The challenge of introducing low-carbon industrial practices: Institutional entrepreneurship in the agri-food sector

•We explored a policy initiative addressing GHG emissions.•We analyzed how influences from other organizational fields affected the initiative.•The study contributes to the understanding of institutional entrepreneurship.•Influences from other organizational fields reduced the openness and motivation to suggest and promote divergent change.

Contemporary agricultural practices account for a significant share of greenhouse gas emissions. Inspired by the emergent literature on institutional entrepreneurship, we seek to explore mechanisms that affect an actor’s propensity to act in ways that imply suggesting and promoting emission-reducing practice changes. As influences originating outside the organizational field are assumed to constitute such mechanisms, the paper explores their role through a case study of a project run by a public agency. Unlike extant theory, results show that the agency’s propensity to act is not necessarily enhanced by extra-field influences but that such influences also limit the scope for suggesting change that challenges existing industrial practices.