Going green but seeing red: Tensions in initiating collective market shaping for sustainability

Empirical research on market shaping for environmental outcomes remains rare in business marketing research, and existing studies are largely biased towards successful cases while overlooking the challenging “front end” of collective market shaping. This study examines how actor-perceived tensions emanating from the business context influence efforts to initiate a collective market-shaping process for improved environmental outcomes. Drawing on a real-time qualitative case study of a European cruise shipbuilding network, we focus on the phase in which a shared market vision and coordinated action have yet to emerge. Our findings show that accumulated tensions hinder the microprocesses required for initiating collective market shaping. These tensions manifest as conflict, scattered activity and inactivity, delaying progress towards collective market shaping. Shifting attention from successful outcomes to early-stage tensions, this study contributes to market-shaping research by uncovering why collective market-shaping efforts for sustainability may fail to take shape in complex industrial networks.