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The championing of environmental improvements in technology investment projects
Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 777–783
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Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
The championing of environmental improvements in technology investment projects Nils Markusson* School of GeoSciences, Grant Institute, The University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JW, UK
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 5 April 2009 Received in revised form 25 November 2009 Accepted 12 January 2010 Available online 21 January 2010
The literature on environmental champions emphasises the effective action of environmentally committed individuals. This paper draws on case studies of process technology investment projects in chemical and dairy companies in the UK and Sweden. The analysis is based on a political process perspective on organisations. By analysing the career histories of environmental champions as well as their behaviour in the investment projects, the paper shows how their championing behaviour is shaped by dynamic interaction with the organisational context, as well as a broader range of motivations and interests, including career opportunities and private life concerns. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Environmental champions Technological innovation Organisational context Expertise Careers
1. Introduction Technology is a long-standing, central topic in environmental policy making. It has been discussed both as part of the problem and as a solution to environmental issues. The question of how to bring environmental concerns to bear on the use and development of technology, in companies and elsewhere, remains important for policy-makers in this area. Recent years have seen an expanding focus in environmental policy from manufacturing processes in industry to the consumption of products, and from single firms to innovation systems (Hilliard and Jacobson, 2003; Pujari, 2006). This does not mean, however, that the problem of pollution from manufacturing industry is solved. This paper will focus on environmental innovations in production technology, often discussed in terms of a distinction between ‘cleaner technology’ and ‘end-ofpipe technology’ (Clayton et al., 1999). Environmental and technological work are sometimes rather separate domains in firms. There is a risk of firms focussing their environmental work on formal management systems and administrative procedure instead of technological measures that can more directly improve firms’ environmental performance. This paper will contribute to answering the question of how environmental concerns can be effectively integrated into work concerning the development and deployment of technology. * Tel.: þ44 131 650 7010; fax: þ44 131 668 3184. E-mail address: [email protected] 0959-6526/$ – see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2010.01.011
Previous research on this topic has concerned the use of environmental criteria in relevant formal management systems (Green et al., 1994; Handfield et al., 2001; Blomquist and Sandstro¨m, 2004), by adopting special tools like Life Cycle Analysis or Design for Environment (Lenox et al., 2000), and by including environmental expertise in cross-functional teams (Groenewegen and Vergragt, 1991; Clayton et al., 1999) or sub-projects (Johansson and Magnusson, 2006). Another mechanism for the integration of environmental concerns is the environmental champion (Anderson and Bateman, 2000), that is, an individual who promotes environmental issues in decision-making processes. ‘Environmental championing’ may be defined as: any effort made by an (individual or collective) actor in a firm to promote environmental issues. It is worth noting that promotion of environmental issues does not by definition presuppose heart-felt environmentalism on behalf of the champion. Indeed, such behaviour may be rooted in other things – as shall be discussed in more detail later – for example raised status or control of resources. Effective championing is a matter of managing to influence decision-making. Environmental championing, therefore, needs to be understood in its organisational context, and the influence of champions is in part determined by structural factors. That successful championing is a combination of action on behalf of a champion and a context conducive to the promotion of environmental issues may seem to be a trivial insight. However, much existing literature strongly emphasises the champion and more or
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less neglects the context. Moreover, saying that both a willing and able champion and a good opportunity for environmental promotion are needed begs questions about the precise natures of both the champions and the opportunities, as well as about how the two relate to each other and interact. There is a long-standing topic of research and debate in the social sciences about whether human agency is determined by social structures, or whether social structures are to be seen as on outcome of the actions of individuals (Giddens, 1984). Actionoriented theories tend to highlight individual achievements and neglect contextual and historical factors, whereas structuralist theories emphasise social and organisational contexts, but may underplay the freedom of action of the individual. The dichotomy between structure and action will here be used to discuss theories of championing, and explore the relationship between environmental champions and their organisational context. The analysis will draw on notions of expertise and interests to characterise potential champions. To understand the background of champions their career histories will be investigated. Their social context will be analysed in terms of the organisation of projects and firms, as well as firm-external factors including not least regulation. The objective of the paper is to develop a new theorisation of environmental championing that gives due importance to both champion and context, and which explains how they interact, and so provide a social science contribution to our understanding of this important topic. The paper will first review different conceptualisations of ‘champions’ in existing literature. After setting out the methodology of the study, the results will be discussed with a special focus on the career histories of environmental champions, as well as the opportunities given to them by their organisations to promote environmental issues. Finally, the paper is concluded by summarising the results, and setting out a new way of explaining environmental championing. 2. Environmental champions between action and structure The concept of the ‘environmental champion’ is mainly used in environmental management literature (Anderson and Bateman, 2000; Boiral et al., 2008). This is, however, mirrored in the innovation studies literature where the ‘innovation champion’ is a common character (as reviewed by Jenssen and Jørgensen (2004)), and in organisational studies literature there is the similar ‘change agent’ (Burns and Stalker, 1961; Buchanan and Storey, 1997). This paper draws also on these additional sets of literature, since although they highlight (mostly) different actors with different skills, there is a commonality in the way they typically conceptualise promotion (of environmental issues, of a technology and of organisational change respectively). There are different approaches to conceptualising what a champion is, and they can be described as lying on a spectrum from action to structure orientation. These approaches will be described below, starting at the action end of the spectrum. At this end of the spectrum are models in which the champion possesses certain qualities – like enthusiasm and willingness to take risks – which are what makes him/her a champion (Jenssen and Jørgensen, 2004). Being a champion is here an inherent property of some people but not others; certain people have a champion essence as it were. Such an essentialist understanding of champions runs the risk of being voluntarist – that is, overplaying the achievements of the individual, and underplaying the organisational context. Another, related, weakness with this model is that the champion tends to be idealised, to become a hero, and everyone who does not go along with the ideas of the champion becomes a villain. For
example, Tidd et al. (2001) speak of ‘assassins’ resisting the initiatives of champions. Having thus defined once and for all who the good guys are and what the good cause is, politically motivated behaviour in the organisation is seen as destructive and getting in the way of what is obviously and rationally desirable. Essentialist, voluntarist understandings of champions tend to go hand-in-hand with apolitical understandings of organisations. Another way of understanding champions is to focus on the behaviour of championing (promoting) the environment. Anderson and Bateman (2000) studied the ways champions framed and presented environmental initiatives and compared successful championing attempts with unsuccessful ones. This approach recognises that the organisational context matters for championing, and that champions need to be reflexive about what they do. However, this is still a relatively voluntarist model in its concern with the receptivity of managers to the ideas of champions. The champion remains the prime mover. At the opposite end of the action-structure spectrum is a structural model of championing. Here the organisational context stimulates the emergence of champions by creating opportunities for employees to assume this role. The findings by Fincham et al. (1994) illustrate this model. They studied the careers of IT specialists in financial sector firms, and observed how there were structurally defined opportunities for this group of employees to further their careers and strengthen the legitimacy of their expertise through the championing of IT solutions. This more structure-oriented model thus highlights the organisational context of championing, and so avoids voluntarism. Moreover, it stresses the career and status interests of the champions, and the choices they make in seizing the opportunities offered to them by the organisation. This model, therefore, also includes an action aspect. In this model, self-interest is part of what motivates the champions. In contrast, heroic accounts of champions tend to be uncritical of the champion’s goals (environmental improvement, technological innovation, organisational change, etc.), and describe them as benefiting the whole organisation. An explicit example of this is given by Jenssen and Jørgensen (2004): ‘It seems that the champion always acts unselfishly and in the best interest of the organisation but the organisation and its leadership do not understand this and resist change.’ Resistance (cf. the assassins mentioned above) is seen as destructive politicking, and only other people than the champion engage in politically motivated behaviour. A political approach to the study of championing behaviour may reveal a more complicated set of motivations and interests, and show that a champion may be involved in politics to constructively promote his or her aims. Attention to structural and political factors is thus useful to counteract the voluntarism and the heroism tendencies of some champion literature. This can be seen as a matter of putting the champion into proper perspective. Another way to achieve this is to look at what other roles are played by firm actors in organisational change. For example, Tushman and Nadler (1996) present four roles that are critical to innovations: idea generator, internal entrepreneur (champion), boundary spanner (gatekeeper) and sponsor (mentor). Whilst such typologies are somewhat arbitrary,1 this set of roles serves to emphasise that the champion is but one of the roles necessary for change. This way it puts the contribution of the champion into perspective.
