Greening from within: the role of organisational purpose shift in building internal legitimacy for fossil fuel incumbents’ green innovation

ABSTRACT

Green innovation that reduces harmful emissions and impacts on the natural environment is crucial in combatting the climate crisis. Yet, incumbents in carbon-intensive industries struggle with its development due to their lack of organisational commitment. We investigate how fossil fuel incumbents can overcome this obstacle and build internal legitimacy for green innovation. Through a longitudinal case study of a Norwegian oil major over 20 years, we highlight the important role of organisational purpose shift. We derive a process model of how fossil fuel incumbents can shift from a goal-based organisational purpose focused on profitability towards a duty-based purpose connected to sustainability-oriented values, building internal legitimacy for green innovation. Our study also demonstrates that organisational purpose shift, when only selectively and gradually realised, impedes full decarbonisation. We contribute to the literature on innovation studies by discussing how organisational purpose shift and internal legitimacy can enhance sustainable innovation in fossil fuel incumbents.

KEYWORDS:

• Green innovation
• fossil fuel incumbents
• organisational purpose
• internal legitimacy
• incumbent-entrepreneur collaborations

JEL:

• M21
• O31
• O32
• Q54
• Q55

1. Introduction

Mounting climate change concerns and the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have increased the pressure on carbon-intensive industries (e.g. oil and gas, transportation, and manufacturing) to move away from conventional, carbon-emitting technology and instead turn to green innovation, technology with the capacity to reduce environmental risks, pollution, or harmful impacts on natural resources (Castellacci and Lie 2017; IPCC 2014; Kemp and Oltra 2011). Fossil fuel incumbents — established firms that hold a leading position within these carbon-intensive industries and depend heavily on fossil fuels — are powerful actors equipped with strong human and financial resources, manifold ties to policymakers, and a wide market reach. Accordingly, their sincere engagement with green innovation is fundamental in lowering greenhouse gas emissions at the industry level (Stern and Valero 2021; Turnheim and Sovacool 2020).

However, pursuing green innovation presents a tremendous challenge for fossil fuel incumbents. Although these firms increasingly promulgate green intentions (Patala et al. 2019), most lack the necessary organisational commitment to foster sustainable innovation (Wright and Nyberg 2017). Especially for the largest incumbents, such as oil majors, energy utilities, and car manufacturers, the highly centralised organisational structures and hierarchical management styles typical of large firms are ill-suited to disrupt ‘business as usual’ and initiate novel directions (Kolk and Levy 2001; Pinkse, Demirel, and Marino 2023). Most importantly, green innovation tends to be internally associated with high development costs, uncertain business prospects, and low levels of profitability (Barbieri, Marzucchi, and Rizzo 2020; Bohnsack, Pinkse, and Kolk 2014; Stucki 2019). This association means green innovation is often positioned as contradictory to the incumbents’ traditional profit-seeking purpose, which dramatically lowers the internal commitment and credibility needed to develop green innovation (Hahn et al. 2014; Hengst et al. 2020). In other words, despite increased external pressure to ‘go green’, fossil fuel incumbents still lack sufficient internal motivation to do so.

Hence, this internal perspective requires more attention. So far, much of the research on green innovation has focused on pressures external to the firm as sources of legitimacy — the widespread perception of the appropriateness of an organisation and its activities (Suchman 1995) – including those exercised by social movements, concerned citizens, and ethical investors (Doblinger and Soppe 2013; Vasi and King 2012). Little research has been dedicated to internal legitimacy and the lack thereof that prevents fossil fuel incumbents from committing more fully to sustainable innovation. Internal legitimacy can be defined as ‘the acceptance or normative validation of an organizational strategy through the consensus of its participants, which acts as a tool that reinforces organizational practices and mobilizes organizational members around a common ethical, strategic or ideological vision’ (Drori and Honig 2013, 347). We therefore ask: How can fossil fuel incumbents build internal legitimacy for green innovation?

We argue that a shift in organisational purpose — defined as the shared vision of the reason for which an organisation was created or exists (Barnard 1938) – is key to spurring internal legitimacy for green innovation. Organisational purpose defines the core actions and business activities of an organisation (Hollensbe et al. 2014) and has been suggested as a promising way to motivate firms’ more sincere engagement with innovations that tackle pressing societal challenges (Henderson 2021). Yet, not every type of organisational purpose may justify greater engagement with societal and environmentally meaningful business and innovation activities. Specifically, we argue that changing from a profitability-oriented (i.e. goal-based) organisational purpose to one that prioritises the pursuit of social and environmental goals (i.e. duty-based) better enables fossil fuel incumbents to make green innovation an integral and desired part of the organisation. However, because shareholder value creation and profitability mandates are so deeply ingrained in the organisational fabric and legacy purpose of fossil fuel incumbents (Bohnsack, Pinkse, and Kolk 2014; Pinkse, Demirel, and Marino 2023), shifting to a purpose that is in line with sustainability-oriented values and green innovation involves profound organisational changes.

To investigate this topic, we conducted a longitudinal case study over two decades (2000–2022) on an oil major in the Norwegian oil and gas (O&G) industry, ‘Energise’ (anonymised). Incumbents in this carbon-intensive industry, both in Norway and worldwide, have come under severe pressure to respond to growing climate change concerns. Although Energise was among the early movers within the O&G industry that showed an interest in clean energy and other types of green innovation, it initially lacked the internal legitimacy for fostering their development. Drawing on semi-structured interviews supported by archival and observational data, we investigate the fundamental mechanisms that helped mobilise internal support for initiating the company’s shift towards green innovation.

Extending George et al. (2021) conceptual work on organisational purpose, we provide insights on how organisational purpose shift unfolds and its role in building internal legitimacy for green innovation. Our analysis suggests that this process occurred at Energise in three critical phases. After a first phase of maintaining the goal-based purpose of a typical fossil fuel incumbent through foregrounding profitability, the firm entered a phase of organisational purpose shift initiated by top management framing and formalising a duty-based purpose through the articulation of sustainability-oriented values and organisational restructuring efforts aligned with those values. This second phase was crucial in building internal legitimacy for green innovation within the O&G incumbent. In the third phase, embedding collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs served as an important way for the incumbent to realise the novel purpose and increase its development of green innovation; yet this phase also featured a selective realisation of the duty-based purpose and a gradually growing engagement with green innovation, as those efforts only occurred in specific parts of the company rather than rippling throughout the entire organisation.

