Making Sense of Impact Materiality - Sensemaking under Multiple Institutional Logics in a Voluntary Double Materiality Assessment at the European Spallation Source ERIC

Sammanfattning

Organizations are increasingly expected to assess and disclose their impacts on people and the environment. While the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) have increased the importance of double materiality assessments in corporate reporting, less is known about how impact materiality is applied in voluntary, non-corporate settings. At the same time, limited research explains how organizational members interpret impact materiality when unfamiliar sustainability reporting practices are introduced into organizations shaped by multiple institutional logics. This thesis investigates how organizational members make sense of impacts in a voluntary double materiality assessment shaped by multiple institutional logics at the European Spallation Source ERIC. The study adopts a qualitative single-case study design, informed by action research. Empirical material was collected through document review, an organization-wide survey, 24 semi-structured interviews, Sustainability Forum meetings, a participatory workshop, researcher observations, and several rounds of validation. The analysis combines the practical implementation of an ESRS-aligned impact materiality assessment with perspectives on institutional logics and sensemaking. The findings are structured across three analytical levels. At the macro level, impact materiality was developed through an iterative process, revealing methodological tensions related to technical ESRS language, dispersed organizational knowledge, limited stakeholder engagement, and indirect or future-oriented impacts. At the meso level, three institutional logics shaped the interpretation of impact relevance. Depending on the context and impact under discussion, these professional, bureaucratic, and sustainability logics sometimes created tensions that organizational members had to navigate. At the micro level, sensemaking theory helped explain how organizational members dealt with this ambiguity. Four perceptual modes showed how organizational members made sense of impact materiality through different ways of articulating and normatively framing it. The main contribution of this thesis is a multilevel framework that connects these three levels, showing how impact materiality is methodologically assessed at the macro level, shaped by institutional logics at the meso level, and made sense of by organizational members at the micro level. Overall, this thesis contributes to understanding impact materiality as both a methodological assessment and an interpretive organizational process. It demonstrates that in a voluntary, non-corporate setting, assessing impact materiality extends beyond reporting and becomes a process in which organizational members develop recurring ways of sensemaking.