Moving targets: Managing interinstitutional relationships in green building design and construction

The act of building typically results in significant consumption of land and natural resources through both construction and building use, as well as the production of both indoor air pollution and landfill waste. Yet green building, which reduces these negative environmental impacts, still constitutes a minority of building practices despite its rapid increase in popularity. Significant technical and economic hurdles to green building have been overcome, but societal barriers remain that include norms, values, and expectations of what is “the right thing to do” when designing and constructing a building. Little is known about how emergent concerns such as green building influence and disseminate through fragmented fields such as building design and construction, where a multiplicity of required actors coordinate their work among multiple meaning systems, backgrounds, and traditions. To address this gap in knowledge, I use an inductive, qualitative approach to examine the engagement of individuals who bring multiple values and meanings to their material practices, using the following three research questions: How is the professional jurisdiction of new tasks determined in an emergent field? How do actors negotiate situations of institutional complexity? How can managers better prepare for emergent expectations? My data suggest that (a) the determination of professional jurisdiction over new green building tasks relies on the non-material professional resources of expertise, interest, voice, and time; (b) a limited set of institutional orders structure society, and exist in a distinct hierarchy for each individual, organization, and profession. The execution of a green building requires advocates who view green building practices as a method to achieve high worth within the orders they value highly; and (c) emergent expectations such as green building become central to a manager’s concern when advocates for green practices gain the triple characteristics of power, legitimacy, and urgency. These findings provide an enhanced understanding of the social barriers to green building, as well as how multiple values and emergent meanings are negotiated by professionals in a fragmented industry.