This paper explores, through the medium of literature review and a single in-depth empirical study conducted over a 1-year period, the ways in which a third sector organisation (TSO) is engaging in reuse behaviour change.The paper forms part of a larger scale PhD research project examining the ways in which corporate bodies can be helped to implement the UK government's ambition to move up the so-called waste hierarchy from recycling to 'reuse and preparing for reuse' [1].The paper starts by exploring the existing literature on current reuse practices, which both confirms that normative behaviour is concentrated on recycling and identifies TSOs as leading proactive stakeholders in promoting reuse behaviour, noting that the literature is generally limited to household waste.Therefore, the empirical research sought to understand and identify whether, and if so how, normative behaviour towards reuse can be developed both within TSOs and potentially their business supply chain network.The paper reports on a single TSO (the Selby Trust), studied through a process of engaged action research and testing a behaviour change theoretical framework developed by Tavri et al. [2].The action research tested the theory that by building a process known as 'associative strength' [3,4], motivation for organisational behaviour change can be developed and, over the short term at least, maintained.The results point to the possibility of the case being replicable across other TSOs and throughout the business supply chain.
Local government has been charged with the delivery of many sustainable development policy goals. This chapter focuses on one local authority's response to the sustainable development challenge by examining a specific initiative — The Sustainable Southwark Members Initiative (SSMI), introduced to promote sustainable development action at a ward level and requiring the commitment and support of local elected Members. It explore, in respect to SSMI and sustainable development, issues around levels of understanding, "greening the greens", lay knowledge, capacity building, local politics, and institutional barriers. The SSMI research highlighted several examples of obstacles to the mainstreaming of sustainable development into local politics. There is widespread support for the view that sustainable development will only be achieved at the local authority level by some form of internal reorganisation and refocusing of policy making. The chapter concludes by assessing the extent to which sustainable development is a mainstream policy goal at the local political level.
This paper, which forms part of a larger research project, starts from the premise that there is an ambition to make the re-use of materials a normative organisational behaviour.It develops a previous literature review of barriers to organisational environmental behaviour change and presents a theoretical framework of behavioural theories, which assist in building 'associative strength' among businesses and individuals: a condition identified as critical to enabling normative behaviours to develop.It also provides an initial pilot test analysis, based on the framework of five UK organizations chosen as likely to be in the vanguard of moves towards re-use given their status as WRAP case studies and based on their own published data.In this paper, re-use refers to the management and processing of materials or items which are re-used, repurposed, repaired or redeployed thus delivering environmental, social or economic benefits to the businesses involved.A range of behavioural theories are considered and reflected within the framework, including automaticity, situational norms, identity relevance, persuasion, normative beliefs and messages, misperceptions and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).The proposed framework contributes by offering a systematic interpretation of different studies under a single theoretical framework.Furthermore, the pilot test analysis provides an initial interpretation of organizational behaviours and practices which might enable others to move up the waste hierarchy.
The research explores the incorporation of the concept of sustainable development in UK land use planning policy through an in-depth case study of the planning policy formulation process in the London Borough of Southwark (LBS). The thesis questions the notion of a formal policy cascade as a standardised and therefore neutral influence. It seeks to look beyond the written guidance to investigate the influence of the informal within the formal plan making process. Adopting a New Institutional perspective of the formal and informal, stable and dynamic, strategic and norm-governed dimensions of institutions (Lowndes 1997), the research examines how sustainable development is interpreted and enters established local planning policy. The context of the research in an arena of emerging local governance is explored with particular reference to local managerial and participatory governance as applied to planning policy formulation. The research employs qualitative techniques using documentary and content analysis, semi-structured interviews and observation. The research concludes that during the LBS plan making process, the incorporation of sustainable development in planning policy became eroded by a combination of inter-related formal institutional and political forces. The argument is made that strong interpretations of sustainable development were able to appear through the informal personal and professional influence of local planning officers. The research concludes that the New Institutional perspective adopted offers a useful way of understanding the complexity of introducing new concepts such as sustainable development into established institutions. Recommendations for enhancing the theoretical framework and for further research are made.
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