How organisational behaviour and attitudes can impact building energy use in the UK retail environment: A theoretical framework

We investigate attitudes to energy-management tasks within a retail organisation, and reflect on links between organisational structure, staff behaviours and energy-efficient design strategy. Research was conducted amongst operational UK shop-floor staff in a large global supermarket chain, using a focus group methodology. We consider the interplay of individual, organisational and technical considerations for energy management and present a preliminary theoretical framework to identify key drivers of environmental behaviours in the workplace. The model is derived from three sources; existing behavioural theory in the domestic arena; Value, Belief, Norms Theory [Stern, P. C. (2000). Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 407-424.], goal-setting theory [Cheng, M. M., Luckett, P. F., & Mahama, H. (2007). Effect of perceived conflict among multiple performance goals and goal difficulty on task performance. Accounting and Finance, 47, 221-242. Locke, E. P., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation. A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717.] and our original qualitative data. Our research suggests two key insights. First, the wider organisational and structural context is likely to be more relevant to behavioural outcomes than personal environmental attitudes. Second, energy management is prone to multiple-goal conflicts, with a related negative impact on task performance. Better aligned user-centred approaches to successful energy-efficiency building design, operation and management are identified as key to manage energy effectively in stores. This is an area currently underplayed in the literature, and the theoretical framework has potential application across different energy-management contexts in a range of organisational environments.