Drawing on club theory, this study examines the challenges and opportunities facing a sustainability certification program, the Green Key scheme, in terms of its recruitment and retention of members within the Dutch tourism and hospitality industry. Extant literature on sustainability certification in this industry tends to focus narrowly on motivations and retention problems at the firm level, or else on drivers of or barriers to the adoption of sustainability certification schemes. The links between scheme design characteristics and scheme effectiveness and their implications for recruitment and retention thus have remained relatively unexamined. To address this gap, this study proposes a theoretical framework that highlights how different design features of sustainability certification schemes might inform the recruitment and retention challenges that scheme managers often face.
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The adoption of sustainability standards within organizations represents one of the most significant challenges that firms face. This qualitative based study draws on the core-periphery thesis of organizational change and the resource-based view of the firm to explore the three adoption architectures firms can use to integrate green certification scheme standards into their business operations. As a result, we examined the nature of the linkages between the different adoption mechanisms, and how such linkages might influence a firm’s sustainability performance. The study demonstrates that organizational attributes, previous experience with a sustainability agenda and the degree of fit between the externally generated sustainability standard and the prevailing business practices can affect the abilities of firms to integrate sustainability standards into their organization structures and thus their sustainability performance. Hence, this paper opens new avenues for sustainability certification researchers to look at the various configurations of standards adoption architectures, and also for practitioners to broadly embrace both institutional and organizational exigencies relevant to the internalization of certification standards
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Environmental or ‘green' education is an important driving force behind the ‘greening' of society as it plays a critical role in raising environmental awareness and preparing students for green jobs. None of the existing environmental attitudes and behavior measures is focused on the evaluation of green education, especially in relation to consumption. To date, no longitudinal studies of children and students' attitudes towards consumption influenced by education exist. Also, little has been done to explore the socio-cultural context in which attitudes toward consumption are being formed and to explain the cross-cultural differences in environmental attitudes. This pilot study is designed to take the first step towards developing methods complementing existing quantitative measurements with qualitative strategies, such as consumption diaries, focus groups, and concept mapping. While this research is just a first attempt to tackle children's knowledge and attitudes consumption, preliminary results of the research on which this chapter is based and enthusiasm of the research participants encourage the author to stress the importance of consumption studies as part of green education for educational program developers. As a chapter of this volume, the author hopes that this study will add to the anthropological depository of research on the cultural variants in the perception of the environment in children. This chapter draws upon the consumption diaries collected from the upper-elementary school children in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, between September 2009 and May 2010. Consumption diaries are chronological documents recording purchase, use, and waste of materials, which can be used both as analytical tools and the means to stimulate environmental awareness. The four main methodological steps involved in this research were as follows. Children were asked to complete the consumption diary, paying specific attention to use and waste materials. Consequently, focus group meetings were held with parents and their children to discuss the diaries. Finally, interviews with the children were conducted in order to generate statements that supplement those generated by focus groups for carrying out the concept mapping analysis. The concept mapping analysis was then conducted to organize the order and analyze the ideas expressed in the focus group and interview sessions. This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge/CRC Press in "Environmental Anthropology Today" on 8/5/11 available online: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203806906 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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