From Sensemaking to Action: Developing a Perception-based Framework for Corporate Climate Resilience
(2026) VBRM15 20261Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety
- Abstract
- This thesis explores how large manufacturing companies in the Benelux region make sense of climate resilience and what they perceive as its key elements. Although ‘corporate climate resilience’ has gained increasing attention in academic and practitioner-oriented literature, the concept is characterised by ambiguity and fragmentation, resulting in inconsistent corporate interpretations and practices. Empirical insights into how large businesses perceive and construct meaning around the concept remain nevertheless limited. This research addresses this gap by adopting an inductive, qualitative case-study approach based on 15 semi-structured interviews with 15 representatives from large manufacturers and 4 field experts in the Benelux.... (More)
- This thesis explores how large manufacturing companies in the Benelux region make sense of climate resilience and what they perceive as its key elements. Although ‘corporate climate resilience’ has gained increasing attention in academic and practitioner-oriented literature, the concept is characterised by ambiguity and fragmentation, resulting in inconsistent corporate interpretations and practices. Empirical insights into how large businesses perceive and construct meaning around the concept remain nevertheless limited. This research addresses this gap by adopting an inductive, qualitative case-study approach based on 15 semi-structured interviews with 15 representatives from large manufacturers and 4 field experts in the Benelux. Applying thematic analysis, it develops a perception-based framework for corporate climate resilience grounded in organisational sensemaking and perceived resilience elements. The framework suggests that large businesses make sense of climate resilience through a continuous process of interpreting and acting, shaped by firm-level dynamics, systemic interdependencies, and structural
constraints. It shows that resilience is shaped through coexisting perspectives and influencing factors, while also being often conditionally relevant. Organisations enact resilience through a continuous interaction between embedment and operationalisation processes. Embedment entails elements of awareness, shared language, pragmatic simplification, willingness, top-down leadership, and strategic embedment, while operationalisation involves data, frameworks, risk-based approaches, ownership, central-local dynamics, and organisational alignment. These elements enable practices of proactive design, redundancy, and resilience across and beyond firms. Overall, the thesis reconceptualises corporate climate resilience as a relational property emerging from interactions between organisational sensemaking and action, and provides practical insights into perceived conditions and challenges for effective climate resilience. (Less) - Popular Abstract
- Companies do not simply ‘build’ or ‘achieve’ climate resilience. This study shows that resilience is an ongoing process shaped by how companies understand it, act on it, and work together with others around them. Companies continuously figure out what ‘resilience’ means for them while acting on it at the same time. This research provides a framework for corporate climate resilience based on how companies themselves understand it. These insights are particularly useful for companies, policymakers, and researchers.
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9237332
- author
- Vossen, Casper Nicolaas LU
- supervisor
-
- Mo Hamza LU
- organization
- course
- VBRM15 20261
- year
- 2026
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Corporate Climate resilience, Organisational Sensemaking, Perception, Manufacturing Sector, Benelux Region, Climate Change Adaptation, Climate Risk Management, Organisational Resilience
- language
- English
- id
- 9237332
- date added to LUP
- 2026-06-17 08:13:14
- date last changed
- 2026-06-17 08:13:14
@misc{9237332,
abstract = {{This thesis explores how large manufacturing companies in the Benelux region make sense of climate resilience and what they perceive as its key elements. Although ‘corporate climate resilience’ has gained increasing attention in academic and practitioner-oriented literature, the concept is characterised by ambiguity and fragmentation, resulting in inconsistent corporate interpretations and practices. Empirical insights into how large businesses perceive and construct meaning around the concept remain nevertheless limited. This research addresses this gap by adopting an inductive, qualitative case-study approach based on 15 semi-structured interviews with 15 representatives from large manufacturers and 4 field experts in the Benelux. Applying thematic analysis, it develops a perception-based framework for corporate climate resilience grounded in organisational sensemaking and perceived resilience elements. The framework suggests that large businesses make sense of climate resilience through a continuous process of interpreting and acting, shaped by firm-level dynamics, systemic interdependencies, and structural
constraints. It shows that resilience is shaped through coexisting perspectives and influencing factors, while also being often conditionally relevant. Organisations enact resilience through a continuous interaction between embedment and operationalisation processes. Embedment entails elements of awareness, shared language, pragmatic simplification, willingness, top-down leadership, and strategic embedment, while operationalisation involves data, frameworks, risk-based approaches, ownership, central-local dynamics, and organisational alignment. These elements enable practices of proactive design, redundancy, and resilience across and beyond firms. Overall, the thesis reconceptualises corporate climate resilience as a relational property emerging from interactions between organisational sensemaking and action, and provides practical insights into perceived conditions and challenges for effective climate resilience.}},
author = {{Vossen, Casper Nicolaas}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{From Sensemaking to Action: Developing a Perception-based Framework for Corporate Climate Resilience}},
year = {{2026}},
}