Embedding sustainability into management control systems: Insights from the German federal administration

IMPACTMany public organizations struggle to move beyond symbolic sustainability efforts. This study shows that sustainability can be proceduralized with purpose by embedding sustainability targets, key performance indicators, and environmental management routines into existing bureaucratic processes, such as management control and internal reporting systems. Empowering internal ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ such as sustainability officers or controllers, to champion these routines helps turn procedures into real change. Evidence from German federal public authorities demonstrates that, even with weak external enforcement, anticipating future scrutiny (anticipatory legitimacy) aligns political mandates with public expectations and strengthens public trust and organizational credibility. Senior civil servants can support these dynamics by linking key sustainability indicators to planning, budgeting, and review processes, and by ensuring that progress in sustainability performance is visible through internal performance reports.ABSTRACTThis study explores the motives for integrating sustainability into the management control systems of German federal ministries and public agencies. Drawing on institutional and legitimacy theories, the authors conducted qualitative interviews with top managers and sustainability officers across nine federal organizations in Germany. Heterogeneous approaches to sustainability implementation were shaped by institutional pressure, legitimacy-seeking behaviour, and managerial agency. Both symbolic and substantive practices emerged and were influenced by coercive, normative, and mimetic isomorphic pressures, as well as by anticipatory legitimacy strategies. This study extends existing frameworks by highlighting the role of bureaucratic constraints, institutional entrepreneurship, and the integration of sustainability issues into management control and internal reporting systems. These insights deepen our understanding of how sustainability is embedded in public sector accounting and control, offering theoretical implications for bureaucratic contexts and practical lessons to avoid symbolic compliance while integrating sustainability into management control processes.