Background: In an evolving business landscape, the need for regulations has emerged to foster sustainable business. To ensure that firms are held accountable, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) entered into force in January 2024, encompassing approximately 50,000 firms across Europe. This directive expands upon previous legislation in all conceivable metrics, and has put affected firms under significant pressure, posing implications for organizational change arising from the extensive implementation.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify what actions firms are taking to comply with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and explore how their actions impact their organizational structure.

Method: The study was conducted through a qualitative method including semi-structured interviews with eight participants, including HR Managers, Sustainability Managers, and Consultants.

Conclusion: The study reveals that the effects on the organizational structure of firms as a consequence of the CSRD primarily involves incremental change. Efforts of coordinating across departments, allocating tasks and establishing supervisory functions emerges as core challenges when transitioning to CSRD compliance. These, in turn constituting structural changes in specialization, functional flexibility, formalization and standardization to accommodate new procedures necessitated by the CSRD. The analysis further highlights the expansion of middle management, support staff and technostructure, as a result of organization wide collaboration.