Sustainability transitions in established companies: Enabling organizational change through ambidexterity

Abstract

Organizations and how they operate today contribute to the environmental problems we are currently facing. Management of organizations tend to focus on economics and at least partly neglect sustainability. Companies face uncertainty when trying to make a sustainability transition, and the concept of ambidexterity aims to address the question of how to manage conflicting demands within the company. That is, the conflicts of the exploitation part and the exploration part, or the day-to-day business and the future business. This thesis aims to explore how established organizations can enable a sustainability transition through an ambidextrous strategy. The research conducted is qualitative and explorative. More specifically the study aims to explore ways for established companies to 1) Enable an uncertain sustainability transition internally 2) Enable more exploration and 3) Integrate the findings into the existing business. To achieve this, the thesis includes a literature review, an interview study with individuals from various industries and a case study. The case is a kitchen appliance manufacturer exploring ways to make a circularity transition. The case study includes interviews and a workshop with the case company. The 30 conducted interviews are the primary source of data collection for this study and analysis of the data was done through a thematic analysis identifying common themes, differences, and similarities in the interview data. The findings of this study are threefold. First, implications for each of the three research questions were presented and visualized. All implications were related to strategy, structure, engagement, systems thinking, and external validation. Additionally, the exploration implications included the importance of learning as a success factor. Second, building on the implications of all three research questions, five general guiding principles for established organizations wanting to enable a sustainability transition were identified. The five principles related to strategy, engagement, systems thinking, learning and early integration. Third, a six step model was developed on how the case company can approach the circular transition. The hope is that the principles and the six-step-model can offer direction for companies approaching a sustainability transition.