Decoupling sustainability and performance: How government infrastructure projects in Australia fare on strategic environmental commitments

Australian government organisations are pivotal in helping to meet the United Nations sustainable development goals. Yet while these organisations promote sustainability in their strategic plans, they struggle to embed these same commitments into their own infrastructure and construction projects. This study examines this persistent disconnect using the lens of strategic decoupling, which explains how organisations symbolically align with external expectations while internal practices remain unchanged. Using a two‐stage qualitative design, we conducted a positivist discourse analysis of strategic artefacts from six government organisations and a theoretically informed interpretivist analysis of 30 interviews with project professionals, framed by strong structuration theory. We identify widespread policy–practice decoupling, reinforced by institutional inertia and the flawed success logic in project management's iron triangle. Our findings reveal the moral burden experienced by middle managers who, as reflexively knowledgeable actors, find their professional identities in conflict with organisational mandates. We extend strategic decoupling theory by introducing the interpretive authority of middle managers and the concept of strategic recoupling. These are intentional efforts by agents to bridge the gap between rhetoric and practice. We call for systemic reform, including strengthened accountability and targeted support for managers to shift sustainability from a ceremonial commitment to an operational reality.

Points for practitioners

Government sustainability policies often decouple from project reality, creating persistent gaps between rhetoric and practice.