The freedom within framework: a multilevel perspective on developing green capabilities through routines in service organisations

The environmental strategy literature accepts that environmental sustainability can be a crucial source of competitive advantage, but approaches based on the resource-based view require further explanation as to how green capabilities are developed and transmitted and how employees at different levels contribute to these processes. This article examines these processes by investigating three multilevel case studies of New Zealand service industry firms, based on 32 interviews with senior and middle managers and front-line staff. The study finds that although green routines and green capabilities develop in heterogeneous, path-dependent and idiosyncratic ways, these follow identifiable processes at the micro level and meso levels of the firm. On the basis of these findings, a framework is developed suggestion pathways explaining how green routines are aggregated into green capabilities across the whole firm, which is termed the freedom within framework.