Informal slack in organisations: a qualitative analysis of innovative organisations.

This paper considers the relationship between organisational slack and innovation from a new perspective. Moving away from the traditional quantitative research approaches, semi-structured interviews and an activity theory framework are used to operationalize a qualitative view of how slack affects the innovation process. This reveals various kinds of formal and informal slack which are considered important by people involved with innovation in a variety of different organisations. In contrast with existing literatures emphasis on money as the purest form of slack, the data presented here suggest that time and other kinds of informal slack have important roles to play in the innovation process

The management of post-consumer plastics waste recycling in the UK

This thesis examines the management of post-consumer plastics waste recycling in the UK. It brings together information and approaches from a number of disciplines in order to present a comprehensive view of the post-consumer plastics waste recycling industry and provide insight into participation issues. Two Scottish collection schemes are utilised as case studies throughout. The thesis summarises current practice in post-consumer plastics recycling and describes the processes associated with it. It also presents a summary of legislation relevant to plastics recycling in the UK, EC and US in particular. The thesis includes a quantitative survey of 500 members of the public that analyses their recycling behaviour and factors that affect motivation. It also looks at public perceptions of plastics. This is complemented by a qualitative study of plastics recyclers that examines recycling routines in more detail, and explores issues that affect the participation, and quality of donation, of individuals. The evaluation of post-consumer plastics recycling schemes is discussed, and models are developed in order to assessth eir financial viability. The lessons gained from this programme of research are then summarised in a policy framework

Sustainability: consumer perceptions and marketing strategies.

Studies of green consumer behaviour, in particular purchasing and disposal, have largely focused on demographics and/or socio-demographics, with mixed and frequently contradictory results. To move the debate forward, we investigated a wide range of 40 sustainability activities with 78 consumers, who placed each activity on a matrix according to perceived effort and perceived difference to the environment. Patterns both across respondents and between certain pairs of activities were identified, and we suggest that this model increases our understanding of how consumers view sustainable activities. Marketers can use this information to consider marketing strategies that positively influence consumers' perceptions of such activities

Recycling and the domestic division of labour: is green pink or blue?

Domestic or household recycling has a crucial role to play in meeting EU targets for overall recycling rates. However, researchers have yet to agree on the characteristics of the domestic recycler and how recycling is actually carried out in the home. In this article, recycling is investigated within the context of domestic labour in an attempt to understand how it fits in with or overrides traditional divisions. This brings an important new perspective to the recycling debate and at the same time updates the domestic division of labour literature to include green activities. It is suggested that recycling contradicts prevailing trends towards decreasing time spent on household chores, but that, like domestic labour, it is initiated and largely sustained by women alone or together with a partner. In this sense, recycling follows a similar pattern to more established household chores

Voluntary simplicity.

Etzioni describes voluntary simplifiers (VS) as people who choose, 'out of free will - rather than by being coerced by poverty, government austerity programs, or being imprisoned - to limit expenditures on consumer goods and services, and to cultivate non-materialistic sources of satisfaction and meaning' (1998:620). Although there are many different definitions of voluntary simplicity (Johnston & Burton, 2003), this definition is useful because it includes the three major elements that set this movement apart from others: free will; limiting consumerism; and alternative sources of satisfaction

Studying actions in context: a qualitative shadowing method for organizational research, Qualitative research [online], 5(4), pages 455-473.

Shadowing is a qualitative research technique that has seldom been used and rarely been discussed critically in the social science literature. This paper has pulled together all of the studies using shadowing as a research method and through reviewing these studies has developed a threefold classification of different modes of shadowing. This work provides a basis for a qualitative shadowing method to be defined, and its potential for a distinctive contribution to organisational research to be discussed, for the first time

Green behaviour: difference in recycling behaviour between the home and the workplace.

In 2008 the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency reported that commercial waste amounted to 5.75 million tonnes, compared with 2.94 million tonnes of domestic waste. Despite the fact that waste arising in commercial premises is nearly double that produced by households in the UK, the study of recycling in the workplace is less common than the study of recycling at home (Marans & Lee, 1993)

Going with the flow: shadowing in organisations.

In 1997 I undertook my first shadowing in an organisation. I had already been researching the organisation with a team of colleagues for more than a year. Despite the fact that I had already spent many long weeks in the organisation, travelling to all their sites in the UK, interviewing over 100 individuals, observing hours and hours of meetings and taking part in project feedback sessions to middle and senior management, nothing prepared me for the shadowing data. It is well documented that shadowing is a physically and mentally exhausting process and at first I thought it was this, and the richness of the torrent of data that was unleashed that was what made the experience so different. However as the weeks passed I began to realise that I was 'seeing' the organisation in a new way. That the data I was collecting were somehow different than the data I had collected before. This shed new light for me on the limitations of other methods and started a process of trying to articulate these subtle and slippery differences to myself and to others

Recycling at home and work: an exploratory comparison.

Purpose: Recent UK legislation requires businesses to segregate their food waste and present metal, plastic, glass and paper waste for collection separately. Despite decades of research on household recycling, scant attention has been paid to the waste that employees personally create and dispose of within their workplaces. There is an implicit assumption that what is already known about recycling at home will simply transfer into the workplace. However emerging debates in the wider green behaviour literatures suggest that behaviours may not translate straightforwardly into other contexts. Methodology: This paper presents an exploratory study that comprehensively compares recycling at home and work for the first time. A one page questionnaire was hand delivered to 1000 households to ask them to indicate which materials they recycled at home and at work, and allowed them to comment on any differences. A total of 220 responses were received. Findings: The data show recycling in both contexts across the full range of materials. An aggregate analysis shows that people generally recycle in both contexts. However further analysis at the level of individual materials gives a different picture, demonstrating that individuals are less likely to recycle at work than they are at home, suggesting that spillover between these contexts is neither automatic nor consistent. Contribution: Since an individual's behaviour is shown to vary across materials, as well as across contexts this challenges the very notion of the 'recycler?. The findings challenge the extant research norms surrounding recycling research in a number of important ways. The outcome of this study is a set of six propositions which set out a future research agenda for the investigation of recycling behaviour in general, and workplaces in particular, in terms of unit of analysis, multiple material streams, and multiple contexts. Limitations: Although this study gives insights into new areas and provides the basis for building future research agendas in the waste management field, it is very much exploratory in nature. In particular the questionnaire used was very simplistic in order to facilitate a healthy return rate from a sampling method which was known to include a significant proportion of recipients ineligible to reply (as they did not work outside the home). Although this was a successful strategy in terms of obtaining a large enough sample, it means that the data collected are only able to be analysed in a very limited way

Household behaviour and sustainability: from inactive to involved, and what lies in-between.

In this working paper we present the initial findings from a 2013 postal survey into green and ethical household behaviour. 457 usable questionnaires were returned from 3000 householders in a large northern city in the UK, giving a response rate of 15%. Respondents provided details about their levels of participation in green and ethical activities, their attitudes towards such behaviour, recent purchase decisions in different product categories, and information use and dissemination. Questions were derived from an earlier piece of qualitative research in which we carried out in-depth interviews with self-identified green consumers and a previous quantitative questionnaire. Our latest findings provide evidence to support varying levels of involvement in green and ethical activities, with differences in participation, attitudes, and information seeking. These differences are discussed and marketing implications identified