Everyone is just sitting and waiting: Organisational barriers to sustainability work in the Atlantic Salmon Farming Industry

Abstract

Humanity has become aware of the world's dangers, rapid climate changes, species going extinct, and oceans becoming acidified. The Atlantic salmon farming industry is currently the fastest-growing food sector in the world. However, the activities of the salmon industry use resources from the ecosystem it lays within and produce changes in the ecological system, threatening the natural habitat. Norway is Brundtland´s country, with a high profit and a leading supplier within technology development. Nevertheless, the highly profitable industry continues to grow on a non-sustainable path while everyone in the pioneering nation is just sitting and waiting for something to happen. Hence, we were triggered to dig deeper into the industry and determine how major actors reason around stimuli to organisational sustainability work and possible responses. Through semi-structured interviews and archive data, we have managed to explore real-life cases and identified five major patterns of defence mechanisms: (1) Avoiding Financial risk, (2) Questioning the Need and Forms of Regulations and Measures, (3) Waiting for Technology Development, (4) Complaining about Media Misinformation and (5) Blaming others. These defence mechanisms inhibit long-term sustainable growth, moral non-sustainable activities, and organisational learning. However, our findings raise awareness of the industry's moral neutralisation techniques, thereby contributing to further research on sustainable development