Responding to a Wicked Problem: How Time, Sense of Place, and Organisational Boundaries Shape Companies’ Decarbonisation Strategies

A rapidly expanding number of companies have pledged to contribute towards the Paris Agreement’s goal by establishing 2050 net-zero emissions targets. However, the literature lacks an in-depth analysis of firms’ strategies to reach those targets and their underlying assumptions. Scholars increasingly use time and space as functional constructs to theorise what motivates different business responses to climate change. Organisational boundaries represent an additional critical dimension when analysing companies’ climate actions. Hence, we adopted a novel tri-dimensional framework (time, sense of place, and organisational boundaries) to analyse the link between the targets companies set and their proposed decarbonisation strategies. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of self-reported and tertiary data from 45 European manufacturing companies rated as leaders in climate action. By investigating how time, sense of place, and organisational boundaries substantiate companies’ decarbonisation strategies’ present and possible future impact, we delineate how different approaches to the three dimensions enable or constrain the comprehensives of net-zero strategies.