Pioneering environmental innovation in developing countries: The case of executives' adoption of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

By integrating and diffusing environmental innovations (EIs), executives act as important change agents who promote the corporate sustainability (CS) agenda. This article borrows a sensemaking lens to examine the influences behind executives' adoption of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), a prominent EI for building sustainability. Through qualitative fieldwork with 30 local executives deliberately adopting LEED and operating in the Bangladeshi apparel industry, this article reveals that the executives are driven by collective influences, that is, homogeneous assumptions co-created in their social circle. It also demonstrates that the executives translate these assumptions in line with individual influences, ultimately displaying four distinct sensemaking patterns and investing differently. While highlighting the importance of analysing EIs in specific industries in developing countries from the perspective of the chief change agents in the firm, this article contributes to the on-going conversations on EI adoption in the CS literature. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.