Unearthing heterogeneity in readiness and resistance to sustainable change and carbon footprints in organisations

Abstract Organisations can drive the sustainability transition if employees and organisational culture are prepared to adopt sustainability-relevant changes. We present a multilevel framework that models the cognitive and emotional dimensions of readiness and resistance to sustainable changes in organisations. This framework is used to study change readiness for plant-based workplace lunches among 62 Danish organisations. Using multilevel latent class analysis, we identify three organisational clusters differing in change readiness. Higher change readiness correlates with reduced carbon footprints from workplace lunches. In ‘change-ready’ organisations, the carbon footprint is 28% (95% CI:16-40%) and 21% (95% CI:8-35%) lower than in ‘change-resistant’ and ‘mixed’ organisations, respectively. Additionally, an organisation’s change readiness level modifies when emotionally resistant employees engage in change-supportive behaviour. Our findings suggest that change agents must tailor sustainability goals to an organisation’s change readiness and resistance characteristics, and that academic scholars need to be alert to organisational heterogeneity when designing interventions.