1 Buchanan and Storey (1997) call this approach to management research ‘listology’, and argue that the point of such lists is the plurality of roles they point to, rather than any particular set of roles they portray.
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A final way of putting the champion into perspective comes from Buchanan and Storey (1997), writing about organisational change agents. They point out that individuals may change roles during change processes, and point to role-taking and roleswitching as important aspects of championing. This highlights the process of becoming (as well as ceasing to be) a champion – in conflict with essentialist and, therefore, static theorisations. And whilst Buchanan and Storey’s perspective is strongly actor-centred, arguably there is also a structural, contextual component to the process of becoming a champion. The more common action-orientated (essentialist and voluntarist) models of environmental champions have been discussed here. The hero-like qualities of the champion have been put into perspective by focussing on championing as a type of behaviour rather than as a trait, and by looking at a broader set of roles in change events. Accounts of championing with a more structural slant highlight the importance of the organisational context in producing opportunities for championing. But an extreme structural perspective runs the risk of making the champion a mere product of the organisational structures, and we must not lose sight of the choice a champion makes in taking on this role. Applying this discussion to the case of environmental championing, the research question to be answered in this paper is the following. - How can we theorise environmental championing in a way that avoids voluntarism, but does not fall into the opposite structuralist trap? As discussed above, this study is of environmental championing in the context of innovation processes. The following empirical questions have guided the research. - Why would firm actors champion environmental concerns in innovation processes? - Who would chose to do so? - Under what circumstances are environmental concerns successfully championed in innovation processes? This section reviewed the literature on environmental champions, and re-phrased the research question in the light of the literature. The next section will set out the methodology for answering the question.
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Table 1 Managers with engineering backgrounds having benefited from environmental qualifications. Case
Position
Project role
Cleaner chemicals Orderly dairy Reluctant dairy Expert chemicals
Production director Technical director Technical director Technical director
Internal client Internal client Internal client (Unclear)
Attention in this paper is given to managers, engineers and environmental staff as potential champions. The data was collected mainly through (43) interviews to capture the complexity and situatedness of different actors’ influence on the decisions made and thus on the environmental and technological outcomes. Drawing on a political process perspective on organisations (Pettigrew, 1985; McLoughlin and Badham, 2005), efforts were made to gather data on the organisational context and history. Skills and knowledge are obviously important for innovation work. In a political perspective sensitive to the interests of the actors, ‘expertise’ is a useful notion for conceptualising this. This paper will draw on Fleck’s (Fleck, 1998) tripartite model of expertise, which proposes that it is made up of knowledge, power and tradability.2 The data collected, therefore, included information not just on the formal education and qualifications of the interviewees, but also on their career histories. The data was analysed as case studies of investment projects. The unit of analysis was the technological choices made as part of these production technology investment projects, thus tying in environmental championing with concrete decisions of environmental importance. By comparing cases from Scotland and Sweden, and from the chemicals and dairy industries (see Table 1), national and sectoral determinants were explored. In particular, it was expected that the role of environmental regulatory pressure (Irwin and Vergragt, 1989; Kagan et al., 2003) would be exposed through comparing the dairy industry with the more heavily regulated chemical industry. Furthermore, it was hoped that the potential influence of private life commitments as expressed in the work place would be discernible through comparing Sweden – with its somewhat stronger pro-environmental popular attitudes – with Scotland. This also links in with the more voluntarist models of environmental championing. If such models of championing were valid, then one would expect this national level difference to matter.
3. Methodology 4. The four case studies This paper will analyse environmental champions in terms of what they achieved, and seek to provide an explanation for this that is sensitive to both structure and action aspects. It will thus be possible to avoid a voluntarist analysis of environmental champions, whilst also avoiding making them structurally determined dupes. Empirically, this will be achieved through investigating both the – private, career and positional (Morgan, 1986) – interests of the environmental champions and the structurally shaped opportunities given to them in the projects, as well as earlier during their careers. In relation to environmental innovations, environmental staff would seem to be natural candidates for the champion role, given their (presumed) knowledge about environmental aspects. King (1995, 2000) showed that environmental staff are sometimes able to be gatekeepers between the environmental and engineering functions in the firm, but they may also be excluded from technological work. Managers may be better situated to promote environmental issues successfully (Vickers and Cordey-Hayes, 1999), but it is less obvious that they would recognise a need to do so.
Having set out a methodology for the study, the results will now be presented. This section will briefly describe the four cases as a background to the analysis of environmental championing in the following two sections. A basic overview of the four case studies is presented in Table 1. The Cleaner Chemicals site was part of a multinational chemicals concern with headquarters in the Netherlands. The production was focussed on bulk production of surfactants. One of the main intermediate products was toxic and inflammable. The project studied was about increasing the capacity of the production line as well as improving quality, resource efficiency and cost-efficiency. Furthermore, the company had been taken to court over irregular emissions, and environmental performance was also part of the objectives. The main environmental aspects of the project were the
2 The tradability component reflects the leverage and legitimacy experts get from their positions on internal and external (to the organisation) labour markets.
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efficiency of the feeding and cleaning systems, and the treatment of toxic emissions in the ventilation gases. There was an emphasis on cleaner technology process changes that could lead to improvements in both environmental performance and economic gains. The project organisation was a mix of local staff: engineering, managers and environmental staff, and engineering consultants. The project leader was a consultant reporting to the technical director. The Orderly Dairy case was about moving production from one site to another, where a new plant was built. The existing production line on the site was also enhanced. The main objectives were to increase capacity and to improve the cost-efficiency. The sites belonged to a multinational dairy company with a strong presence and long history on the Swedish market. Environmental concerns were not a high priority. The environmental work had an administrative focus, and was to a large degree dealt with separately from the rest of the project activities. The environmental authorities expressed their contentment with the orderliness of the company’s environmental work, which, however, had limited impact on the investment decisions made. The project was organisationally complex with staff from both sites, from the national headquarters, and from external engineering consultants, builders, etc. The project leader was a consultant reporting to the technical director. In the case of Reluctant Dairy, the investment concerned an existing plant and had the aim of improving quality, traceability and resource efficiency. The site was part of a medium size UK dairy company. During the project the regional water utility started applying pressure on the company to manage its effluents, which were at times high on fat and had high acidity. This had little effect on the main investment project, but stimulated efforts external to the project to recover product from cream tankers. The company did not prioritise environmental improvements, but were pleased to discover that the changes they made for other reasons could be seen to be environmentally beneficial. The project organisation mainly drew on a company supplying both engineering consultancy services as well as some of the new equipment. The project leader was a consultant reporting to the company technical director. The Expert Chemicals case was about a medium-sized company starting production of a new, high value chemical. A new production line had to be built, on an existing site. The main environmental aspects considered were the toxicity of the substances used and produced, and their impact on the effluent treatment plant on the site. Unlike the other cases, this company had enough engineering staff in-house to run the project without using consultants. The project leader from the process technology department reported to a manager at a business unit. Environmental routines and intra-company networks were in place and operated well. In spite of reduced environmental ambitions after a change of ownership, an organisational structure of inter-linked environmental and technical expertise secured a level of environmental performance. 5. The careers of potential environmental champions The analysis will focus on the presence of environmental champions in these cases. The discussion will focus in this section on career histories, and in the following section on the championing opportunities they faced, or did not face. Environmental staff had a role to monitor the technological work in the projects for permit implications, but they were not the only ones promoting improved environmental performance. The systematic, mandated promotion of environmental issues by environmental staff can be contrasted with the more contingent, ad hoc environmental championing performed by other staff.