Based on our findings, we offer a process model of how fossil fuel incumbents build internal legitimacy for green innovation through organisational purpose shift. Our model contributes to the literature on innovation studies concerned with the innovative behaviour of firms by highlighting organisational purpose’s critical role in reorienting fossil fuel incumbents towards sustainable innovation (Henderson 2021). Specifically, we show how incumbents that challenge their fundamental reason for being and change to a duty-based purpose can break with historically ingrained organisational patterns and design an organisation receptive to green innovation. At the same time, our findings suggest that purpose shift is not a ready-made solution to radically decarbonise fossil fuel incumbents and that realising a new purpose often happens in a selective and gradual manner. We also advance the literature on incumbents’ legitimacy management when confronted with sustainability demands. While existing work has demonstrated how incumbents rely on rhetoric (Patala et al. 2019) or, at best, adopt green technology at arm’s length by purchasing green products or certificates to respond to external legitimacy pressures (Doblinger and Soppe 2013; Vasi and King 2019), our study points out the importance of enhancing internal legitimacy for green innovation to initiate its development. Last, our findings concur with existing work that shows how fossil fuel incumbents that turn to green innovation can benefit from collaborating with sustainable entrepreneurs (Schönwälder and Weber 2023; Shepherd and Patzelt 2011). We enrich research on interorganisational collaborations between incumbents and sustainable entrepreneurs (Hockerts and Wüstenhagen 2010) by suggesting that incumbents that collaborate with partners characterised by an organisational purpose that matches the aspired purpose of the incumbent can strengthen the realisation of a duty-based organisational purpose.

2. Theoretical orientation

2.1. Fossil fuel incumbents’ lack of internal legitimacy for green innovation

The literature within innovation studies concerned with the innovative behaviour of firms has highlighted incumbents’ inability and lack of motivation to develop and diffuse innovation (Henderson and Clark 1990; Tripsas and Gavetti 2000). Because of historically ingrained and inert organisational structures, the emphasis on shareholder value and profit maximisation, the fear of cannibalising existing lines of business, and technological lock-in (Christensen 1997; Unruh 2000), incumbents tend to hold on to established technologies rather than fostering novel avenues. Particularly for fossil fuel incumbents, to pursue and integrate the development of green innovation into their organisations is likely to present an extraordinary organisational challenge.

Examples of green innovation include renewable energy, low-carbon or carbon- neutral materials, recycling and waste reduction, or pollution reduction technologies (Stucki 2019). Fossil fuel incumbents focus on fundamentally different technologies — namely, those used to extract and utilise natural resources to operate carbon-intensive businesses. Moreover, these firms sometimes even take an adversarial stance to green innovation. They tend to reject green innovations as a viable alternative to fossil fuels, portraying them as risky business endeavours and expressing concern about maintaining the same profitability levels as those offered by carbon-intensive operations (Pulver 2007; Stern and Valero 2021).

Despite these concerns, there seems to be a growing interest in green innovation among fossil fuel incumbents, driven by the external demands of environmental movements, concerned investors and policymakers, and other climate-conscious stakeholders (Hiatt, Grandy, and Lee 2015; Sine and Lee 2009). In other words, the urgency to tackle the climate crisis through green innovation is largely being driven by an enhanced external legitimacy for green innovation. As a result, some incumbents increasingly engage in ‘greening’ efforts, such as investing in green markets or adopting green certificates (Doblinger and Soppe 2013; Georgallis and Lee 2020; Vasi and King 2019). Furthermore, incumbents have been found to enhance their sustainability performance by pushing for or adopting solutions that are technologically related to their existing resource base and historically developed assets (Pinkse, Demirel, and Marino 2023; Wesseling et al. 2017). However, research has demonstrated that such strategies have little sustainability effects, often or even remain symbolic and revert to business as usual rather than signifying a long-term oriented organisational commitment to green innovation (Hahn et al. 2014; Wright and Nyberg 2017).

Thus, many fossil fuel incumbents may need greater internal legitimacy to commit more fully to the development of green innovation (Hengst et al. 2020). Despite being resourceful actors equipped with considerable capabilities, these incumbents must live up to their profitability mandate, which is typically considered to be at odds with green innovation (Soderstrom and Heinze 2021); this makes it challenging to reorient their organisations towards sustainability. One way for fossil fuel incumbents to build internal legitimacy for green innovation is to reconsider their fundamental reason for existence and adopt a purpose that enables corporate activities beyond profit (Henderson 2021; Meyer, Leixnering, and Veldman 2022).

2.2. Building internal legitimacy for green innovation through organisational purpose shift

To further disentangle the role of organisational purpose in helping fossil fuel incumbents build internal legitimacy for green innovation, we draw on recent conceptual work and distinguish between a goal-based organisational purpose and a duty-based organisational purpose (George et al. 2021). A goal-based purpose means striving towards an organisational objective, such as profitability, without considering the organisation’s broader impact on society (Berle and Means 1932). Whereas a goal-based purpose reflects the traditional understanding of corporate purpose as the responsibility to maximise profitability (Friedman 1970), a duty-based purpose goes beyond a shareholder value-centric view of organisational purpose and takes into account the firm’s role as part of society (Hollensbe et al. 2014). A duty-based organisational purpose is therefore rooted in higher societal values, and considers ethical, social, and environmental values as integral to an organisation’s existence. The existing research on organisational purpose connected to social values is mainly of conceptual nature or based on studies at the employee level, suggesting positive implications on employee well-being, motivation, and performance, including innovative performance (Henderson and Van den Steen 2015).

We argue that fossil fuel incumbents’ reluctance to embrace green innovation is rooted in their goal-based organisational purpose. Hence, committing to green innovation requires a shift from their legacy purpose to a duty-based one. Indeed, as Henderson (2021, 5481) points out, embracing a pro-social or pro-environmental purpose might be ‘the single most important determinant of whether a firm is able to master … its commitment to … a goal beyond simple profit maximisation’. A duty-based purpose can align organisational efforts with sustainability-oriented goals and practices and make sustainable innovation an integral and desired part of the organisation. However, despite theoretical arguments, currently, we have little empirical insights on how the shift towards an organisational purpose beyond profit actually unfolds (Chua et al. 2024; Kaplan 2023).

