Abstract
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. Middle managers act as pivotal agents for recoupling but lack sufficient institutional authority and support. Middle managers strengthen accountability by embedding measurable sustainability targets and post-project impact reviews into governance frameworks. Middle managers integrate sustainability ratings into design-phase documents to avoid procurements locking in high-emission materials.
Keywords
government projects, project governance, public infrastructure, strategic decoupling, sustainability, sustainable development
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
1-1-2026
E-ISSN
14678500
ISSN
03136647
Publication Title
Australian Journal of Public Administration
Publisher
Wiley
School
School of Business and Law
RAS ID
100247
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Hughes, R., & Brown, K. (2026). Decoupling sustainability and performance: How government infrastructure projects in Australia fare on strategic environmental commitments. Australian Journal of Public Administration. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.70061