Table 2 Environmental qualifications. Type of work
In more detail
Technology
Managing environmentally motivated investment projects Managing operations and maintenance of end-of-pipe utilities Environmental lab-work Management Establishing environmental management systems Building up environmental staff capacity Administrative Applying for permits, etc.
Environmental staff, however, had relatively little influence on the technology (apart from implementing regulatory requirements when this was sanctioned by the company, and this was not always the case). This paper will instead focus on some of the managers who successfully championed environmental issues. This study includes two examples of this. In all the cases the projects were lead by project leaders reporting to a client internally to the company. The internal client was an individual manager acting alone or with the aid of a steering group. In both of the Swedish cases the internal clients successfully promoted environmental performance; see Table 1. At Orderly Dairy this was the Technical Director making sure that a planned oil-fuelled boiler was replaced with district heating, and at Cleaner Chemicals it was the Production Manager who made sure that treatment of vent gases was included in the main investment project rather than organised as a separate, permit-driven project, in the hope of finding a cleaner technology solution. The remainder of this section will analyse the career histories of a selection of staff. This will be done to explore who may end up in a position and situation where environmental championing might be effective. In the companies studied environmental and engineering work was to a large extent kept separate. And whilst it is true that the engineers did little environmental work in the projects in particular, and in general, there were also examples of engineers who had benefited in their careers from doing environmentally motivated work, and who had developed hybrid environmental and technological expertise. There is one example from each company of individuals with engineering degrees who had started off in engineering positions and in subsequent careers had moved into management in part based on environmental qualifications. They are listed in Table 1. There are three Technical Directors, all of whom had an added responsibility for environmental affairs. Three of the four were also the internal clients for the investment projects studied. These four managers highlighted that having done environmental work in the past had contributed to their careers. The types of environmental qualifications mentioned are listed in Table 2. Apart from technical work, their environmental qualifications also included managerial (apart from technology management) and administrative tasks. Some of this work overlapped with environmental staff tasks, but for each person it was combined with environmental qualifications of the technology type, a combination which was less common among environmental staff. These individuals had bundled some environmental skills with their technical and managerial skills. This was not the only environmental career path open to engineers, however. There were also engineers who had moved into full time environmental staff positions.3 It should also be noted that there was one example of a senior environmental technology specialist at Expert Chemicals. These three environmental career paths are visualised in Fig. 1.
3
This was even a relatively common background among environmental staff.
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781
Fig. 1. Environmental career paths and skills combinations for engineers.
All three career paths represent formation of hybrid expertise – that is, people developing bundled expertise across traditional knowledge boundaries (Buchanan and Storey, 1997). The management path is here the least environmental one, in the sense of not doing environmental work full time. It was a matter of adding another, secondary skill (denoted by a small letter in Fig. 2), rather than full specialisation on environmental (or environmental and technological) work. A full combination, or hybrid, of actively used environmental and technological skills was unusual (as denoted by the grey environmental technology specialist path in the figure). There were, as discussed above, some possibilities for engineers to add environmental qualifications in engineering. Another strategy might be to spend some time in an environmental position (one or two cases in the data), for a future management career. There is, however, a risk for an engineer of staying too long in an environmental position. Environmental staff do little technological work, and there is a risk that his or her engineering skills will not be maintained and upgraded. This in turn may be detrimental for opportunities to go back to engineering, and into technology management positions. Fig. 2 shows this possible path via an environmental position (grey arrow). It also illustrates that no interviewees started off in
Management
? Engineers
Environmental staff
Fig. 2. Engineering and environmental career paths.
the environmental area and moved into engineering. This certainly limited their possibilities for a technology management career, and senior environmental responsibilities were often held by technical managers, limiting the line management careers in the environmental area.4 The motivations mentioned by the former engineers who had opted for these environmental career paths reveal some important facts regarding the internal labour markets in these companies. For some it was just another job that came along. For others, it was a matter of being attracted to environmental issues as ‘a hot topic’ in the company. They had hoped to further their careers by achieving results in an area were they could be expected to be highly visible.5 This happened in the dairy industry in the 1990s, but earlier in the chemicals industry, reflecting that sector’s longer history of regulatory pressure. This motivation was mainly mentioned by engineers pursuing management careers. Another motivation mentioned was the alignment of private life environmental interests with professional life tasks. This was mentioned by some of those going for environmental staff jobs, sometimes mentioning in the same breath the career penalties such a move brought in terms of for example salary, as evidence of them being motivated by private life interests rather than by furthering their careers. As evidence of private life environmental commitments, the interviewees mentioned concerns for the future of their children, interests like fishing, and pointed to actions like recycling. The alignment of private environmental concerns with working life was at times complex. As mentioned above, the choice of an environmental career path could mean a financial sacrifice. On the other hand management careers, whilst being less focussed on environmental improvements, could offer chances to influence important decisions more directly. Some interviewees in the chemical
4 There could, however, be line management career paths for environmental staff via other areas, for example quality, but given the selection of interviewees in this study we do not know. Although, it is clear that engineers has opportunities in the engineering/technology management area, whereas similar opportunities in environmental management for environmental staff were relatively rare. 5 Petts et al. (1998) also note opportunities for advancement as a motivating factor for (especially younger) managers to do environmental work.
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industry emphasised that working in this industry was important just because it is dirty, and needs improvement. This section has analysed the career paths of a category of staff who had started off in engineering and picked up environmental skills along the way. In the next section we will see that those who had done so, and subsequently had moved on to technology management positions were in good positions to champion environmental improvements.
and the company agenda – are structural aspects of the organisation from the point of view of the individual member of staff making such a career. At the same time, however, they are action aspects from the point of view of (higher level) management setting policies on promotions and strategic priorities – assuming that management has, if not a monopoly, at least a dominant input in setting such policies. Structure and action are in this way coproduced (as are technology and organisation (Russell and Williams, 2002)).
