Increasing energy efficiency through goal alignment in the workplace: a retail study

Energy efficiency is a growing priority for companies as financial and carbon costs of energy are increasingly recognized as key to organizational success. Organisations tend to primarily focus on technical solutions to energy efficiency, with less attention generally paid to motivating staff behaviours. While technology provides opportunity for energy consumption efficiencies, staff behaviours are crucial to support technical equipment and innovation, and to carry out activities that cannot be automated.Extensive research has been carried out into household energy efficiency behaviours;however, research into behavioural engagement with energy efficiency in the workplace is far less established.Research described in this thesis contributes to this under-played area, with publications in two peer-reviewed journal papers and one other paper currently under review at a peer-reviewed journal. Three papers have also been published in conference proceedings (see appendix 12 for list of publications).This research has contributed to organisational practice as well as academic research.Partnership with Tesco enabled access to extensive qualitative and quantitative organisational data; providing opportunities to develop and test new approaches to retail staff engagement. A substantial part of the research was a job design intervention that Tesco Energy Managers consider to have saved £4 million in energy consumption in the first year of operation, representing 2-3% of the total energy spend across the estate.The research strategy took an abductive approach, with iterative qualitative and quantitative data gathering and analysis processes used to build theory. [CONTINUES.]