Sustainable Change: Education for Sustainable Development in the Business School

This paper examines the implementation of education for sustainable development (ESD) within a business school. ESD is of growing importance for business schools, yet its implementation remains a challenge. The paper examines how barriers to ESD's implementation are met through organisational change as a sustainable process. It evaluates change brought about through ESD in a UK-based business school, through the lens of Beer and Eisenstat's three principles of effective strategy implementation and organisational adaptation, which state: 1) the change process should be systemic; 2) the change process should encourage open discussion of barriers to effective strategy implementation and adaptation; and 3) the change process should develop a partnership among all relevant stakeholders. The case incorporates, paradoxically, both elements of a top-down and an emergent strategy that resonates with elements of life-cycle, teleological and dialectic frames for process change. Insights are offered into the role of individuals as agents and actors of institutional change in business schools. In particular, the importance of academic integrity is highlighted for enabling and sustaining integration. Findings also suggest a number of implications for policy-makers who promote ESD, and for faculty and business school managers implementing, adopting and delivering ESD programmes

Danish nearshore wind energy policy: Exploring actors, ideas, discursive processes and institutions via discursive institutionalis

This article explores Danish renewable energy policy and policymaking, focusing on the development of nearshore wind energy and the role played by various actors, their competing ideas, the discursive processes in which they participate, and the institutional settings where exchanges occur. The research employs a case study design, concentrating on the Vesterhav Syd nearshore windfarm project. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, the paper exploits Discursive Institutionalism and one of its recent refinements, labelled Ideational Power that highlights power over, through and in ideas. The data gathered provides compelling evidence of the ways in which actors struggle for dominance, each seeking to persuade others of their preferred policy problem definition and solutions: a process that oscillates between highly technical coordinative discourses among government agencies and business organisations and more politicised communicative discourses among a wider set of actors that includes community groups. Significantly, this case reveals the power of various policy stakeholders in Danish energy policy, suggesting that once decisions are taken at the national level of governance to construct a windfarm, only limited influence can be exerted by local groups on the outcomes. Our findings raise wider questions about such processes beyond the Danish case

Renegotiating authority in the Energy Union: A Framework for Analysis

In a context of multiple crises, European Union (EU) energy policy is often identified as one of the few areas still exhibiting strong integration dynamics. However, this policy domain is not exempt from contestation and re-nationalization pressures. This collection seeks to understand better the contradictory integration and fragmentation tendencies by problematizing the notion of authority. While authority lies at the heart of European integration theory, less attention has been given to explaining when and why previously conferred authority becomes contested and how authority conflicts are addressed. In framing this collection, we build on sociological approaches to examine systematically the conferral of authority (what counts as authority and how it comes to be recognized) and its contestation (the types of contestation and strategies for managing authority conflicts). We focus this analytical discussion on the Energy Union, being an example of ‘hybrid area’, which sits uncomfortably at the nexus of different policy areas

Going 'off script': the influence of instrument constituencies on the Europeanisation of Turkish water policy

The European Union (EU) has established a major role in directing policy change, both internally and beyond its borders: a phenomenon known as ‘Europeanisation’. This article examines the Europeanisation of water policy in Turkey in relation to implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). Although some principles of EU water policy have been adopted in Turkey, the WFD has also been subject to significant domestic modification, prompting questions about how and why such patterns of partial implementation occur. In this respect, learning and socialisation within transnational ‘instrument constituencies’ (ICs) is shown to be an important explanatory factor. It follows that diffusion of the EU’s water policy and the WFD beyond its borders may be enhanced by promoting the capacity for instrument constituency learning (or the ‘cognitive environment’) in non-EU countries

Seeking legitimacy through CSR: Institutional Pressures and Corporate Responses of Multinationals in Sri Lanka

Arguably, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of multinational enterprises (MNEs) are influenced by a wide range of both internal and external factors. Perhaps most critical among the exogenous forces operating on MNEs are those exerted by state and other key institutional actors in host countries. Crucially, academic research conducted to date offers little data about how MNEs use their CSR activities to strategically manage their relationship with those actors in order to gain legitimisation advantages in host countries. This paper addresses that gap by exploring interactions between external institutional pressures and firm-level CSR activities, which take the form of community initiatives, to examine how MNEs develop their legitimacy-seeking policies and practices. In focusing on a developing country, Sri Lanka, this paper provides valuable insights into how MNEs instrumentally utilise community initiatives in a country where relationship-building with governmental and other powerful non-governmental actors can be vitally important for the long-term viability of the business. Drawing on neo-institutional theory and CSR literature, this paper examines and contributes to the embryonic but emerging debate about the instrumental and political implications of CSR. The evidence presented and discussed here reveals the extent to which, and the reasons why, MNEs engage in complex legitimacy-seeking relationships with Sri Lankan institutions

The Europeanisation of Interest Representation: UK Business and Environmental Interests Compared

Traditional approaches to the study of interest representation have been concerned with examining the role of interest groups within a political system. This is a worthwhile exercise. However, it leads to an incomplete picture. It is also important to explore what impact a political system has on interest representation. In adopting the Europeanisation framework outlined in this paper, we can begin to examine what impact the European Union (EU), as a political system, has had on interest representation among national level actors. This paper explores the EU-effect on the interest representation patterns among two sets of actors in the UK: business organisations and environmental groups. The research presented here reveals significant differences and similarities in the interest representation of the two groups, and exposes the broader Europeanisation mechanisms in operation

The Europeanization of Interest Representation: A Strategic Decision-Making Analysis of UK Business and Environmental Interests

The point of departure for this paper is that the European Union (EU) has affected national politics, policies and polities. This process, labelled Europeanization, has led to changes in two interconnected political dimensions. First, it has led to modifications in the relationships between state and non-state actors within the national arena. Second, it has changed the interactions between the sub-national, national and supranational actors (state and non-state). To explore these propositions the paper conducts an analysis of the interest representation patterns exhibited by non-state actors. The paper compares firms (in the telecommunications, gas and electricity sectors) and environmental groups (focused on nature conservation or biodiversity policy), both based in the United Kingdom (UK), in order to determine how, to what extent and why Europeanization has affected their interest representation behaviour. The activities displayed by the two sets of interests are compared and contrasted in terms of chosen lobbying targets (i.e. national government departments and EU institutions), routes and allies (i.e. direct contact or via intermediaries such as Euro-groups) and the timing and character of the contact. Ideas and tools drawn from management science (i.e. strategic decision making analyses) are employed to assist in deriving the causal explanations for the Europeanized patterns of behaviour. It is argued that a combination of the three strategic decision making factors (i.e. internal organizational resources, objectives (and perceived rewards) and external political environments explain the contrasting behaviour of the firms and environmental groups