A Surge toward a Sustainable Future: Organizational Change and Transformational Vision by an Oil and Gas Company

Abstract

Context: reflecting the call being made by the United Nations to solve our current climate challenges and reduce companies’ CO2 emissions, there is a strong need for large corporations to not only employ the terminology of sustainable transitions, but to implement strategies and select new alternative sustainable solutions. Objective: this study fills a gap in the literature by developing and validating a model that helps researchers understand the factors that enable a large corporation undergoing a sustainable transition to select its new sustainable practices. The developed model used theories of sustainability transition and institutional theory with three pillars (regulative, normative, and cognitive) in order to help understand the nature of the company’s innovation selection criteria. Method: survey-based research was carried out among an oil and gas company’s employees, and structural equation modeling was used to test the model fit, validate the survey, and test the hypotheses. Results: the results showed that normative and regulative pillars play the main role in selecting renewable energy activities as a first step toward the company’s sustainable future. Conclusion: the findings provide researchers with a valuable model for understanding the main criteria for selecting new sustainable projects in established companies.