Employees and Pro-Environmental Behaviors: Obstacles, Constraints, and Barriers
This chapter provides an original analysis of barriers to the adoption of pro-environmental behaviors by individuals. An overview of the literature on environmental issues shows that the study of obstacles to environmental engagement at the individual lev
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Employees and Pro-Environmental Behaviors: Obstacles, Constraints, and Barriers
Abstract This chapter provides an original analysis of barriers to the adoption of pro-environmental behaviors by individuals. An overview of the literature on environmental issues shows that the study of obstacles to environmental engagement at the individual level has attracted limited attention compared to research on incentives and facilitators. This chapter provides an overview of the current state of knowledge on factors that limit the likelihood of employees adopting pro-environmental behaviors in the workplace. The chapter draws on Lewinian field theory as an analytical framework and examines the extent to which, depending on their degree of physical and mental proximity (whether real or perceived), employees feel hindered in their environmental engagement. Keywords Obstacles · Levels · Lewinian field · Mental representation
7.1 Obstacles in the Workplace: A Brief Commentary on the Current State of Knowledge An overview of the specialized literature on environmental behaviors might lead one to conclude that the study of obstacles is a relatively minor area of research in comparison to the number of studies devoted to incentives and facilitators. However, there have been a number of attempts over the years to rank and categorize obstacles. For the most part, these © The Author(s) 2020 P. Paillé, Greening the Workplace, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58388-0_7
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have tended to focus on the study of obstacles, or barriers, to environmental commitment and engagement in nonwork settings (Gifford, 2011; Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002; Lorenzoni, Nicholson-Cole, & Whitmarsh, 2007). Though not neglected, research on obstacles in a work context suffers from a lack of visibility that, in my view, can be explained by a lack of structure around the knowledge developed in this area rather than any real lack of interest in the question itself. Individuals face a range of obstacles in the workplace. These can be grouped into four categories or levels: institutional, organizational, managerial, and individual (i.e., psychological). These four categories also provide a means of understanding the different reasons people give in order to justify their lack of environmental engagement. 7.1.1
Institutional Level
Institutional obstacles include normative constraints that are external to the organization and that govern, structure, and regulate the internal conduct of operational processes. The legislative framework creates obstacles related to the availability and clarity of information, the perceived ease of its applicability, and the flexibility of organizational characteristics and specificities (Jabbour et al., 2016). The management system relating to environmental standards can also give rise to obstacles if senior management is uncertain about the anticipated effects or results, if it believes that the costs and complexity associated with introducing standards outweigh the benefits of holding certifications, and if it belie
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