources, including interviews with employees, observations, and document analysis. The findings show that translation is a complex and non-linear process in which sustainability strategies are continuously reshaped. The original regulations guiding the strategy are filtered and adapted to different contexts and, as a result, produce multiple co-existing interpretations. The study identifies a “fractured translation” phenomenon, where tensions between organizational units, gaps between expectations and operational realities, and varying employee understandings lead to uneven implementation of the same strategies. The study highlights that a sustainability transition in organizations is an ongoing process of interpretation and negotiation and adds to the existing body of literature by examining how different levels of this process interact and reshape each other. It also provides important implications for managers, as well as researchers interested in the topic.