6. Structured opportunities for environmental championing 7. Conclusion A range of different motives for opting for management careers ‘with a green tinge’ have been identified above, and it was clear that the organisational context contributed to such career choices. Irrespective of the underlying motives, these careers brought the individuals into good positions to champion environmental performance in the projects studied, as will be discussed below. As seen in Table 1, the internal customers in three out of the four cases had made such careers. Their background and their position in management enabled them to take on the internal client role in the projects, which was arguably a relatively influential one. The internal customers were involved in early stage planning of the projects, and approved any later changes to them (or led steering groups that made such decisions). This gave them some leeway in terms of making decisions promoting environmental performance. As mentioned above, the two internal clients in the Swedish cases took this opportunity. These opportunities were shaped by the company agendas. In the Cleaner Chemicals case the inclusion of vent gas treatment in the project was motivated by the ‘win-win’ argument of expected resource efficiency gains making costly end-of-pipe treatment redundant. This was well in line with the general emphasis on explicit win-win solutions in this project. In the Orderly Dairy case the district heating solution was not only environmentally beneficial, but also cheaper than the proposed new boiler. Virtually, no costs were accepted in this project for the sake of environmental performance improvement.6 The championing opportunities available were thus shaped by the company agendas, but the champions did also have an impact and were successful in contributing to improvements in the environmental performance. It is possible to account also for the other two potential champions. In the Expert Chemicals case the Technical Director was not given the internal client role, and so had less influence on the project. In the Reluctant Dairy case the Technical Director, who like the others with this title had an added-on environmental responsibility, nonetheless did not in the internal client role promote environmental performance in the project. Contributing factors to this were the low environmental ambition level in the company and the absence of an environmental permit. One can also note that he did not express any strong private life environmental commitments, and the low priority given to environmental performance in the company meant that there were no rewards for environmental initiatives. The structured organisational context thus shaped the career paths of the potential champions, as well as the opportunities for championing presented to them. Effective championing emerged as a confluence of championing action and structured championing opportunities. Context and structure is not here seen as the same thing. The explanation of environmental championing set out above shows how certain dimensions of the organisational context of the individual – specifically the career opportunities and rewards offered
6 Apart from changing one of the acids used for cleaning, a minor change given the large size of the project.
This paper set out to answer the question of how to theorise environmental championing in a way that avoids voluntarism, but without falling into the opposite structuralist trap. By relating environmental championing to the career background of potential champions as well as to their current situation in the context of the organisation, it has been made clear that both action and structure components are needed to account for environmental championing. On the one hand, the potential champions had made the choice of bundling environmental skills with their initial engineering skills in part to further their careers, and in some cases also as a way of aligning private life environmental interests with their professional lives. This highlights the importance of the choices made, that is, of action. On the other hand, this was possible because the companies rewarded such hybrid expertise in their recruitment and promotion of managers, which highlights the contextual, structural factor of organisations offering particular career opportunities to their engineering staff. The interaction of individual – private, career and professional – interests with the organisational context shaped the careers and expertise of these managers, and made them good environmental championing candidates. Furthermore, when these managers were in the internal client role they had some leeway to influence project decisions and so champion environmental issues. However, even in this relatively influential position the championing initiatives were aligned with the company agenda. The environmental motives put forth had to be, as in other cases, aligned with economic motives. In the actual championing situation it was the confluence of the actions of individuals with certain interests, and a structured organisational context offering certain opportunities, that explained environmental championing. The analysis has shown how the interaction between individuals’ interests and the organisational context shaped the expertise they developed and the career paths they took. When in the position of internal project clients these individuals were well placed to promote environmental performance, and they were able to do so as long as they aligned their initiatives with the company agenda. Environmental championing is thus shaped by individual action as well as organisational structure. Environmental championing is the product of organisational processes that evolve over time. This paper has set out an account of environmental championing that does not overly rely on the inherent qualities of a champion, and emphasises the organisational context as a cause of championing. To avoid essentialism one should talk of potential environmental champions, who given the right opportunity may engage in environmental championing as a behaviour, rather than categorise some people as environmental champions irrespective of the context in which they act. Furthermore, this account does not make champions heroes in the sense of altruistic do-gooders, but sees self-interest and career promotion as an intrinsic aspect of an explanation of who becomes involved in environmental championing. Moreover, the account has not reduced the champions to structurally determined products of the organisations, but highlighted their own interests as a motivating factor. To avoid
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structuralism attention should be paid to what actually motivates someone to promote environmental improvements, and not assume that this ‘good cause’ is motivation enough in itself. Finally, the paper has shown how regulatory pressure over time shapes management career paths for engineers willing to bundle environmental skills with their technological and managerial skills, thus creating a mechanism that can contribute to bridging the gap between technological and environmental work in firms. The main contribution of this paper is to set out a new treatment of environmental championing that avoids placing excessive weight on the initiatives of individual champions and their inherent qualities, and that shows the dynamics of the interaction between champions and their context. The paper also shows that a political approach, which is sensitive to a range of interests of organisational actors can contribute to the study of environmental championing. The results presented are mainly valid for medium-sized to large process industry firms. The organisational dynamics of small firms, and organisations in other sectors of the economy may be different. However, it is hoped that this study may be a useful point of reference for studies also of such cases. This paper has not explained in any great detail when and why firm organisations present good opportunities for environmental championing (only that they do so and what such opportunities may look like). Future research should focus on this and investigate how both the contingencies of each situation and the usually more slowly evolving social structures shape such championing opportunities. The results presented reflect differences between the chemicals and dairy industries in terms of their sectoral environmental profiles, and the harder regulatory pressures the former often experience. The results also suggest that there may be a national difference between Sweden and Scotland, with for example interviewees in the former country generally expressing more proenvironmental attitudes. More research is needed to fully understand how private life environmental commitments are aligned with individuals’ roles in the work place and affect their professional life behaviour.
Acknowledgements Thanks go to the Economic & Social Research Council whose funding (award number PTA-030-2002-01339) helped make the research project on which this paper is based possible, and to Professor Robin Williams, Dr Graham Spinardi and Dr Stewart Russell for their contributions and help. Any remaining problems are my own shortcomings. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Science & Technology in Society: an International Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, Washington, DC, 31 Mar to 1 Apr 2007, and as Working paper no 6 of the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, The University of Edinburgh, December 2007.
