Abstract
In organization and corporate sustainability (CS) research, decoupling has attracted considerable research attention. The majority of this research has investigated its precursors. Continued reports of weather extremes suggest that CS decoupling continues to be salient. Despite a fruitful research tradition, the consequences of decoupling have received less attention. Where they have been examined, the focus was on financial aspects. The present study zooms in on employees as important organizational constituents and analyses how they are affected when their organization decouples sustainability practices from structures. It investigates how decoupling affects organizational commitment and how this relationship is affected by how employees attribute responsibility and form other attitudes such as trust and cynicism. To this end, an online experiment is carried out among 469 employees. findings reveal that attribution, trust, and cynicism mediate the link between decoupling and commitment, while environmental attitudes play a minor role. Results are interpreted through an AT lens.