The successful development and deployment of adequate sustainable manufacturing strategies are still open issues and of utmost interest for research and practice. Guided by this particular challenge, we investigate the significance of organisational change management for sustainable competitiveness in manufacturing. By using six case studies from the Lombardia region in Italy and basing our research on the theoretical constructs of competitive aggressiveness and organisational change, we discover four archetypes of companies that show an increasing sustainable competitiveness with an increasing formalism and persistence in organisational change. Our findings suggest that change management practices are conditional hypothesis for creating competitive advantage through sustainability, and implementation gaps do hinder companies in realising the full potential. The study offers guidance to stakeholders, on how change management actions may potentially affect company performance in the manufacturing sector, as well as providing direction on the impact improved planning and leadership instances can have on the sustainability performance.