2025/11/01 by Cecilia Enberg · 1 voice
Environmental Science · Business, Management and Accounting · #Sustainability and Climate Change Governance #Environmental Sustainability in Business #Regulation and Compliance Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/1523908x.2025.2581045
openalex publication_date 2025/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/11/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
The aim of this paper is to bring insights into the lack of concerted action in the governing of Swedish industry’s green transition by investigating national policymakers’ views on the polycentric landscape that they are part of. I apply positioning theory to analyse policymakers’ views on their own and other actors’ roles and responsibilities in governing industry’s green transition. The results show that policymakers take on an orchestrating role that is not aligned with the interests expressed by industry. Accepting a polycentric governance landscape, national policymakers partly displace their mandate to craft policies to industry. They also describe a shift of the regulative role from the national to the supranational level that is at odds with industry’s expectations of national regulations – something that risks creating a ‘policy implementation gap’. The study concludes with theoretical implications by suggesting that taking each other into consideration while acting for a common goal, is insufficient for concerted action. Rather, joint arenas for deliberation, where actors can accept and refute positions attributed to them in real time, can be important to allow for alignment of interests and mutual adjustment between emerging initiatives and, eventually, concerted action.