Background: Sustainability issues have become increasingly relevant for businesses worldwide. Especially corporate sustainability as a comprehensive approach integrating the competing demands of social, environmental, and economic dimensions on a business creates ambiguous situations for decision-makers. Therefore, cognitive frames as individuals’ lenses that reduce complexity and allow sense-making in these ambiguous situations have gained scholarly attention. Start-ups, characterised by their agility, innovation, and potential for rapid growth, provide a valuable setting to explore cognitive frames in corporate sustainability.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine how decision-makers in sustainable start-ups build individual cognitive frames on corporate sustainability. Therefore, antecedents of cognitive frames in corporate sustainability are central to this research.

Method: To fulfil the research purpose, a qualitative grounded theory study of inductive nature was conducted. Approached exploratorily, we followed a relativist ontology and a constructionist epistemology. 14 semi-structured interviews with decision-makers from 10 different sustainability-focused start-ups were the main mode of data collection and allowed a deep dive into the topic. Our data was analysed through grounded analysis.

Conclusion: As a result of our study, we found two cognitive frames in corporate sustainability, the Unbending Frameand the Integrative Frame, that are defined by four different frame characteristics. These cognitive frames show that there are two main antecedents that play a crucial role when building cognitive frames in corporate sustainability: the role of sustainability in the upbringing, and as an umbrella term exposure to various aspects regarding sustainability more specifically trigger events, media and global events, education, and the individual social environment.