Competing Demands, Competing Guardrails, and Competing Demands for Guardrails Exploring Organizational Guardrail Entanglement when Navigating Sustainability Paradoxes

The creation of organizational boundaries may support collective navigation of paradox involving a diversity of stakeholders and associated viewpoints, by scaffolding dynamic decision-making, while at the same time leaving room to maneuver and local flexibility (Smith & Lewis, 2022; Lewis & Smith, 2022). Boundaries may take the form of guardrails such as organizational fora allowing for structured flexibility within the parameters of a zone of navigational flexibility (Smith & Besharov, 2019). This article explores the creation of guardrails for navigating sustainability paradoxes. Based on an action research project involving participant observation, focus group/single interviews, survey data, and interventions zooming in on the procurement and use of raw materials, this study contributes to our understanding of organizational guardrails as facilitators of paradoxical action by exploring the dynamic between competing guardrails uncovering three types of competing guardrail disputes associated with guardrail creation: Navigational zone-disputes; track and trace-disputes, and green disputes.