To help address this gap, we build on George et al. (2021), who suggest three mechanisms – framing, formalising, and realising — to embed a purpose within an organisation. Framing refers to defining and articulating a set of values that provides the essential building blocks of an organisational purpose. This step is often initiated by an organisation’s founders or executives. For instance, many CEOs have recently articulated mission statements that position the firm as part of society, emphasising social and environmental responsibility as the new reason for being (Fink 2018; Mayer 2021). Framing an organisational purpose can thus be regarded as an expression of a set of values that an organisation ‘seeks to create for its stakeholders’ (George et al. 2021, 7) and that is decisive for the organisation’s existence. Formalising an organisational purpose involves ‘embedding the purpose in organisational routines and practices, and structuring the organisation’s business model’ (George et al. 2021, 12); this implies that organisations must rebuild their organisational systems and structures to match their new organisational purpose and prepare the organisation for taking action aligned with the new purpose (Kaplan 2023). Ultimately, realising purpose involves putting organisational purpose into action through suitable resource allocation and value creation efforts (George et al. 2021). Realising a duty-based organisational purpose is a challenging step (Westphal 2023), especially, as noted, for fossil fuel incumbents. Incumbents have been shown to avoid transformational change efforts and tend to decouple their proclaimed purpose from what is translated into practice, a situation that can trigger perceptions of organisational hypocrisy and ‘greenwashing’ accusations (Carlos and Lewis 2018; Ferns and Amaeshi 2021).

What it takes for incumbents to move beyond purpose statements and actually realise a duty-based purpose remains understudied. However, interorganisational collaborations with entrepreneurs appear to offer a promising source of new value creation for incumbents (Araújo and Franco 2021; Pahnke, Katila, and Eisenhardt 2015). As market entrants, entrepreneurs tend to be more innovative and progressive than incumbents (Chandy and Tellis 2000; Triguero, Moreno-Mondéjar, and Davia 2013). Collaboration with sustainable entrepreneurs in particular may be essential to help fossil fuel incumbents access green resources, develop an open mindset, and overcome the carbon-intensive legacy of their innovation efforts (Hockerts and Wüstenhagen 2010; Schönwälder and Weber 2023).

Sustainable entrepreneurs are dedicated to solving complex societal problems by developing environmentally sound alternatives (Dean and McMullen 2007; Shepherd and Patzelt 2011). Incumbents may build corporate venture units and accelerators to facilitate collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs and to expand their capabilities (Kohler 2016). We therefore propose collaborating with sustainable entrepreneurs as an important vehicle for fossil fuel incumbents to realise a duty-based purpose and step up their green innovation efforts.

In summary, we still lack knowledge about how fossil fuel incumbents can build internal legitimacy for green innovation. Working with the assumption that internal legitimacy is strongly connected to organisational purpose, we empirically investigate how fossil fuel incumbents can build internal legitimacy for green innovation through organisational purpose shift. Through our empirical study, we examine the case of a fossil fuel incumbent’s change from a goal-based organisational purpose to a duty-based purpose and how such a process unfolds.

3. Research design and methodology

3.1. Case selection

We studied the incumbent firm ‘Energise’ (anonymised) as a leading firm in the Norwegian O&G industry. We chose this case company as it is particularly suitable for addressing our research question. As a central actor in the O&G industry, Energise is highly dependent on fossil fuels yet faces severe pressures to tackle the climate crisis through greater engagement with green innovation to enable a green energy transition and secure the future of the Norwegian energy sector as a strong economic pillar beyond oil (Mäkitie et al. 2020). The O&G industry represents a key part of the Norwegian economy. It contributes to the country’s high level of social welfare and produces the largest share of its GDP (33%). Norway follows the principle that its fossil fuel resources must create value for society; this is why the Norwegian state secures extraordinary returns from its fossil fuel resources through taxation. For instance, in 2022, the net government cash flow from petroleum activities equalled 1374 billion Norwegian kroner (approximately 121 billion EUR) (Norwegian-Petroleum 2023).

Located within this context, Energise has been among the early movers within the O&G industry in Norway and worldwide to show an interest in clean energy solutions. Nevertheless, the company suffered from internal scepticism to develop them. Recently, however, Energise has moved from a dedicated O&G company to a broad energy company supportive of the clean energy transition with intensified green innovation efforts (i.e. developing and implementing renewable energy solutions). As such, our case selection follows theoretical sampling criteria (Eisenhardt and Graebner 2007) as we expect the chosen company to be a salient case for generating novel theoretical insights on how fossil fuel incumbents build internal legitimacy for green innovation.

3.2. Data collection

We collected qualitative data on the incumbent over the selected time frame of analysis, from 2000 to 2022. The main data for this study consist of semi-structured interviews supported by archival data and observations. The core of our data collection efforts focused on the selected incumbent to unpack organisational purpose shift in building internal legitimacy for green innovation. Furthermore, we focused on the incumbent’s emerging collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs as an essential element of its realisation of the novel organisational purpose and development of green innovation, and identified Energise’s corporate venture capital (CVC) unit and corporate accelerator as central units to establish these collaborations.

To include the perspective of the sustainable entrepreneurs, we sampled five such entrepreneurs who collaborated with the incumbent. We identified the interviewed entrepreneurs by scrutinising Energise’s publicly announced investments and collaborations via corporate press releases from between 2000 and 2022. We focused on those that offered a sustainable contribution to the fossil fuel incumbent with innovations aimed at reducing emissions and preserving the natural environment, resulting in a convenience sample of five entrepreneurs. These sustainable entrepreneurs operated in the areas of renewable energy, circular economy and recycling, and digital and chemical technology focused on emission reduction. Table 1 provides an overview of the entrepreneurs included in this study.

Table 1. Overview of sustainable entrepreneurs.

Sustainable entrepreneurs	Entrepreneur 1	Entrepreneur 2	Entrepreneur 3	Entrepreneur 4	Entrepreneur 5
Founding year	2020	2016	2015	2019	2017
Founding country	Italy	Norway	Canada	Norway	Spain
Year of establishing collaboration with Energise	2021	2019	2018	2021	2018
Main technology	Circular	3D printing	Data capture	Remote	Solar
	economy,	technology	technology	subsea	photovoltaic
	recycling			monitoring	construction
	material
Sustainable	Waste	Waste and	Emission	Remote	Renewable
contribution	reduction	transportation	reduction	detection of	energy
		reduction	through	unfavourable
			reduction of	ocean
			operation	conditions to
			volumes	increase
				understanding
				of climate
				change and
				subsea life

Taken together, our collected data encompass the case firm, the collaborating entrepreneurs, and contextual data on the O&G industry. Table 2 presents an overview of the collected data.

