The Quest for Low-Carbon Mobility: Sustainability Tensions and Responses When Retail Translates a Manufacturer’s Decarbonization Strategy

Corporate action to tackle climate change is affected by multifaceted tensions, which are insufficiently investigated. It therefore remains unclear how tensions become salient and how they are responded to when a new strategy is introduced. We propose that translation theory can inform paradox theory and explore this conceptualization using a qualitative case-study research design. Specifically, we examine how retail translates the decarbonization strategy of a car manufacturer. We show how retail employees, in their role as translators, compare the manufacturer’s strategy against their context and thereby make tensions salient in a context-dependent manner. Additionally, we examine how translators respond to salient tensions by applying eight different contextualization mechanisms to resolve the tensions between the new strategy and contextual factors. In one subunit, the translation of the new strategy fails, and the tension persists. We derive two theoretical propositions from the studied patterns of the salience of and response to tensions.