Conflicting and Complementing Logics: Examining Sustainability Practices Across Economies

The role institutional environments play in sustainability practices across countries is well documented in the international business literature. However, how multiple and occasionally conflicting institutional logics shape sustainability practices at the individual-level is underexplored, especially across countries. To enhance our understanding of this process, we investigate how individuals in two high-hazard organizations in the energy sectors in the Republic of Serbia and Canada practice sustainability. Our findings illustrate that in both contexts, individuals “pull down” structural elements of high-hazard logics into their daily sustainability practice, thereby relating their practices to the well-being of others as well as aligning them to their salient identities. However, our findings also illustrate how multiple, often conflicting, logics interact to shape this process distinctively across two countries. In Serbia, individuals pull-down and combine elements of high-hazard and legacy state logics to construct community logic and align their practice to it. In Canada, individuals do so to construct professional logics and align their practice to it. Based on our comparative case analysis of a developed economy and an economy in transition, we create a general model, as well country-specific models, depicting how individuals navigate multiple institutional logics to engage in sustainability practices.