Table 2. Data overview.

Type of data	Data on incumbent	Data on sustainable entrepreneurs	Data on industry context
Interviews	Employees (10), representing various departments of the company, including corporate venture capital (CVC) unit and renewable energy department 95 pages of transcript	Founders (4), employees (1) 28 pages of transcript	Industry experts: venture capitalist in the energy industry (1); industry association (1); expert on entrepreneurs and industry incumbents (1); 26 pages of transcript, 1 page of detailed notes
Archival data	Press releases on collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs (154); annual reports (22); company presentations on CVC (4)	Information gathered from websites; product descriptions (5); open source interview (1)	Industry reports (6)
Observations	Corporate accelerator webinar of the incumbent firm (2); pitches of sustainable entrepreneurs (3); industry conference session on the role of CVC in the energy industry (2); 14 pages of notes

3.2.1. Interviews

We conducted 18 semi-structured interviews. We interviewed employees of the incumbent firm (10), representatives of collaborating sustainable entrepreneurs (5), and industry experts (3). All interviews were conducted between 2020 and 2022 via digital means due to the COVID-19 pandemic, except one in 2014 which was conducted as part of a pilot study. The interviews lasted about 45–60 minutes, were recorded, and resulted in 149 pages of interview transcripts.

The employees of the incumbent firm were located in various departments of the company, including the departments of sustainability, renewable energy, and corporate ventures. We interviewed the employees about the company’s approach and commitment to sustainability and green innovation, key events that influenced the incumbent’s shift from a dedicated O&G company to a broad energy company, and the role of collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs. We also used these interviews to discuss and validate our emerging findings.

Interview questions for the sustainable entrepreneurs addressed their collaboration experiences with the incumbent, the process of forming collaborations, their reflections on the incumbent’s organisational changes, and their perception of major industry developments. These interviews also allowed us to triangulate the insights we gained on the incumbent as we explicitly asked the interviewed entrepreneurs about their perspective on the incumbent’s organisational changes.

We further conducted interviews with industry experts who had an extensive background in the O&G industry and were able to reflect on the overall development of sustainability and green innovation among oil incumbents and the industry. The industry experts are employed in three different industry associations and therefore independent from the case company. The industry experts have agreed to participate in interviews and share their knowledge after we have reached out to them and introduced our project.

3.2.2. Archival data

We collected annual reports, press releases, and company presentations from the incumbent’s website and net archive. These data served to identify and triangulate key organisational changes of the case company. As explicated above, we also traced the incumbent’s venture investments and collaboration efforts over our time frame of analysis by accessing the incumbent’s news archive of press announcements. Additionally, we used web.archive.com, a non-profit digital library of internet sites, to access past announcements on investments and collaborations to cover our entire time frame of analysis.

With respect to the sustainable entrepreneurs, we searched their websites to gain information about their founding year, location, and core technologies. Furthermore, we collected industry reports on the Norwegian O&G industry to deepen our knowledge on this industry. These reports helped us to understand how sustainability concerns have impacted the industry in general.

3.2.3. Observations

Between 2020 and 2021, the study’s first author attended relevant digital events, such as those on the Energise accelerator programme. Sustainable entrepreneurs pitched their technologies to the incumbent as part of those events. Observing these events gave us a better understanding of the sustainable entrepreneurs’ technologies and their sustainability contributions. Other observations were taken at industry conferences such as the ‘Oslo Innovation Week’ and the ‘Energy Transition Conference’, with specific focus on sessions which explicitly discussed the phenomena of collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs and CVC activities in the Norwegian O&G industry. These observational data informed this study by deepening our understanding of the nature of collaboration between sustainable entrepreneurs and fossil fuel incumbents.

3.3. Data analysis

Given our longitudinal case study design, we adopted a process approach to data analysis containing several steps (Langley 1999). We started by analysing the collected data on Energise, following an inductive, open-coding approach (Strauss and Corbin 1994) that used NVivo to support the coding. In doing so, we were intrigued by major organisational changes such as the corporate name change and organisational restructuring efforts that seem to have affected the incumbent’s shifting attitude towards green innovation. The first result of the coding process was to chronologically map these critical organisational change events.

We then turned to Energise’s collaborations with entrepreneurs. We analysed all press releases that contained announcements of collaborations with and investments in sustainable entrepreneurs. This overview provided us with insights into the incumbent’s changing collaboration behaviour over time. We observed how Energise moved from collaborations with O&G-focused entrepreneurs who supported its conventional business towards collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs focused on green innovation. In a next analytical step, we incorporated the interview data on the sustainable entrepreneurs collaborating with Energise, and also used these data to triangulate the insights we gained on Energise’s organisational developments.

Once we gained a clearer picture of the critical organisational developments that would explain the incumbent’s changing commitment to green innovation, we detected an interesting periodisation in which organisational purpose and purpose shift appeared as theoretically salient elements in explaining the incumbent’s changing attitude towards green innovation. Applying temporal bracketing (Langley 1999), we identified the three critical phases that we explicate in our findings below.

4. Findings

Our longitudinal case study of Energise’s changing attitude towards green innovation reveals an organisational change process driven by the incumbent’s reconsideration of its organisational purpose. We find that the shift from a goal-based purpose to a duty-based purpose played a salient role in building internal legitimacy for green innovation and starting its development.

After a long first phase of maintaining a goal-based purpose, the firm entered a phase of purpose shift enabled through top management (i) framing a duty-based organisational purpose that explicitly articulated the sustainability-oriented values of responsibility, equality, and sustainability, and (ii) formalising the novel purpose through organisational restructuring efforts aligned with those values. This second phase was critical in building internal legitimacy for green innovation. The third phase, the selective realisation of the duty- based organisational purpose, saw green innovation developed by embedding collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs into specific parts of the company. In the following sections, we elaborate on each of the identified phases in detail.

