The mining industry has a central but ambivalent role in the sustainability transition, as it both supplies critical raw materials for low-carbon technologies and needs to reduce its own emissions. Electrification of mobile machinery is a important step, but it requires more than replacing diesel equipment with electric alternatives. It also involves changes in infrastructure, mine planning, supplier relations, routines and decision-making, while several technologies remain under development. Therefore, electrification in mining can be understood as a socio-technicaltransition rather than a purely technical change.

Combining transition studies with perspectives from organizational change, this thesis analyzes how perceived organizational barriers and technological uncertainty shape how an incumbent mining organization handles electrification. While transition studies provide a lens for understanding electrification as part of a broader socio-technical transition, organizational change perspectives are used to examine how this transition is interpreted, negotiated and enacted insidethe organization. Previous transitions research has often treated incumbent firms as relatively coherent regime actors, leaving limited understanding of how internal organizational conditions shape transition processes. Empirically, the study is based on a qualitative embedded singlecase study, including semi-structured interviews with internal and external actors, as well as observations from two mine sites.

The findings show that electrification is widely perceived as a necessary and desirable long-term direction within the organization, driven by environmental goals, improved work environment, long-term competitiveness and potential cost efficiency. At the same time, uncertainty regarding technology maturity, supplier capacity, infrastructure requirements, geopolitics, future costs and operational consequences makes the organization hesitant to test, invest in and commit to specific electrification path. These uncertainties are interpreted through existing responsibilities, priorities and routines, meaning that support for electrification remains conditional andvaries across organizational roles. The study identifies this as an uncertainty paradox: because uncertainty limits experimentation and commitment, opportunities for learning are reduced, which in turn reproduces the uncertainty that slows the transition. As a result, electrification remains exploratory and fragmented. Pilot projects and supplier collaborations generate valuable knowledge, but this learning is not always sufficiently shared or translated into coordinated organizational action.

The study further conceptualizes the incumbent firm as a micro-regime, where internal routines, production-oriented priorities, decentralized decision-making, local autonomy and role-specific interpretations reproduce stabilizing mechanisms usually associated with broader socio-technical regimes. This shows that electrification is constrained not only by external technology and market conditions, but also by internal organizational structures that shape how new technologies are evaluated and acted upon.

By opening the incumbent “black box”, this thesis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how established industrial firms handle sustainability transitions. The findings show that incumbent firms are neither simply resisting nor straightforwardly driving change. Instead, they navigate transitions through internal negotiations between long-term sustainability ambitions, technological uncertainty and established operational logics. The study therefore highlights the importance of shared learning, clearer strategic translation and stronger coordination across organizational levels in order to move from fragmented exploration toward more deliberate transition management.