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References Anderson, L.M., Bateman, T.S., 2000. Individual environmental initiative: championing environmental issues in U.S. business organizations. Academy of Management Journal 43 (4), 548–570. Blomquist, T., Sandstro¨m, J., 2004. From issues to checkpoints and back: managing green issues in R&D. Business Strategy and the Environment 13, 363–373. Boiral, O., Cayer, M., Baron, C.M., 2008. The action logics of environmental leadership: a developmental perspective. Journal of Business Ethics 85, 479–499. Buchanan, D., Storey, J., 1997. Role taking and role switching in organizational change: the four pluralities. In: McLoughlin, I., Harris, M. (Eds.), Innovation, Organizational Change and Technology. International Thomson Business Press, London. Burns, T., Stalker, G.M., 1961. The Management of Innovation. Tavistock, London. Clayton, A., Spinardi, G., Williams, R., 1999. Policies for Cleaner Technology: New Agenda for Government and Industry. Earthscan, London. Fincham, R., Fleck, J., Procter, R., Scarbrough, H., Tierney, M., Williams, R., 1994. Expertise and Innovation: Information Technology Strategies in the Financial Services Sector. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Fleck, J., 1998. Expertise: knowledge, power and tradeability. In: Williams, R., Faulkner, W., Fleck, J. (Eds.), Exploring Expertise. Macmillan Press, London. Giddens, A., 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Polity Press, Cambridge. Green, K., McMeekin, A., Irwin, A., 1994. Technological trajectories and R&D for environmental innovation in UK firms. Futures 26 (10), 1047–1059. Groenewegen, P., Vergragt, P., 1991. Environmental issues as threats and opportunities for technological innovations. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 3 (1), 43–55. Handfield, R.B., Melnyk, S.A., Calantone, R.J., Curkovic, S., 2001. Integrating environmental concerns into the design process: the gap between theory and practice. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 48 (2), 189–208. Hilliard, R., Jacobson, D., 2003. Systems of Innovation and their Limits: the Case of Environmental Regulation of the Irish Pharmaceutical Industry. CISC Working Paper No. 2. CISC. Irwin, A., Vergragt, P., 1989. Re-thinking the relationship between environmental regulation and industrial innovation: the social negotiation of technical change. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 1 (1), 57–70. Jenssen, J.I., Jørgensen, G., 2004. How do corporate champions promote innovations? International Journal of Innovation Management 8 (1), 63–86. Johansson, G., Magnusson, T., 2006. Organising for environmental considerations in complex product development projects: implications from introducing a ‘‘Green’’ sub-project. Journal of Cleaner Production 14, 1368–1376. Kagan, R.A., Gunningham, N., Thornton, D., 2003. Explaining corporate environmental performance: how does regulation matter? Law & Society Review 37 (1), 51–89. King, A., 1995. Innovation from differentiation: pollution control departments and innovation in the printed circuit industry. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 42 (3), 270–277. King, A., 2000. Organizational response to environmental regulation: punctuated change or autogenesis? Business Strategy and the Environment 9, 224–238. Lenox, M., King, A., Ehrenfeld, J., 2000. An assessment of design-for-environment practices in leading us electronics firms. Interfaces 30 (3), 83–94. McLoughlin, I., Badham, R., 2005. Political process perspectives on organization and technological change. Human Relations 58 (7), 827–843. Morgan, G., 1986. Images of Organization. Sage, London. Pettigrew, A.M., 1985. The Awakening Giant: Continuity and Change in ICI. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Petts, J., Herd, A., O’Heocha, M., 1998. Environmental responsiveness, individuals and organizational learning: SME experience. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 41 (6), 711–730. Pujari, D., 2006. Eco-innovation and new product development: understanding the influence on market performance. Technovation 26, 76–85. Russell, S., Williams, R., 2002. Social shaping of technology: frameworks, findings and implications for policy. In: Sørensen, K., Williams, R. (Eds.), Shaping Technology, Guiding Policy: Concepts, Spaces and Tools. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. Tidd, J., Bessant, J., Pavitt, K., 2001. Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change, second ed. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester. Tushman, M., Nadler, D., 1996. Organizing for innovation. In: Starkey, K. (Ed.), How Organizations Learn. International Thomson Business Press, London. Vickers, I., Cordey-Hayes, M., 1999. Cleaner production and organizational learning. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 11 (1), 75–94.
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Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
The championing of environmental improvements in technology investment projects Nils Markusson* School of GeoSciences, Grant Institute, The University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JW, UK
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 5 April 2009 Received in revised form 25 November 2009 Accepted 12 January 2010 Available online 21 January 2010
The literature on environmental champions emphasises the effective action of environmentally committed individuals. This paper draws on case studies of process technology investment projects in chemical and dairy companies in the UK and Sweden. The analysis is based on a political process perspective on organisations. By analysing the career histories of environmental champions as well as their behaviour in the investment projects, the paper shows how their championing behaviour is shaped by dynamic interaction with the organisational context, as well as a broader range of motivations and interests, including career opportunities and private life concerns. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Environmental champions Technological innovation Organisational context Expertise Careers
1. Introduction Technology is a long-standing, central topic in environmental policy making. It has been discussed both as part of the problem and as a solution to environmental issues. The question of how to bring environmental concerns to bear on the use and development of technology, in companies and elsewhere, remains important for policy-makers in this area. Recent years have seen an expanding focus in environmental policy from manufacturing processes in industry to the consumption of products, and from single firms to innovation systems (Hilliard and Jacobson, 2003; Pujari, 2006). This does not mean, however, that the problem of pollution from manufacturing industry is solved. This paper will focus on environmental innovations in production technology, often discussed in terms of a distinction between ‘cleaner technology’ and ‘end-ofpipe technology’ (Clayton et al., 1999). Environmental and technological work are sometimes rather separate domains in firms. There is a risk of firms focussing their environmental work on formal management systems and administrative procedure instead of technological measures that can more directly improve firms’ environmental performance. This paper will contribute to answering the question of how environmental concerns can be effectively integrated into work concerning the development and deployment of technology. * Tel.: þ44 131 650 7010; fax: þ44 131 668 3184. E-mail address: [email protected] 0959-6526/$ – see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2010.01.011
Previous research on this topic has concerned the use of environmental criteria in relevant formal management systems (Green et al., 1994; Handfield et al., 2001; Blomquist and Sandstro¨m, 2004), by adopting special tools like Life Cycle Analysis or Design for Environment (Lenox et al., 2000), and by including environmental expertise in cross-functional teams (Groenewegen and Vergragt, 1991; Clayton et al., 1999) or sub-projects (Johansson and Magnusson, 2006). Another mechanism for the integration of environmental concerns is the environmental champion (Anderson and Bateman, 2000), that is, an individual who promotes environmental issues in decision-making processes. ‘Environmental championing’ may be defined as: any effort made by an (individual or collective) actor in a firm to promote environmental issues. It is worth noting that promotion of environmental issues does not by definition presuppose heart-felt environmentalism on behalf of the champion. Indeed, such behaviour may be rooted in other things – as shall be discussed in more detail later – for example raised status or control of resources. Effective championing is a matter of managing to influence decision-making. Environmental championing, therefore, needs to be understood in its organisational context, and the influence of champions is in part determined by structural factors. That successful championing is a combination of action on behalf of a champion and a context conducive to the promotion of environmental issues may seem to be a trivial insight. However, much existing literature strongly emphasises the champion and more or
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less neglects the context. Moreover, saying that both a willing and able champion and a good opportunity for environmental promotion are needed begs questions about the precise natures of both the champions and the opportunities, as well as about how the two relate to each other and interact. There is a long-standing topic of research and debate in the social sciences about whether human agency is determined by social structures, or whether social structures are to be seen as on outcome of the actions of individuals (Giddens, 1984). Actionoriented theories tend to highlight individual achievements and neglect contextual and historical factors, whereas structuralist theories emphasise social and organisational contexts, but may underplay the freedom of action of the individual. The dichotomy between structure and action will here be used to discuss theories of championing, and explore the relationship between environmental champions and their organisational context. The analysis will draw on notions of expertise and interests to characterise potential champions. To understand the background of champions their career histories will be investigated. Their social context will be analysed in terms of the organisation of projects and firms, as well as firm-external factors including not least regulation. The objective of the paper is to develop a new theorisation of environmental championing that gives due importance to both champion and context, and which explains how they interact, and so provide a social science contribution to our understanding of this important topic. The paper will first review different conceptualisations of ‘champions’ in existing literature. After setting out the methodology of the study, the results will be discussed with a special focus on the career histories of environmental champions, as well as the opportunities given to them by their organisations to promote environmental issues. Finally, the paper is concluded by summarising the results, and setting out a new way of explaining environmental championing. 2. Environmental champions between action and structure The concept of the ‘environmental champion’ is mainly used in environmental management literature (Anderson and Bateman, 2000; Boiral et al., 2008). This is, however, mirrored in the innovation studies literature where the ‘innovation champion’ is a common character (as reviewed by Jenssen and Jørgensen (2004)), and in organisational studies literature there is the similar ‘change agent’ (Burns and Stalker, 1961; Buchanan and Storey, 1997). This paper draws also on these additional sets of literature, since although they highlight (mostly) different actors with different skills, there is a commonality in the way they typically conceptualise promotion (of environmental issues, of a technology and of organisational change respectively). There are different approaches to conceptualising what a champion is, and they can be described as lying on a spectrum from action to structure orientation. These approaches will be described below, starting at the action end of the spectrum. At this end of the spectrum are models in which the champion possesses certain qualities – like enthusiasm and willingness to take risks – which are what makes him/her a champion (Jenssen and Jørgensen, 2004). Being a champion is here an inherent property of some people but not others; certain people have a champion essence as it were. Such an essentialist understanding of champions runs the risk of being voluntarist – that is, overplaying the achievements of the individual, and underplaying the organisational context. Another, related, weakness with this model is that the champion tends to be idealised, to become a hero, and everyone who does not go along with the ideas of the champion becomes a villain. For
example, Tidd et al. (2001) speak of ‘assassins’ resisting the initiatives of champions. Having thus defined once and for all who the good guys are and what the good cause is, politically motivated behaviour in the organisation is seen as destructive and getting in the way of what is obviously and rationally desirable. Essentialist, voluntarist understandings of champions tend to go hand-in-hand with apolitical understandings of organisations. Another way of understanding champions is to focus on the behaviour of championing (promoting) the environment. Anderson and Bateman (2000) studied the ways champions framed and presented environmental initiatives and compared successful championing attempts with unsuccessful ones. This approach recognises that the organisational context matters for championing, and that champions need to be reflexive about what they do. However, this is still a relatively voluntarist model in its concern with the receptivity of managers to the ideas of champions. The champion remains the prime mover. At the opposite end of the action-structure spectrum is a structural model of championing. Here the organisational context stimulates the emergence of champions by creating opportunities for employees to assume this role. The findings by Fincham et al. (1994) illustrate this model. They studied the careers of IT specialists in financial sector firms, and observed how there were structurally defined opportunities for this group of employees to further their careers and strengthen the legitimacy of their expertise through the championing of IT solutions. This more structure-oriented model thus highlights the organisational context of championing, and so avoids voluntarism. Moreover, it stresses the career and status interests of the champions, and the choices they make in seizing the opportunities offered to them by the organisation. This model, therefore, also includes an action aspect. In this model, self-interest is part of what motivates the champions. In contrast, heroic accounts of champions tend to be uncritical of the champion’s goals (environmental improvement, technological innovation, organisational change, etc.), and describe them as benefiting the whole organisation. An explicit example of this is given by Jenssen and Jørgensen (2004): ‘It seems that the champion always acts unselfishly and in the best interest of the organisation but the organisation and its leadership do not understand this and resist change.’ Resistance (cf. the assassins mentioned above) is seen as destructive politicking, and only other people than the champion engage in politically motivated behaviour. A political approach to the study of championing behaviour may reveal a more complicated set of motivations and interests, and show that a champion may be involved in politics to constructively promote his or her aims. Attention to structural and political factors is thus useful to counteract the voluntarism and the heroism tendencies of some champion literature. This can be seen as a matter of putting the champion into proper perspective. Another way to achieve this is to look at what other roles are played by firm actors in organisational change. For example, Tushman and Nadler (1996) present four roles that are critical to innovations: idea generator, internal entrepreneur (champion), boundary spanner (gatekeeper) and sponsor (mentor). Whilst such typologies are somewhat arbitrary,1 this set of roles serves to emphasise that the champion is but one of the roles necessary for change. This way it puts the contribution of the champion into perspective.
1 Buchanan and Storey (1997) call this approach to management research ‘listology’, and argue that the point of such lists is the plurality of roles they point to, rather than any particular set of roles they portray.
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A final way of putting the champion into perspective comes from Buchanan and Storey (1997), writing about organisational change agents. They point out that individuals may change roles during change processes, and point to role-taking and roleswitching as important aspects of championing. This highlights the process of becoming (as well as ceasing to be) a champion – in conflict with essentialist and, therefore, static theorisations. And whilst Buchanan and Storey’s perspective is strongly actor-centred, arguably there is also a structural, contextual component to the process of becoming a champion. The more common action-orientated (essentialist and voluntarist) models of environmental champions have been discussed here. The hero-like qualities of the champion have been put into perspective by focussing on championing as a type of behaviour rather than as a trait, and by looking at a broader set of roles in change events. Accounts of championing with a more structural slant highlight the importance of the organisational context in producing opportunities for championing. But an extreme structural perspective runs the risk of making the champion a mere product of the organisational structures, and we must not lose sight of the choice a champion makes in taking on this role. Applying this discussion to the case of environmental championing, the research question to be answered in this paper is the following. - How can we theorise environmental championing in a way that avoids voluntarism, but does not fall into the opposite structuralist trap? As discussed above, this study is of environmental championing in the context of innovation processes. The following empirical questions have guided the research. - Why would firm actors champion environmental concerns in innovation processes? - Who would chose to do so? - Under what circumstances are environmental concerns successfully championed in innovation processes? This section reviewed the literature on environmental champions, and re-phrased the research question in the light of the literature. The next section will set out the methodology for answering the question.
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Table 1 Managers with engineering backgrounds having benefited from environmental qualifications. Case
Position
Project role
Cleaner chemicals Orderly dairy Reluctant dairy Expert chemicals
Production director Technical director Technical director Technical director
Internal client Internal client Internal client (Unclear)
Attention in this paper is given to managers, engineers and environmental staff as potential champions. The data was collected mainly through (43) interviews to capture the complexity and situatedness of different actors’ influence on the decisions made and thus on the environmental and technological outcomes. Drawing on a political process perspective on organisations (Pettigrew, 1985; McLoughlin and Badham, 2005), efforts were made to gather data on the organisational context and history. Skills and knowledge are obviously important for innovation work. In a political perspective sensitive to the interests of the actors, ‘expertise’ is a useful notion for conceptualising this. This paper will draw on Fleck’s (Fleck, 1998) tripartite model of expertise, which proposes that it is made up of knowledge, power and tradability.2 The data collected, therefore, included information not just on the formal education and qualifications of the interviewees, but also on their career histories. The data was analysed as case studies of investment projects. The unit of analysis was the technological choices made as part of these production technology investment projects, thus tying in environmental championing with concrete decisions of environmental importance. By comparing cases from Scotland and Sweden, and from the chemicals and dairy industries (see Table 1), national and sectoral determinants were explored. In particular, it was expected that the role of environmental regulatory pressure (Irwin and Vergragt, 1989; Kagan et al., 2003) would be exposed through comparing the dairy industry with the more heavily regulated chemical industry. Furthermore, it was hoped that the potential influence of private life commitments as expressed in the work place would be discernible through comparing Sweden – with its somewhat stronger pro-environmental popular attitudes – with Scotland. This also links in with the more voluntarist models of environmental championing. If such models of championing were valid, then one would expect this national level difference to matter.
3. Methodology 4. The four case studies This paper will analyse environmental champions in terms of what they achieved, and seek to provide an explanation for this that is sensitive to both structure and action aspects. It will thus be possible to avoid a voluntarist analysis of environmental champions, whilst also avoiding making them structurally determined dupes. Empirically, this will be achieved through investigating both the – private, career and positional (Morgan, 1986) – interests of the environmental champions and the structurally shaped opportunities given to them in the projects, as well as earlier during their careers. In relation to environmental innovations, environmental staff would seem to be natural candidates for the champion role, given their (presumed) knowledge about environmental aspects. King (1995, 2000) showed that environmental staff are sometimes able to be gatekeepers between the environmental and engineering functions in the firm, but they may also be excluded from technological work. Managers may be better situated to promote environmental issues successfully (Vickers and Cordey-Hayes, 1999), but it is less obvious that they would recognise a need to do so.