4.1. Phase I: maintaining goal-based organisational purpose

Before 2015, Energise was a dedicated O&G company and maintained a goal-based organisational purpose by foregrounding a profitability mandate which was sustained through developing large-scale, profitable O&G projects. Additional objectives that fuelled this purpose included business growth and exploration, efficiency, and ensuring secure operations. This goal-based purpose, including its underlying objectives, was emphasised in messages from the former CEO commenting on the company’s developments, such as the following:

We have made our core activities more robust through sales and acquisitions. Our downstream results have shown such a dramatic improvement that we have met our profitability targets one year ahead of schedule Energise is making an aggressive commitment to the Norwegian Continental Shelf. in both developed and unexplored areas. Last year, we brought five new projects on stream, sanctioned the development of five new projects, and stepped up our exploration efforts. (Energise CEO, annual report, 2006)

During the decades after its founding, the company contributed significantly to societal welfare in Norway, driving the internal pride, high status, and legitimacy associated with working for the company and contributing to its declared purpose. Indeed, as Interviewee 4 (I4) reported, the company had ‘very little consciousness about sustainability; then it was all about growth [of the O&G business]’ (I4, 2020).

Unsurprisingly, there was a lack of internal legitimacy among the internal workforce and the corporate leadership for clean, renewable energy and other forms of green innovation because of their perceived incompatibility with the existing organisational purpose and its cornerstone values. According to our informants, whereas O&G projects typically yield an extremely high return on investments (ROI), the ROI of renewable projects was significantly lower; hence, these projects were subject to considerable internal scepticism. Furthermore, compared to traditional investments, the development costs for green innovation were perceived as quite high, which is why investments in this area were considered risky.

Energise was certainly an incumbent that engaged in innovation; yet these efforts were focused on improving and enhancing its O&G business. Already back then, the incumbent relied on collaborations with entrepreneurs and its CVC unit to foster innovation. However, the CVC unit only targeted collaborations with O&G entrepreneurs instead of sustainable entrepreneurs and focused on innovation that would lead to efficiency and cost reduction benefits, such as faster operation recovery systems for oil drilling or digital control systems. On average, the company entered two CVC collaborations with O&G entrepreneurs per year.

However, 2007 represented a year of exception, with Energise entering two collaborations with wind energy entrepreneurs. These were pilot projects to assess business opportunities in the market for renewable energy. Yet, as the development costs for renewable energy were considered too high, and the profit expectations too low, these efforts remained isolated attempts. In the following years, corporate innovation efforts remained focused on its O&G operations to achieve even higher profits. One of our interviewees from the present renewable energy entity of the company reflected on the lack of legitimacy for renewable energy and how this has changed over the years to come:

There [have] been groups in the company working with renewables. … It was in the background and it wasn’t clear in the strategy, it was not spoken about, it certainly wasn’t a focus. … It was the weird guys in the corner, to put it that way. This has completely changed over the last decade. (I15, 2022)

Thus, while green innovation attempts existed in the company, they remained a small sideshow not aligned with the organisational purpose. Most employees were either highly sceptical or showed no interest in green innovation.

4.2. Phase II: shift to duty-based organisational purpose

Studying the developments within Energise over time, we recognised a shift in organisational purpose, moving from the goal-based purpose of a dedicated O&G company to the duty- based purpose of a ‘broad energy company’ oriented along the sustainability-oriented values of responsibility, equality, and sustainability in climate matters. This purpose shift happened between 2015 and 2017 and was critical in building internal legitimacy for green innovation. We find that the shift was enabled through top management efforts aimed at (i) framing the duty-based organisational purpose through emphasising sustainability-oriented values and (ii) formalising the novel purpose through organisational restructuring.

4.2.1. Framing the duty-based organisational purpose through emphasising sustainability-oriented values

In 2015, a leadership change occurred within Energise with a new CEO coming in and introducing the novel organisational values of sustainability, responsibility, and equality instead of profit maximisation. When the new CEO was appointed, he expressed serious concerns about the company’s contribution to the climate crisis, emphasising the urgent need for a reorientation based upon those sustainability-oriented values. One of our informants explained the CEO’s increased attention to addressing sustainability concerns and the climate crisis in this way: ‘Our CEO … he has been very specific all the time that we need to be a part of the solution because we are part of the problem with regard to the climate facts’ (I1, 2020).

Similarly, in a company press release that announced the new leadership, the CEO stated, ‘We will also strengthen our efforts in the transition to a low-carbon society. Competitiveness and sustainability are critical, either in oil and gas production or future projects in renewable energy’ (Company press release, 2015).

Furthermore, framing the novel organisational purpose and its underlying values with an even stronger signal, the company’s leadership decided to change its name to a values- based name. While the incumbent’s first name during the decades after its founding reflected its central business area of O&G, its name change in 2017 expressed the value of equality. Company materials describe the importance of the name change as follows: ‘The choice fell on a name that describes something more than oil. The name hints at a desire to help shape the future and compete in a society with lower emissions. Not least, the name points to values and about where the company comes from’ (Company website, 2022).

Although one could argue that a name change is a purely symbolic act that can also be decoupled from an organisation’s proclaimed purpose, such as the contested renaming efforts by ‘British Petroleum’ to ‘Beyond Petroleum’ and then to ‘BP’ (Ferns and Amaeshi 2021), all of our corporate informants confirmed that the change of the company’s name had a profound effect on themselves and the organisation’s culture precisely because of the reorientation in organisational values that the new name represented:

It grows into the culture in a very interesting way. I think over time and by people referring to the values, we bring more context to itI think changing the name, as we adjust to the energy transition and as we describe Energise, the new trends, the new ambitions [are] kind of shaping us. (I7, 2021)

Likewise, another informant working with renewables in the incumbent company emphasised the importance of the name change in fostering a new mindset, despite the firm’s longstanding history as an oil major:

[The name change] was the right thing to do … first, when it was announced, obviously there [are] always some of those who had a long history with [the company]. [It] was established in 1974, [and] there are individuals that have been working several years with that name. But I now think it’s been seen as a great success actually and sort of resetting the mindset to some extent, which is also good. (I3, 2021)

The same sentiment was also reflected by another informant, who pointed out the crucial role of the corporate name change in substantiating the incumbent’s purpose shift away from O&G towards a sustainability-driven energy company and in shaping the internal mindset of the incumbent’s employees accordingly:

The day we changed [the] name… to Energise, it was clearly stated that we are going to be a much broader energy company. A lot of people felt that that was strange at that time. The reason for this is that the majority of all employees have been working with oil and gas. That was what they knew and where they had their skills, but in those 2 or 3 years, a lot of things happened with the mentality and mindset of the people working in the company. You can see it now; you can see it on blogs every day that people are commenting, ‘Why do you go into that project because that produces a lot of [carbon dioxide]?’ … So that has changed dramatically. (I1, 2020)

