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Download fileA socio-technical approach to improving retail energy efficiency behaviours.
journal contribution
posted on 2014-12-22, 10:20 authored by Sian Christina, Patrick WatersonPatrick Waterson, Andrew Dainty, Kevin DanielsIn recent years, the UK retail sector has made a significant contribution to societal responses on carbon reduction. We provide a novel and timely examination of environmental sustainability from a systems perspective, exploring how energy-related technologies and strategies are incorporated into organisational life. We use a longitudinal case study approach, looking at behavioural energy efficiency from within one of the UK's leading retailers. Our data covers a two-year period, with qualitative data from a total of 131 participants gathered using phased interviews and focus groups. We introduce an adapted socio-technical framework approach in order to describe an existing organisational behavioural strategy to support retail energy efficiency. Our findings point to crucial socio-technical and goal-setting factors which both impede and/or enable energy efficient behaviours, these include: tensions linked to store level perception of energy management goals; an emphasis on the importance of technology for underpinning change processes; and, the need for feedback and incentives to support the completion of energy-related tasks. We also describe the evolution of a practical operational intervention designed to address issues raised in our findings. Our study provides fresh insights into how sustainable workplace behaviours can be achieved and sustained over time. Secondly, we discuss in detail a set of issues arising from goal conflict in the workplace; these include the development of a practical energy management strategy to facilitate secondary organisational goals through job redesign.
Funding
This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) [grant number EP/G037272/1].
History
School
- Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Published in
Applied ergonomicsVolume
47Pages
324 - 335Citation
CHRISTINA, S. ... et al, 2015. A socio-technical approach to improving retail energy efficiency behaviours. Applied Ergonomics, 47, pp.324-335Publisher
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics SocietyVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Publication date
2015Notes
This is an Open Access Article published by Elsevier according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2014.08.003ISSN
0003-6870eISSN
1872-9126Publisher version
Language
- en