How to Avoid Pigeonholing the Environmental Manager?

Abstract

Abstract:The research investigates the role the environmental manager plays to ensure a successful (or not) implementation of environmental performance within an organization. It is based on interviews of 5-7 actors per company within a sample of 7 companies (42 interviews). We build upon bias of perception of the various actors interviewed within each company to define 4 paradoxes related to the roles and mission of the environmental manager that hinder proper efficiency of environmental management at company level. Paradox 1 is that no one takes ownership of environmental performance within the organization. Paradox 2 is that the environmental manager is in an awkward situation vis-à-vis his boss. Paradox 3 is that the role of the environmental manager in relation to employees is ambiguous. Paradox 4 is that corporate and product approaches are decoupled. We suggest that these paradoxes interact and form a vicious cycle that may, in part, be responsible for the environmental decoupling phenomenon-companies often adopt a sustainability policy symbolically without implementing it substantively. Our research suggests that, by leveraging the leadership of the environmental manager through organizational and motivational measures, the vicious cycle can be transformed into a virtuous cycle and the human motivation can become a driver for green change within corporations. We proposed the SEA (Shaping Environmental Action) model based of 4 pillars: information, motivation, organization, and strategy.

Architect, Catalyst, Advocate, and Prophet: A Four-Lens View of Companies to Support Ecodesign Integration

“…The presence of the architect's perspective was further found in relation to challenges experienced by companies working with sustainability, about the difficulty to set a direction, doubts of where to set priorities and what KPIs to measure; calling for an architect's perspective to establish rational priorities, indicators and goals [12,28,62]. The importance of having capabilities specified in the company's organigram was highlighted at Company D which echoes with the findings of Boucher et al [39]. On the other hand, we found that the discussion around having environmental targets for products varied depending on the context of the company, and more particularly on the nature of its products and drivers to develop environment-friendly products.…”

“…Through the structural lens, scholars have reported the lack of strategy or concrete goals to integrate environmental aspects in products [17,[61][62][63], the absence of a predefined toolset to support ecodesign decision-making, and the lack of formal presence of ecodesign aspects in project assessment frameworks [19,22], and performance measurement systems [61,63]. Additionally, scholars reported lack of clear responsibility allocation and presence in the organigram [17,39], and the absence of specific mechanisms to collect information related to sustainability from the market and regulation [62]. Scholars have recommended exploring possibilities to integrate ecodesign aspects in existing processes [11,12,19,21,[64][65][66], in order to create an official arena for discussing environmental aspects [65], and investigating how to formally integrate ecodesign aspects in the different levels of organization, i.e., operational, tactical and strategic [18].…”

“…Scholars have recommended exploring possibilities to integrate ecodesign aspects in existing processes [11,12,19,21,[64][65][66], in order to create an official arena for discussing environmental aspects [65], and investigating how to formally integrate ecodesign aspects in the different levels of organization, i.e., operational, tactical and strategic [18]. The establishment of clear environmental goals for product design is also recommended, as well as the creation of environmental specialist roles to support development processes [39,64,66].…”

“…Within internal stakeholders driving sustainability in organizations, we can distinguish between employees primarily working with environmental management, e.g., a sustainability manager or Environment, Health and Safety specialist, and employees working in core business roles who seek to drive the sustainability agenda based on individual interest [32]. These two types of stakeholders have been found to be central in driving sustainability practices in companies [33][34][35][36], and have been expected to drive sustainability integration in their organization as "champions", "change agents" or "leaders" [32,[35][36][37][38][39].…”