Taking Lead for Sustainability: Environmental Managers as Institutional Entrepreneurs

Abstract

Over the past two decades, sustainability professionals have entered the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. However, little attention has been given to the actual professionalization processes of these and the leadership conducted by them when shaping the pace and direction for sustainable development. With the aim to explore how the role of sustainability professionals develops, critical events affecting everyday sustainability work practices were identified. Based on a phenomenological study with focus on eight experienced environmental managers’ life stories, and by applying the theoretical lens of institutional entrepreneurship, the study displays a professionalization process in six episodes. Different critical events both enabled and disabled environmental managers’ opportunity to engage in institutional entrepreneurship. The findings indicate how agency is closely interrelated to temporary discourses in society; they either serve to support change and create new institutional practices towards enhanced sustainability or disrupt change when agency to act is temporarily “lost”. To manage a continually changing environment, environmental managers adopt different strategies depending on the situated context and time, such as finding ambassadors and interorganizational allies, mobilizing resources, creating organizational structures, and repositioning themselves.

Employees' engagement, family ownership, or gender diversity? Searching for determinants of SMEs' green behaviors in CEE countries

“…First, looking at the role of internal stakeholders' engagement (in connection with our research questions), the results indicate the high significance of having an environmental manager in the determination of proactive environmental strategies (PES) and energy consumption monitoring (ECM) in SMEs—surprisingly, even in family firms in the CEE region. This finding supports the claim of several previous research studies carried out outside the CEE territory, demonstrating that professionalization in the context of environmental management is the driver of institutional transformation (Gluch & Månsson, 2021). For example, Dahlmann and Grosvold (2018) used semi‐structured interviews with environmental managers from UK‐based companies to find that contemporary environmental managers must redefine their professional roles' institutional arrangement from exclusively bearing environmental practice to engaging broadly in environmental sustainability across organizations.…”

Understanding a Successful Entrepreneur—what Experts Say: A Phenomenological Approach Study

“…Dan Stein and John F. Burgess (1993) mentioned (Karam et al, 2010) the notion of entrepreneurship from Dan Stain and Jhon F. Burgess. As for the mentioned (Gluch & Månsson, 2021):…”

Integrated Evaluations of Resource and Environment Carrying Capacity of the Huaihe River Ecological and Economic Belt in China

“…Between equally important and slightly more important = (2,3,4) Slightly more important = (3,4,5) Between slightly more important and rather important = (4,5,6) Rather important = (5,6,7) Between rather important and quite important = (6,7,8) Quite important = (7,8,9) Between quite important and extremely important = (8,9,10) Extremely important A pairwise comparison matrix A is obtained by pairwise comparison of any two factors. Accordingly, n(n−1)/2 pairwise comparisons are required for n factors in the index system.…”

“…On that basis, some suggestions and countermeasures such as sticking to the bottom-line thought in resource utilization, dividing the resource and environment into urban land, agricultural land and ecological space, and determining the ecological conversation line, permanent prime farmland and urban Land 2021, 10, 1168 2 of 21 development boundary, were put forward. The implementation of double evaluations was helpful to maintain regional security and enhance the utilization efficiency of resources, thereby meeting the intensive and high-efficiency standards [2][3][4].…”