Framing the novel organisational purpose through corporate name change was also considered important for building internal legitimacy for green innovation (i.e. renewable energy), as reported by informants from the renewable unit:

I guess the whole rebranding to Energise… I think, from a renewable perspective, that is hugely important… internally, it changes the sentiment. I feel that is important for people buying into that broad energy company strategy. I also think the workforce is now more understanding that we have to change. We have to change, from a climate perspective but also from a business perspective. (I15, 2020)

4.2.2. Formalising the duty-based organisational purpose through organisational restructuring

Another critical element of this second phase was to formalise the novel purpose through organisational restructuring. Main structural changes included the creation of two novel organisational units. In 2015, the renewable energy project group that had played a minor role within the company was lifted towards an independent organisational unit. The unit’s most prominent focus was on renewable energy, particularly offshore wind. Other alternative low-carbon energy sources and solutions, such as green hydrogen or carbon capture storage also fell under the jurisdiction of this unit. Next, a sustainability department (previously a sub-unit within finance) was restructured as an independent unit. Both new departments were elevated to the corporate top level, directly reporting to the CEO. One of our interviewees, who experienced the transition from being a member of a small project group exploring wind energy to the establishment of an organisational unit dedicated to clean energy solutions, described this process using the metaphor of a child growing up:

So [the renewable energy project members] started as a kid trying to find a place in the family. Then, of course, you are allowed to develop yourself, and become more individual. Then you need to have an apartment outside the house for yourself. Then, maybe we are there at the moment, we have created our own career and identity to a certain extent but are still part of the family. (I2, 2020)

With clean energy and sustainability becoming key organisational units, a strong formal signal was sent from the top management of the company that the novel organisational purpose, including its sustainability-oriented values, would now be enacted through organisational action. Our informants also emphasised the importance of the formal restructuring efforts in changing the legitimacy prospects of renewables within the incumbent:

[The company had] both research and certain activities in renewables before that, but the decision to raise that as a business area on the level of the corporate executive committee was [a] very visible sign of it. Renewables will be the big area for Energise. But had we not established that as a business area, who knows what that would have looked like. (I12, 2021)

Indeed, framing and formalising the duty-based organisational purpose and its emphasis on sustainability-oriented values significantly contributed to building internal legitimacy for green innovation within the incumbent. As one of our interviewees highlighted, both the corporate name change and the restructuring efforts stimulated these developments:

Gradually we started doing things—for instance, this new business area, new energy solutions—then it was lifted all the way up to the executive committee … and then we did this rebranding … when we changed… to Energise then it really happened. … Then, it was very clearly stated that we are going to be a broad energy company [and that] we will take some actions. (I1, 2020)

In 2016, as part of its organisational restructuring efforts, the company also announced that it was allocating a CVC fund worth 183 million EUR to collaborating with sustainable entrepreneurs. Thus, almost a decade after the two initial pilot projects in wind energy in 2007, the company initiated collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs in the joint pursuit of green innovation, facilitated through a newly established corporate venture fund.

However, while we observed critical organisational developments that helped Energise build internal legitimacy for green innovation, we also noticed a remaining heritage of the incumbent’s legacy purpose. Profitability — the key pillar of the company’s goal-based purpose — continued to play an important role. Two of our informants working in the renewable area within the company pointed out to us that consideration of profitability persisted in assessing renewable energy projects: ‘You need to kind of show that [you] can build projects that can generate money, still allocate resources to a different part of the company, still in a very profit-oriented approach’ (I2, 2020). The second interviewee added:

We want to make sure that we are involved in renewables because of business reasons. It is a business, it is about money, putting money in, and then making sure that we will get our return. That will always be the basis for any of our decisions. (I3, 2020)

Similarly, another informant from the CVC unit reflected, ‘It’s as much a business question as it’s a sustainability question. Even though Energise is very conscious and honest when it comes to sustainability’ (I12, 2021).

Thus, while Energise’s organisational purpose shift was critical in reorienting the incumbent to green innovation and building internal legitimacy for it, the company did not divest from its O&G business. Instead, Energise underwent a gradual engagement with green innovation, reflecting a selective realisation of the new duty-based organisational purpose, which we illuminate in the next phase.

4.3. Phase III: selective realisation of duty-based organisational purpose

Based on our analysis, we found that the realisation of the aspired organisational purpose does not immediately affect the entire company but rather, reflects a selective and gradual process affecting particular units of the company. At Energise, we observed that the realisation of the duty-based organisational purpose was supported by embedding collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs into specific units of the company; this was a critical mechanism in enabling growing engagement with green innovation and putting the novel purpose into action, albeit in a selective manner.

In 2018, the company created an accelerator programme aimed at bringing several entrepreneurs in house over three months to work on business and technology development jointly. The incumbent provided dedicated in-house mentors for the entrepreneurs to work with and to help them eventually establish long-term contracts with the incumbent. A primary reason for establishing the accelerator in addition to the recently established corporate venture fund was to intensify collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs as an essential vehicle to develop green innovation, as highlighted by one of our informants:

Our strategic belief is that the climate challenge is something that we need to address … . I think collaboration is really important with different ecosystems and I think the accelerator and the funds are [some] of those ways through which we talk to many people. We can’t solve this ourselves. I think we have to admit that even if [we are] 25,000+ employees across over 30 countries, we need help. (I5, 2021)

Energise employees who were involved in these efforts enjoyed the active engagement with the sustainable entrepreneurs. As one of the incumbent representatives reflected, the company is mostly interested in actively developing innovation together with the sustainable entrepreneurs, rather than in superficial investments: ‘We don’t want to just take money and just buy things we need; we can buy things and then develop them and then potentially sell them, but that’s our DNA, in a way: to be an active developer’ (I3, 2020).

Further embedding these collaborations with the sustainable entrepreneurs into the company, in 2018, Energise merged the two existing (yet previously separately organised) corporate venture funds. Before the merger, separate teams and units were responsible for the green innovation fund versus the conventional O&G fund. Merging these into one unit further integrated green innovation into the company’s core business – although it did not represent a full turn away from fossil fuels.

