Lost in Transit? Making Sense of CSRD Scope 3 Reporting in a Logistics Subsidiary

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how CSRD-driven Scope 3 emissions reporting demands become interpretable, actionable, and to varying degrees stable within a local subsidiary of a multinational logistics enterprise. While CSRD increases expectations for traceable, defensible, and auditable sustainability information, Scope 3 reporting remains difficult because relevant data, methods, responsibilities, and external relationships are distributed across organizational levels, functions, and value chain actors. The study addresses this challenge by asking how organizational actors within a local subsidiary make sense of and translate CSRD-driven Scope 3 requirements, how these processes shape the development, stabilization of governance and compliance routines. Empirically, the thesis is based on a qualitative single case study of a Nordic logistics subsidiary, drawing on 24 semi-structured interviews with subsidiary, headquarters, and central function actors, complemented by internal and customer-related material. Using sensemaking as the primary analytical lens, supported by translation, ownership alignment, and routinization, the analysis shows that reporting demands become locally salient through customer requests, regulatory pressure, unclear figures, and reporting problems. Actors assemble workable responses across interfaces, but responsibility for delivery is often distributed without corresponding methodological authority. The findings show that Scope 3 governance is assembled before it is settled: some practices become repeated and consequential, while others remain fragile, person-dependent, and only partly embedded. The thesis contributes by conceptualizing this condition as uneven stabilization under distributed control.