Mainstreaming Climate Risk: How Tools, Complexity, and Salience Shape Business‑as‑Usual and Transformational Strategic Responses

Growing concern about climate risk has intensified calls for sustainability mainstreaming. Yet firms often embed climate risk in ways that reinforce business‑as‑usual priorities rather than prompting strategic transformation. This study explains why this occurs by integrating behavioural and practice perspectives on strategy. We examine how climate‑risk management tools shape the framing of climate‑related complexity, highlight certain aspects as salient, and direct managerial attention towards pursuing business‑as‑usual rather than transformative approaches. Empirically, we analyse global food and drink firms’ open‑text CDP disclosures from 2018 to 2022. Our findings show how an overreliance on familiar, routinised tools can bias firms’ decision‑making. This bias leads many firms to incorporate climate risks into their existing strategy rather than changing it; however, in some cases, particular configurations of perceived complexity and salience enable more transformational approaches. The study advances our understanding of the process of sustainability mainstreaming and its limits in enabling strategic transformation.