Organizational Sensemaking Theory Perspective of Developing AI‐Driven Strategies for Sustainability Initiatives

ABSTRACT Although artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being touted to assist organizations, AI integration for sustainability efforts has been limited AND sporadic and tends to follow an ad hoc strategy. The existing literature therein focuses on the technological capabilities of AI, overlooking how organizations make sense of and strategically embed these into sustainability initiatives. Addressing this gap, this study explored the strategies that organizations utilized to integrate AI to improve sustainable initiatives in the Australian industry. Using a qualitative case study approach, data were collected through semistructured interviews with top executives and managers across operations, supply chain, and IT fields. Four strategies were discovered during the analysis, which was guided by grounded theory and organizational sensemaking theory as the sensitizing concept. The findings reveal that integrating AI for sustainability practices is a dynamic sensemaking process that reconfigures how organizations interpret value, responsibility, and interdependencies across the broader ecosystem.