Sustainability Overload and Execution Inconsistency: How Too Many Sustainability Priorities Weaken Strategic Implementation

Firms are increasingly expected to pursue multiple sustainability priorities, but the implementation consequences of expanding sustainability agendas remain insufficiently understood. This study investigates whether and how sustainability overload reduces sustainability execution consistency. Drawing on the attention-based view and the corporate sustainability tensions perspective, the study proposes that a broad and simultaneous sustainability agenda exceeds managers’ attentional and coordination capacity, thereby weakening implementation coherence across departments. Specifically, the study hypothesizes that sustainability overload increases managerial attention strain, which in turn increases interunit priority divergence, ultimately reducing sustainability execution consistency. To test this sequential mechanism, a randomized experimental vignette study was conducted with 300 middle- and senior-level managers working in Türkiye-based firms operating in sustainability-exposed sectors. Participants were assigned to either a focused sustainability strategy condition or an overloaded sustainability strategy condition. The results support all proposed hypotheses. The overloaded condition increased managerial attention strain and interunit priority divergence, while reducing perceived sustainability execution consistency. PROCESS Model 6 analysis confirmed the sequential mediation mechanism. The findings suggest that sustainability implementation depends not only on the breadth of sustainability goals, but also on whether these goals are organized through a manageable priority architecture. The study contributes to sustainability strategy implementation research by highlighting managerial attention and cross-functional divergence as mechanisms linking sustainability overload to execution inconsistency.