EHS-manager Alejandro Jaramillo Gómez recently wrote on LinkedIn about the high turnover among Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) managers. It's a familiar issue to me, but one that seems underdiscussed. The prevailing explanation of why EHS Managers fail tends to point at individual shortcomings. "They" lack leadership, perseverance, or persuasive power. But insights from organizational theory suggest there might be a structural cause; the institutional context in which these professionals operate. Here are four possible contributing factors:

1. Formal responsibility without practical power

According to Crozier and Friedberg, organizations function within fields of “zones of controlled uncertainty.” In such environments, power is exercised practically instead of formally. EHS managers may hold formal mandates and responsibilities, but in practice their interventions collide with production priorities and entrenched interests. Because they rarely have access to informal power structures, their interventions remain largely symbolic. The high turnover rate is not the result of individual failure, but of structural powerlessness in an environment where influence is asymmetrically distributed.

2. Symbolic safety culture as a rationality façade

From the symbolic-institutional perspective of Meyer & Rowan, many organizational practices are ritualistic and aimed at legitimacy rather than effectiveness. "Safety culture" fits this model: it tends to become a rationality façade. It's made visible through certifications, dashboards, and campaigns, but it remains disconnected from actual behavior on the shop floor. In practice, production demands and efficiency logic dominate. The EHS manager finds themselves torn between the discourse of safety and the operative reality of the organization. This decoupling between formal structure and actual practice is a core theme in institutional theory.

3. Institutional appearance: legitimacy without integration

The EHS role is often introduced to meet external expectations: legal compliance, audit requirements, or social pressure. This fits what Meyer & Rowan describe as “ceremonial conformity.” The function may carry symbolic weight, but it's rarely integrated into strategic decision-making or core operations. As a result, the EHS manager is held accountable for safety without the corresponding power or resources. This leads to frustration, burnout, and eventual departure.

4. Isomorphism and the absence of shared governance

DiMaggio and Powell describe how organizations in sectoral fields are subject to institutional pressure to resemble one another; a process they call isomorphism. Safety culture certification is a clear example. Organizations adopt these systems under the influence of coercive isomorphism (legitimacy pressures), mimetic isomorphism (imitation of perceived leaders), and normative isomorphism (professionalization). But this rarely results in shared ownership. Operational leaders often stay disengaged, while EHS managers are held responsible. Without structural collaboration or co-governance, cultural change becomes little more than a performance.

From role fixation to system transformation

So, the rapid turnover of EHS managers is not an isolated failure, but a symptom of a system that still confuses ritual with reality. Institutional organizational theory reveals that environment, health & safety management is seldom truly embedded in the power structures of the organization. It's performed through audits and labels, but undermined in practice. A sustainable solution requires something else than simply better EHS professionals. It requires a change in the system itself. Only when environment, health & safety management becomes a matter of shared ownership, anchored in real decision-making and supported by operational power, can it grow into more than an institutional myth. Or, what do you think?

Literature used

Ortmann, G., Sydow, J., Türk, K. (Eds., 1997), Theorien der Organisation - Die Rückkehr der Gesellschaft, Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien.