Research project The proposed project will advance understanding of the drivers of and barriers to sustainable lifestyles by an integrative investigation of the determinants of everyday practices and behaviours within large scale organizations.
Finansår , 2011, 2012, 2013
huvudman: Nora Räthzel, finansiär: European Union, y2011: 680, y2012: 680, y2013: 680,
Studying large scale organizations
Large organizations are responsible for a significant amount of GHG emissions. An estimation in the year 2000, which considered 8 different categories of sources of GHG emissions (industrial processes, power stations, transportation fuels, among others), showed that the potential contribution of large organizations to global warming over the next 100 years will be highly significant: 72 % CO2, 18 % Methane, 9 % Nitrous Oxide (Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research, 2000).
The project will advance understanding of the drivers of and barriers to sustainable lifestyles by an integrative investigation of the determinants of everyday practices and behaviours within large scale organizations
i. by identifying how carbon consumption practices in the workplace and the home can be transformed
ii. by enhancing our understanding of how these two important areas of our lives can be made to work together to achieve a transition to a sustainable society.
As a key practice of everyday life, work is a place and space where the sometimes contradictory demands of economic profit and environmental sustainability meet and are negotiated, with the resulting effects on work practices, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. As people spend an important part of their lives at work, within a community of values, norms and everyday practices, it is also the place where identities are negotiated, where individual values are transformed and where sustainability-related behaviour is either promoted and rewarded or hindered and discouraged.
The general research questions are:
