This article reports on an in‐depth, qualitative study into the pro‐environmental engagement of small businesses in the east of England, with respect to climate change in particular. Managers of environmentally pro‐active small businesses were asked about the pro‐environmental measures they had implemented in their firms, their motivations for doing so, and their understanding of climate change. The managers in this study had a relatively good understanding of environmental issues in general and climate change in particular, and had implemented a range of pro‐environmental measures in their firms. Their understanding of climate change was a holistic one, which sat within their overall understanding of environmental and social issues. While economic arguments and external pressure played a role in their pro‐environmental engagement, perhaps the most notable motivation for managers in this study to engage with environmental and climate change issues was personal values and beliefs. Environmentally engaged managers exhibited an internal locus of control. Some of these findings contrast with the views of key informants in local government and business advice organisations, who tend to emphasise the business case and cost arguments when trying to encourage small businesses towards greater environmental engagement. These findings suggest that public policy and business advice in this area should perhaps focus more strongly on personal values and a sense of being able to contribute to environmental protection in their engagement with small businesses. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
This article examines issues of sustainability in relation to
further search for and processing of information is necessary. Thus it seems reasonable to assume that consumers who are familiar with a particular brand will not rely on country of origin, or attribute information, to any large extent, in evaluating that brand.
This paper presents results from a longitudinal, qualitative study into the adoption of environmental management systems (EMS) in three companies in the UK water & sewerage industry. Based on institutional theory and the literature on EMS, four factors related to the adoption of EMS are identified: external and internal institutional forces, environmental performance issues, and economic performance issues. While previous literature has often assumed a balance of performance and institutional factors or a preponderance of performance factors, the results of this study indicate that institutional forces are the predominant drivers. The results further indicate that environmental performance issues become less important over time, whereas institutional drivers and economic performance rationales increase in importance over time. While conforming to institutional pressures can result in improved economic performance of a company, adoption of environmental management systems mostly on the basis of institutional and economic factors has wider repercussions for the state of corporate environmental management and progress towards greater ecological sustainability of business. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007.
This article presents a case of the early stages of an attempted integration of environmental management and corporate responsibility in a UK utility company, which may, in due course, develop into a more holistic orientation towards corporate sustainability. The company had made some deliberate attempts to link environmental and social responsibility issues. However, this integration was partial and contested within the company. The case shows that dealing with environmental soundness and starting to integrate environmental and social issues and management need not be a sequential process. Institutional and wider social factors are shown to play a strong role in influencing company thinking and actions in this area, seemingly sending rather mixed signals in this case. The case also highlights the role of sustainability champions in making links between the organization's business purpose, its environmental performance and its social responsibility in terms of the long term sustainability of the region and the company's future. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.*Related content and download information correct at time of download. Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyse the drivers of sustainable entrepreneurial practices in SMEs operating in a developing economy. The secondary objectives are to explore the relationship between these drivers and to draw out the implications for policy and practice. Design/methodology/approach -The paper is informed by the literature on sustainable entrepreneurship, and on the drivers of pro-environmental practices in SMEs. It reports on the results of an intensive multi-level empirical study, which investigates the environmental practices of SMEs in Pakistan's leatherworking industry using a multiple case study design and grounded analysis, which draws on relevant institutional theory. Findings -The study identifies that coercive, normative and mimetic isomorphic pressures simultaneously drive sustainable entrepreneurial activity in the majority of sample SMEs. These pressures are exerted by specific micro-, meso-and macro-level factors, ranging from international customers' requirements to individual-level values of owners and managers. It also reveals the catalytic effect of the educational and awareness-raising activities of intermediary organisations, in tandem with the attraction of competitiveness gains, (international) environmental regulations, industrial dynamism and reputational factors. Practical implications -The evidence suggests that, in countries where formal institutional mechanisms have less of an impact, intermediary organisations can perform a proto-institutional role that helps to overcome pre-existing barriers to environmental improvement by sparking sustainable entrepreneurial activity in SME populations. Originality/value -The findings imply that the drivers of sustainable entrepreneurial activity do not operate in a "piecemeal" fashion, but that particular factors mediate the emergence and development of other sustainability drivers. This paper provides new insights into sustainable entrepreneurship and motivations for environmental practices in an under-researched developing economy context.
We study the values on which managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) draw when constructing their personal and organizational-level engagement with environmental issues, particularly climate change. Values play an important mediating role in business environmental engagement, but relatively little research has been conducted on individual values in smaller organizations. Using the Schwartz Value System (SVS) as a framework for a qualitative analysis, we identify four "ideal-types" of SME managers and provide rich descriptions of the ways in which values shape their constructions of environmental engagement. In contrast to previous research, which is framed around a binary divide between self-enhancing and self-transcending values, our typology distinguishes between individuals drawing primarily on Power or on Achievement values and indicates how a combination of Achievement and Benevolence values is particularly significant in shaping environmental engagement. This demonstrates the theoretical usefulness of focusing on a complete range of values. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.
This article interrogates the norms of good citizenship invoked in and across different social domains, using the example of citizenship education in the UK as one field in which good citizenship is constituted. It is possible to make visible the political struggle inherent in the mechanisms of framing the good citizen by unpacking the differences between citizenship as acts, status and virtues. This is a necessary step in assessing good citizenship claims in the absence of moral and political absolutes. We deploy a two-tiered account of Butler's theory of performativity to examine how ordinary citizenship acts are preceded by elite rhetorical framing. We conclude that citizenship, like democracy, is always enacted in particular contexts in which positioning, method and motives play an important part. IntroductionOur aim in this article is to contribute to the important task of bringing to the debate on good citizenship greater theoretical depth and empirical richness. We interrogate the norms of good citizenship invoked in different social domains and extend our analysis across as well as within particular domains, using the example of citizenship education in the UK to illustrate our argument. At the centre of our efforts is the specification of a framework for analysing invocations of the good citizen. The aim of this style of analysis is to reveal or unmask the making of conceptions of the good citizen and good citizenship. The good citizen is a figure who is 'framed', or set up, by political and academic observers alike; framed in the sense of viewed from a certain perspective, and in the different sense of set up for a particular purpose (to contribute to a sustainable society or cohesive community, for example). Indeed, the frames constitute ideas of the good citizen and the desired practices that flow from that: there is no single normative ideal outside frames. By deploying an interpretative methodology, it is our intention to make visible the political struggle inherent in the practices and mechanisms of framing the good citizen, and to speculate on the possibility of assessing such claims in the absence of moral and political absolutes.We argue that a focus on good citizenship means a focus primarily on acts of citizenship, showing how key actors performatively construct both the content (approaches) and products (domains) of good citizenship, indicating a constitutive relationship between 'elite' representations and 'ordinary' performative acts of citizenship and their specific contexts. As we will go on to elaborate, the invocation of the good citizen is twofold: the frame itself is produced through elite actions (the constitution of a domain and an approach) and in turn provides the repertoires of possible acts and social roles that are deemed to be 'good', as performed by ordinary would-be citizens themselves. Analysts therefore need to embrace the inevitable plurality of conceptions of the good citizen, and would benefit from a specific set of linked concepts that can genuinely help us to map and ...
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