Policy Integration, Institutional Readiness, and the Implementation Gap in Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation: Policy and Organizational Perspectives From a Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Climate change adaptation is now part of many public policies and business strategies, yet formal commitments often do not lead to practical action. This implementation gap has been documented in parallel by two literatures that rarely engage each other: research on the mainstreaming of adaptation into public policy, and organizational research on how firms respond to physical climate risk. This study connects the two. We systematically reviewed 373 English‐language, Scopus‐indexed journal articles (2017–2025) on adaptation mainstreaming, policy integration, and institutional readiness, and compared the results with a structured corpus of 44 organizational climate‐adaptation studies published in 21 business and management journals (2006–2025). The review asks how mainstreaming is conceptualized, which dimensions support integration and implementation, why implementation gaps persist, and how policy domain patterns compare with organizational scholarship. Across both domains, climate risk is acknowledged faster than it is embedded in budgets, responsibilities, decision routines, and accountability: an embedding deficit that survives the transition from government to firm. The comparison also reveals domain‐specific mechanisms: authority, vertical coordination, and administrative capacity in the policy domain; managerial attention, competitive alignment, capital allocation rules, and value chain interdependence in firms. It further shows that equity concerns, which are prominent in policy research, remain largely absent from organizational research. The review distills these findings into the Climate‐Contingent Readiness–Integration–Implementation–Learning (CC‐RIIL) model, a simple diagnostic framework. The model locates four recurrent gaps in the mainstreaming process, explains why each arises and with what consequences, and separates process completion from evaluated adaptation outcomes. Actionable implications for managers, governance bodies, and policymakers are derived from the model.