Having set out a methodology for the study, the results will now be presented. This section will briefly describe the four cases as a background to the analysis of environmental championing in the following two sections. A basic overview of the four case studies is presented in Table 1. The Cleaner Chemicals site was part of a multinational chemicals concern with headquarters in the Netherlands. The production was focussed on bulk production of surfactants. One of the main intermediate products was toxic and inflammable. The project studied was about increasing the capacity of the production line as well as improving quality, resource efficiency and cost-efficiency. Furthermore, the company had been taken to court over irregular emissions, and environmental performance was also part of the objectives. The main environmental aspects of the project were the
2 The tradability component reflects the leverage and legitimacy experts get from their positions on internal and external (to the organisation) labour markets.
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efficiency of the feeding and cleaning systems, and the treatment of toxic emissions in the ventilation gases. There was an emphasis on cleaner technology process changes that could lead to improvements in both environmental performance and economic gains. The project organisation was a mix of local staff: engineering, managers and environmental staff, and engineering consultants. The project leader was a consultant reporting to the technical director. The Orderly Dairy case was about moving production from one site to another, where a new plant was built. The existing production line on the site was also enhanced. The main objectives were to increase capacity and to improve the cost-efficiency. The sites belonged to a multinational dairy company with a strong presence and long history on the Swedish market. Environmental concerns were not a high priority. The environmental work had an administrative focus, and was to a large degree dealt with separately from the rest of the project activities. The environmental authorities expressed their contentment with the orderliness of the company’s environmental work, which, however, had limited impact on the investment decisions made. The project was organisationally complex with staff from both sites, from the national headquarters, and from external engineering consultants, builders, etc. The project leader was a consultant reporting to the technical director. In the case of Reluctant Dairy, the investment concerned an existing plant and had the aim of improving quality, traceability and resource efficiency. The site was part of a medium size UK dairy company. During the project the regional water utility started applying pressure on the company to manage its effluents, which were at times high on fat and had high acidity. This had little effect on the main investment project, but stimulated efforts external to the project to recover product from cream tankers. The company did not prioritise environmental improvements, but were pleased to discover that the changes they made for other reasons could be seen to be environmentally beneficial. The project organisation mainly drew on a company supplying both engineering consultancy services as well as some of the new equipment. The project leader was a consultant reporting to the company technical director. The Expert Chemicals case was about a medium-sized company starting production of a new, high value chemical. A new production line had to be built, on an existing site. The main environmental aspects considered were the toxicity of the substances used and produced, and their impact on the effluent treatment plant on the site. Unlike the other cases, this company had enough engineering staff in-house to run the project without using consultants. The project leader from the process technology department reported to a manager at a business unit. Environmental routines and intra-company networks were in place and operated well. In spite of reduced environmental ambitions after a change of ownership, an organisational structure of inter-linked environmental and technical expertise secured a level of environmental performance. 5. The careers of potential environmental champions The analysis will focus on the presence of environmental champions in these cases. The discussion will focus in this section on career histories, and in the following section on the championing opportunities they faced, or did not face. Environmental staff had a role to monitor the technological work in the projects for permit implications, but they were not the only ones promoting improved environmental performance. The systematic, mandated promotion of environmental issues by environmental staff can be contrasted with the more contingent, ad hoc environmental championing performed by other staff.
Table 2 Environmental qualifications. Type of work
In more detail
Technology
Managing environmentally motivated investment projects Managing operations and maintenance of end-of-pipe utilities Environmental lab-work Management Establishing environmental management systems Building up environmental staff capacity Administrative Applying for permits, etc.
Environmental staff, however, had relatively little influence on the technology (apart from implementing regulatory requirements when this was sanctioned by the company, and this was not always the case). This paper will instead focus on some of the managers who successfully championed environmental issues. This study includes two examples of this. In all the cases the projects were lead by project leaders reporting to a client internally to the company. The internal client was an individual manager acting alone or with the aid of a steering group. In both of the Swedish cases the internal clients successfully promoted environmental performance; see Table 1. At Orderly Dairy this was the Technical Director making sure that a planned oil-fuelled boiler was replaced with district heating, and at Cleaner Chemicals it was the Production Manager who made sure that treatment of vent gases was included in the main investment project rather than organised as a separate, permit-driven project, in the hope of finding a cleaner technology solution. The remainder of this section will analyse the career histories of a selection of staff. This will be done to explore who may end up in a position and situation where environmental championing might be effective. In the companies studied environmental and engineering work was to a large extent kept separate. And whilst it is true that the engineers did little environmental work in the projects in particular, and in general, there were also examples of engineers who had benefited in their careers from doing environmentally motivated work, and who had developed hybrid environmental and technological expertise. There is one example from each company of individuals with engineering degrees who had started off in engineering positions and in subsequent careers had moved into management in part based on environmental qualifications. They are listed in Table 1. There are three Technical Directors, all of whom had an added responsibility for environmental affairs. Three of the four were also the internal clients for the investment projects studied. These four managers highlighted that having done environmental work in the past had contributed to their careers. The types of environmental qualifications mentioned are listed in Table 2. Apart from technical work, their environmental qualifications also included managerial (apart from technology management) and administrative tasks. Some of this work overlapped with environmental staff tasks, but for each person it was combined with environmental qualifications of the technology type, a combination which was less common among environmental staff. These individuals had bundled some environmental skills with their technical and managerial skills. This was not the only environmental career path open to engineers, however. There were also engineers who had moved into full time environmental staff positions.3 It should also be noted that there was one example of a senior environmental technology specialist at Expert Chemicals. These three environmental career paths are visualised in Fig. 1.
3
This was even a relatively common background among environmental staff.
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Fig. 1. Environmental career paths and skills combinations for engineers.
All three career paths represent formation of hybrid expertise – that is, people developing bundled expertise across traditional knowledge boundaries (Buchanan and Storey, 1997). The management path is here the least environmental one, in the sense of not doing environmental work full time. It was a matter of adding another, secondary skill (denoted by a small letter in Fig. 2), rather than full specialisation on environmental (or environmental and technological) work. A full combination, or hybrid, of actively used environmental and technological skills was unusual (as denoted by the grey environmental technology specialist path in the figure). There were, as discussed above, some possibilities for engineers to add environmental qualifications in engineering. Another strategy might be to spend some time in an environmental position (one or two cases in the data), for a future management career. There is, however, a risk for an engineer of staying too long in an environmental position. Environmental staff do little technological work, and there is a risk that his or her engineering skills will not be maintained and upgraded. This in turn may be detrimental for opportunities to go back to engineering, and into technology management positions. Fig. 2 shows this possible path via an environmental position (grey arrow). It also illustrates that no interviewees started off in
Management
? Engineers
Environmental staff
Fig. 2. Engineering and environmental career paths.
the environmental area and moved into engineering. This certainly limited their possibilities for a technology management career, and senior environmental responsibilities were often held by technical managers, limiting the line management careers in the environmental area.4 The motivations mentioned by the former engineers who had opted for these environmental career paths reveal some important facts regarding the internal labour markets in these companies. For some it was just another job that came along. For others, it was a matter of being attracted to environmental issues as ‘a hot topic’ in the company. They had hoped to further their careers by achieving results in an area were they could be expected to be highly visible.5 This happened in the dairy industry in the 1990s, but earlier in the chemicals industry, reflecting that sector’s longer history of regulatory pressure. This motivation was mainly mentioned by engineers pursuing management careers. Another motivation mentioned was the alignment of private life environmental interests with professional life tasks. This was mentioned by some of those going for environmental staff jobs, sometimes mentioning in the same breath the career penalties such a move brought in terms of for example salary, as evidence of them being motivated by private life interests rather than by furthering their careers. As evidence of private life environmental commitments, the interviewees mentioned concerns for the future of their children, interests like fishing, and pointed to actions like recycling. The alignment of private environmental concerns with working life was at times complex. As mentioned above, the choice of an environmental career path could mean a financial sacrifice. On the other hand management careers, whilst being less focussed on environmental improvements, could offer chances to influence important decisions more directly. Some interviewees in the chemical
4 There could, however, be line management career paths for environmental staff via other areas, for example quality, but given the selection of interviewees in this study we do not know. Although, it is clear that engineers has opportunities in the engineering/technology management area, whereas similar opportunities in environmental management for environmental staff were relatively rare. 5 Petts et al. (1998) also note opportunities for advancement as a motivating factor for (especially younger) managers to do environmental work.