The gradually growing engagement with green innovation was also reflected among the entrepreneurs we interviewed, as highlighted in the following quote from one entrepreneur, the CEO of a start-up dedicated to reducing emissions:

The reason we can afford to do things that are associated with sustainability is because people are investing in it now. Our customers [incumbents] are paying money for investigating this solution. They have a corporate need; they have a desire to be more sustainable. (I8, start-up CEO, 2021)

Our entrepreneurial interviewees also mentioned that Energise had only developed a fresh attitude towards green innovation in recent years. This point was stressed by the CEO of a start-up working on recycling solutions, who described how the turn to values around sustainability served as an essential precursor for collaborating with a traditional fossil fuel- based incumbent:

Sustainability and circular economy are a big trend in the market, whilst two years ago, it would have been way too early for this idea to actually get traction. I believe that what helped is for myself personally and my founders, the values of sustainability, the values of recycling, the environmental part of the project… we strongly believe in this. Nobody cared in 2018 about environmental aspects, nobody was going to pay one cent more for a product that was sustainable, at least not in the oil and gas setting. (I11, start-up CEO, 2021)

All five entrepreneurs included as part of this study mentioned a joint development experience with the incumbent, as highlighted by one of the sustainable entrepreneurs:

They [the incumbents] have of course a lot of knowledge of the material that they demand. They took our idea which was more abstract, and they helped us shape it [in]to something that is more connected with the reality of Energise today … they were the ones putting the pieces of the puzzle together. So, we went in with an idea, a vision. It was quite abstract and they helped us put it down and find a way that this could actually work. (I11, start-up CEO, 2021)

However, while these developments helped to realise Energise’s newly set purpose, it is important to note that they present a selective manner of purpose enactment and not a radical transformation away from the incumbent’s conventional line of business. Instead, and as reflected by one of our informants, the purpose shift and the associated organisational change process can be considered a journey that is still unfolding – a journey in which entrepreneurial collaborations play a crucial role for the incumbent: ‘We’re over 20,000 people. Getting that to change takes time, but we are on a journey, and I think working with entrepreneurs challenges the way we work’ (I5, 2021).

Our analysis suggests that embedding collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs into the company is an important way for fossil fuel incumbents to enact a duty-based organisational purpose and step up their development of green innovation. Indeed, collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs accelerated from 2018 onwards. According to the publicly available information we analysed, at least six novel collaborative investments were formed in 2019, three in 2020, four in 2021, and six in 2022. This progress reflects the company’s effort to realise a duty-based organisational purpose and depart from its sole focus on O&G. However, the actual engagement with green innovation only unfolded within particular organisational units, such as within the CVC or accelerator programme, resulting in additional activities connected to sustainability rather than a full and radical transformation of existing practices.

5. Discussion

This study aimed to understand how fossil fuel incumbents can build internal legitimacy for green innovation. We summarise our insights in Figure 1, presenting a process model of how incumbents build internal legitimacy through organisational purpose shift.

Figure 1. Process model of how fossil fuel incumbents build internal legitimacy for green innovation through organisational purpose shift.

Our model highlights purpose shift as an important way for fossil fuel incumbents to depart from pure profitability objectives and design an organisation supportive of green innovation. Organisational purpose shift can be initiated through framing and formalising a duty-based organisational purpose according to sustainability-oriented values. Furthermore, while embedding collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs is an important way for incumbents to realise the duty-based purpose, we find that realising the aspired purpose occurs in a selective and gradual manner rather than in a holistic and radical fashion. Taken together, the insights offered by our model suggest that while purpose shift prepares the organisation for taking sustainability-oriented action and allows fossil fuel incumbents to credibly engage with green innovation, realising a new purpose remains limited when existing practices persist.

Our study makes four contributions. Our main contribution is to the literature on innovation studies concerned with firms’ innovative behaviour. We enrich this body of work by highlighting the role of organisational purpose shift in mobilising incumbents for previously inconceivable innovation activities. Our results suggest that incumbents that challenge their fundamental reason for being and engage in efforts to adopt a duty-based purpose can move beyond profit maximisation and strengthen innovation efforts targeted at mitigating societal issues (R. Henderson 2021). These insights present an important extension to the existing literature on firms’ innovative behaviour, which has provided extensive insights into the role of firm size and structure, firms’ technological knowledge and learning behaviour, the nature of intellectual property rights, and the role of alliances as factors that drive innovation (e.g. Danneels 2002; Stuart 2000), while the crucial yet ‘softer aspects’ of organisations (Henderson 2021, 5481) have often been left out of scope. Our study turns attention to such ‘softer aspects’ by showing how organisational purpose and its shift matter to the innovative behaviour of the firm. We also enrich the more specific literature on green innovation which has predominantly focused on technological characteristics and feasibility, development costs, or knowledge capabilities of firms as drivers of green innovation (Barbieri, Marzucchi, and Rizzo 2020; Stucki 2019) by highlighting organisational purpose shift as an important organisational-level factor for incumbents deeply vested in carbon-intensive businesses to turn to green innovation.

Second, our insights contribute to the literature on organisational purpose (George et al. 2021; Kaplan 2023; Meyer, Leixnering, and Veldman 2022) by showing that realising a novel purpose can be a challenging endeavour to apply to the entire organisation. Our results indicate that realising a duty-based purpose often takes place in a selective manner, with only some parts of the organisation taking action on the novel purpose, resulting in a gradual engagement with novel and aspired activities rather than a complete and radically sudden switch. In other words, while the shift towards a duty-based purpose provides an important foundation for established corporations to perceive sustainable actions as a credible business direction, selective realising of the novel organisational purpose results in such actions being treated as an addition to the existing core business rather than a replacement. Still, our insights suggest that purpose shift is different from greenwashing or a purely symbolic approach to sustainable actions as it holds the potential to help organisations to depart from business as usual behaviours (Wright and Nyberg 2017) through changing the structures, mindset and cultural repertoire that govern how they act (Morrison and Mota 2023). Yet, this shift requires ongoing organisational efforts to realise the potential of a novel purpose across the entire organisation.

Third, our study contributes to the literature on incumbents’ legitimacy management when confronted with sustainability demands. While existing research has focused on how incumbents adopt green innovation to repair or maintain their external legitimacy — such as when they are challenged by environmental movements, regulatory demands, or ethical investors (Georgallis and Lee 2020; Sine and Lee 2009) — our study shows the need to establish internal legitimacy to foster novel and desired activities (Drori and Honig 2013). By demonstrating how incumbents can build internal legitimacy through organisational purpose shift, we reveal mechanisms that differ from those used to address external legitimacy concerns. Research on the latter has shown that incumbents rely on rhetorical strategies or impression management tactics to enhance legitimacy in the eyes of external audiences, even as they still may perceive green innovation as a threat or alien to their organisation (Patala et al. 2019). Our findings reveal that building internal legitimacy through organisational purpose shift goes deeper as it must be supported by actions that change an organisation’s underlying values and structures. Moreover, although purpose shift alone does not imply a ready-made solution to radically decarbonise fossil fuel incumbents, building internal legitimacy for green innovation helps incumbents to move beyond the simple adoption of green innovation, such as arm’s length financial investments, ‘showcase’ patents, or the purchasing of green certificates, which have often been documented as typical responses to external legitimacy concerns (Doblinger and Soppe 2013; Vasi and King 2012).

Finally, we enrich the literature on interorganisational collaborations for green innovation, particularly between incumbents and sustainable entrepreneurs (Hockerts and Wüstenhagen 2010). Much work that has examined the role of incumbents and entrepreneurs in addressing sustainability challenges has pointed out the differences between the two parties and revealed challenges that hinder their successful collaboration. In sharp contrast to profit- driven incumbents, sustainable entrepreneurs are characterised by strong pro-social and sustainability values (Wry and York 2017) and the desire to protect the natural environment and overcome associated challenges (Dean and McMullen 2007). Our study provides valuable insights into how collaborations between these divergent actors can support incumbent organisations in realising a new organisational purpose. Our findings suggest that incumbents that collaborate with partners characterised by an organisational purpose that matches the aspired purpose of the incumbent can strengthen the gradual realisation of the novel purpose. In other words, such collaborations seem to be critical in helping fossil fuel incumbents to overcome ceremonial statements and start ‘walking the purpose-talk’ — that is, putting the anticipated purpose into action by redefining organisational products and business directions (Kimsey, Geradts, and Battilana 2023).

6. Limitations and future research

Our qualitative study is not without limitations that represent important avenues for future research. First, while we provide an internal organisational account of purpose shift, we acknowledge that we build our arguments based on a single case study, which challenges the generalisability of our findings. Future research might engage in comparative studies to derive deeper knowledge on how incumbents in carbon-intensive industries can overcome their dominating mindset focused on profitability and the associated pervasiveness of fossil fuels. This research could compare incumbents across distinct industries or different types of incumbent firms along the value chain of carbon-intensive industries. Indeed, it has been found that incumbents in the supplier industry are less reluctant to pursue green innovation than the large incumbents that we studied (Andersen and Gulbrandsen 2020; Steen and Weaver 2017). Studying different types of incumbents along the value chain might thus reveal further insights on how distinct incumbents may realise a duty-based organisational purpose and how this affects the development of green innovation. Moreover, guided by our interview results, we predominantly focused on the incumbent’s collaboration and CVC activities with sustainable entrepreneurs as one way to realise a novel organisational purpose. We encourage future research to investigate other organisational domains of purpose realisation, such as incumbents’ research and development departments, human resource and recruitment activities, and headquarter vs. satellite activities.

Moreover, while our study indicates that realising a duty-based purpose presents a major challenge for fossil fuel incumbents, future research is needed to fully unpack the organisational struggles and tensions involved in realising this type of purpose. Although our case firm significantly stepped up its green innovation efforts over the time frame of our analysis, it did not fully divest from fossil fuel technologies and seem to struggle with a full realisation of its duty-based purpose. Our study therefore suggests that realising purpose is not a punctual event but one that unfolds over time, with many incumbents employing the dualistic strategy of adding novel, sustainable innovation to their conventional business model. How does such a dualistic strategy in the wake of purpose shift generate internal struggles? How do those struggles impede or slow down purpose realisation? And how do internal stakeholders react to various paces of organisational purpose enactment?

Next, given that our study is characterised by an internal focus, it does not provide insights into the interlinkages between organisational level dynamics and broader societal and system level dynamics. Therefore, we encourage future research to place the study of organisational purpose shift into a systemic context. One way to approach this is to investigate the role of external audiences. For instance, our case study did not allow us to explore the role of external stakeholders, who may of course influence or react to the purpose shift. Future studies could examine how divergent stakeholder expectations may influence how a firm defines or modifies its purpose. Furthermore, as investors typically value short-term returns and the maximisation of shareholder value, do they diminish their commitment to firms that change to a duty-based purpose? How can firms find the right balance between a commitment to shareholders and a commitment to a duty-based purpose? These questions deserve further research attention.

Finally, while our study provides evidence that collaborations with sustainable entrepreneurs help incumbents to develop green innovation, there is the need to explicate the organisational dynamics within and across the divergent collaborating partners. Future research could dive deeper into the phenomena of incumbent-entrepreneurship collaborations, examine the specific challenges and tensions that those partnerships imply, and study how they influence an incumbent’s transition towards sustainability.

7. Conclusion

Given the climate emergency, achieving decarbonisation of carbon-intensive industries through green innovation is essential. Yet, critical organisational constraints may hinder fossil fuel incumbents from cultivating, developing, and diffusing green innovation. In this paper, we examine internal legitimacy as a little-studied key constraint that prevents fossil fuel incumbents from engaging with green innovation. We show that the shift from a goal-based organisational purpose driven by profitability towards a duty-based organisational purpose may be a significant way to overcome incumbents’ hesitation to green innovation and build internal legitimacy for it. However, our study also demonstrates that the realisation of the aspired purpose often takes place selectively and gradually, meaning that the novel purpose is enacted in only some units of the organisations, while the established core business persists. Thus, organisational purpose shift alone does not imply a ready-made solution to radically decarbonise fossil fuel incumbents; further organisational efforts are required to divest from fossil fuels and enable decarbonisation at large scale. Nevertheless, organisational purpose shift presents an important way for established firms to begin moving away from their iconic and profoundly institutionalised purpose of ‘making as much money as possible’ towards a purpose that allows them to take credible action on sustainable development and improve their crucial impact on society.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Special Issue Editor Georg Reischauer for his thoughtful guidance throughout the revision process, and our two anonymous reviewers for their excellent suggestions. We also thank our colleagues at the research centre INTRANSIT and participants of the Futuring Nordics seminar at the University of Oslo on “circular economy and corporate sustainability” for their valuable input, and all interviewees who generously spend their time to talk to us. This project received funding from the Norwegian Research Council, project number 295021.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).