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industry emphasised that working in this industry was important just because it is dirty, and needs improvement. This section has analysed the career paths of a category of staff who had started off in engineering and picked up environmental skills along the way. In the next section we will see that those who had done so, and subsequently had moved on to technology management positions were in good positions to champion environmental improvements.
and the company agenda – are structural aspects of the organisation from the point of view of the individual member of staff making such a career. At the same time, however, they are action aspects from the point of view of (higher level) management setting policies on promotions and strategic priorities – assuming that management has, if not a monopoly, at least a dominant input in setting such policies. Structure and action are in this way coproduced (as are technology and organisation (Russell and Williams, 2002)).
6. Structured opportunities for environmental championing 7. Conclusion A range of different motives for opting for management careers ‘with a green tinge’ have been identified above, and it was clear that the organisational context contributed to such career choices. Irrespective of the underlying motives, these careers brought the individuals into good positions to champion environmental performance in the projects studied, as will be discussed below. As seen in Table 1, the internal customers in three out of the four cases had made such careers. Their background and their position in management enabled them to take on the internal client role in the projects, which was arguably a relatively influential one. The internal customers were involved in early stage planning of the projects, and approved any later changes to them (or led steering groups that made such decisions). This gave them some leeway in terms of making decisions promoting environmental performance. As mentioned above, the two internal clients in the Swedish cases took this opportunity. These opportunities were shaped by the company agendas. In the Cleaner Chemicals case the inclusion of vent gas treatment in the project was motivated by the ‘win-win’ argument of expected resource efficiency gains making costly end-of-pipe treatment redundant. This was well in line with the general emphasis on explicit win-win solutions in this project. In the Orderly Dairy case the district heating solution was not only environmentally beneficial, but also cheaper than the proposed new boiler. Virtually, no costs were accepted in this project for the sake of environmental performance improvement.6 The championing opportunities available were thus shaped by the company agendas, but the champions did also have an impact and were successful in contributing to improvements in the environmental performance. It is possible to account also for the other two potential champions. In the Expert Chemicals case the Technical Director was not given the internal client role, and so had less influence on the project. In the Reluctant Dairy case the Technical Director, who like the others with this title had an added-on environmental responsibility, nonetheless did not in the internal client role promote environmental performance in the project. Contributing factors to this were the low environmental ambition level in the company and the absence of an environmental permit. One can also note that he did not express any strong private life environmental commitments, and the low priority given to environmental performance in the company meant that there were no rewards for environmental initiatives. The structured organisational context thus shaped the career paths of the potential champions, as well as the opportunities for championing presented to them. Effective championing emerged as a confluence of championing action and structured championing opportunities. Context and structure is not here seen as the same thing. The explanation of environmental championing set out above shows how certain dimensions of the organisational context of the individual – specifically the career opportunities and rewards offered
6 Apart from changing one of the acids used for cleaning, a minor change given the large size of the project.
This paper set out to answer the question of how to theorise environmental championing in a way that avoids voluntarism, but without falling into the opposite structuralist trap. By relating environmental championing to the career background of potential champions as well as to their current situation in the context of the organisation, it has been made clear that both action and structure components are needed to account for environmental championing. On the one hand, the potential champions had made the choice of bundling environmental skills with their initial engineering skills in part to further their careers, and in some cases also as a way of aligning private life environmental interests with their professional lives. This highlights the importance of the choices made, that is, of action. On the other hand, this was possible because the companies rewarded such hybrid expertise in their recruitment and promotion of managers, which highlights the contextual, structural factor of organisations offering particular career opportunities to their engineering staff. The interaction of individual – private, career and professional – interests with the organisational context shaped the careers and expertise of these managers, and made them good environmental championing candidates. Furthermore, when these managers were in the internal client role they had some leeway to influence project decisions and so champion environmental issues. However, even in this relatively influential position the championing initiatives were aligned with the company agenda. The environmental motives put forth had to be, as in other cases, aligned with economic motives. In the actual championing situation it was the confluence of the actions of individuals with certain interests, and a structured organisational context offering certain opportunities, that explained environmental championing. The analysis has shown how the interaction between individuals’ interests and the organisational context shaped the expertise they developed and the career paths they took. When in the position of internal project clients these individuals were well placed to promote environmental performance, and they were able to do so as long as they aligned their initiatives with the company agenda. Environmental championing is thus shaped by individual action as well as organisational structure. Environmental championing is the product of organisational processes that evolve over time. This paper has set out an account of environmental championing that does not overly rely on the inherent qualities of a champion, and emphasises the organisational context as a cause of championing. To avoid essentialism one should talk of potential environmental champions, who given the right opportunity may engage in environmental championing as a behaviour, rather than categorise some people as environmental champions irrespective of the context in which they act. Furthermore, this account does not make champions heroes in the sense of altruistic do-gooders, but sees self-interest and career promotion as an intrinsic aspect of an explanation of who becomes involved in environmental championing. Moreover, the account has not reduced the champions to structurally determined products of the organisations, but highlighted their own interests as a motivating factor. To avoid
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structuralism attention should be paid to what actually motivates someone to promote environmental improvements, and not assume that this ‘good cause’ is motivation enough in itself. Finally, the paper has shown how regulatory pressure over time shapes management career paths for engineers willing to bundle environmental skills with their technological and managerial skills, thus creating a mechanism that can contribute to bridging the gap between technological and environmental work in firms. The main contribution of this paper is to set out a new treatment of environmental championing that avoids placing excessive weight on the initiatives of individual champions and their inherent qualities, and that shows the dynamics of the interaction between champions and their context. The paper also shows that a political approach, which is sensitive to a range of interests of organisational actors can contribute to the study of environmental championing. The results presented are mainly valid for medium-sized to large process industry firms. The organisational dynamics of small firms, and organisations in other sectors of the economy may be different. However, it is hoped that this study may be a useful point of reference for studies also of such cases. This paper has not explained in any great detail when and why firm organisations present good opportunities for environmental championing (only that they do so and what such opportunities may look like). Future research should focus on this and investigate how both the contingencies of each situation and the usually more slowly evolving social structures shape such championing opportunities. The results presented reflect differences between the chemicals and dairy industries in terms of their sectoral environmental profiles, and the harder regulatory pressures the former often experience. The results also suggest that there may be a national difference between Sweden and Scotland, with for example interviewees in the former country generally expressing more proenvironmental attitudes. More research is needed to fully understand how private life environmental commitments are aligned with individuals’ roles in the work place and affect their professional life behaviour.
Acknowledgements Thanks go to the Economic & Social Research Council whose funding (award number PTA-030-2002-01339) helped make the research project on which this paper is based possible, and to Professor Robin Williams, Dr Graham Spinardi and Dr Stewart Russell for their contributions and help. Any remaining problems are my own shortcomings. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Science & Technology in Society: an International Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, Washington, DC, 31 Mar to 1 Apr 2007, and as Working paper no 6 of the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, The University of Edinburgh, December 2007.
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