Search results

We study ceremonial adoption of voluntary standards, where participants adopt the standard in principle but do not change their practices. Ceremonial adoption can benefit individual participants, who may be able to reap the benefits of association with the standard at lower cost, but it can be problematic for overall levels of adoption. We conceive of ceremonial adoption as an interaction between strategic incentives of participants and social ties to their audiences, such that not all participants are likely to ceremonially adopt. Our setting is the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for sustainable construction. We study the conditions under which projects register for LEED certification, allowing them to claim affiliation with LEED, but then do not actually finish certification. While our data are correlational in nature, our results suggest that studying the competition for audience members (in our case, occupants) can provide greater understanding of certification behavior as well as overall levels of adoption. Our findings have implications for organizations that design and maintain voluntary standards and for organization theorists who wish to understand field-level change. Thus, we provide more evidence that strategy and organizational theory interact in important and often unexamined ways.

Project Management, Business Ethics.

This case is suitable to be used in advanced undergraduate and MBA/MSc level.

The case highlights the challenges of adopting the green concept by British Council Lahore. The British Council Lahore’s new Library aimed at providing modern twentieth-century library services to the educational community in Lahore was completed in August 2016 and became one of the earliest and highest rated Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for Building Design and Construction (BD + C): new construction-certified building in Pakistan. The library building was a stellar outcome of design and innovation, rating high on water use reduction, energy efficiency, use of wastewater technology, sustainable site design, use of green materials and resources, high indoor environmental quality, and innovation. The architect was Raza Ali Dada, the lead architect and partner of the prestigious architectural firm Nayyar Ali Dada & Associates (NADA). It is January 2016, and he faces the problem of a serious impasse with the client (British Council) because of a difference of understanding safety and design priorities of the green project. This may be due to possible inaccurate assessment of component costs by NADA and be caused by the client’s inflexibility with security features of the building. Operational and stakeholder processes that assist and hinder the adoption of green building design in a country like Pakistan can be seen in play in the context. The impasses can, at worse, result in the loss of the entire business from the British Council, or at best, serious delays in project delivery, which would reflect very badly on NADA’s ability to handle construction projects. How can Raza proceed with the negotiations? How can the client be won over before the impasse turned into schedule delays that the firm could not afford?

The learning objectives of this case are as follows:

• to introduce students to the “Green Building” concept and LEED certification and its various levels;

• to highlight the operational and strategic processes that can assist the adoption of green infrastructure in Pakistan; and

• to illustrate challenges associated with the adoption of responsible building design in emerging economies with constrained resources and poor awareness of the need for greener infrastructure among industry clients.

to introduce students to the “Green Building” concept and LEED certification and its various levels;

to highlight the operational and strategic processes that can assist the adoption of green infrastructure in Pakistan; and

to illustrate challenges associated with the adoption of responsible building design in emerging economies with constrained resources and poor awareness of the need for greener infrastructure among industry clients.

This chapter aims to examine the linkages between urbanisation, real estate investments and sustainability in Turkey. To do so, theoretical and conceptual frameworks were discussed based on literature review. Through mixed-methods research, primary data were collected via questionnaires from relevant 248 company executives while secondary data were collected from relevant institutions. Data on two case study green buildings were also collected through documents from building owners and project and construction managers. The results show that many urban development, transformation and real estate projects are executed without considering sustainability principles. Thus, nationally, mixed-use real estate and green building projects are limited even though a majority of the companies surveyed (85%) designed and executed projects based on a green structure approach. Generally, the costs of green buildings are higher compared to traditional buildings. There is the need for strategic spatial plans based on reliable cadastre systems, targeting national and regional development in using existing resources efficiently and paying attention to the importance of environmental quality. For the efficiency of real estate markets, advanced real estate market and financing systems and the integration of sustainability principles into decision-making process in planning, design, construction and operation phases of projects should be considered.

The authors provide new quantitative evidence of the relationship between technologies and organizational design in the context of complex one-off products. The systems that produce complex, one-off products in mature, fragmented industries such as construction lack many of the typical organizational features that researchers have deemed critical to product development success (e.g., team familiarity, frequent communication, and strong leadership). In contrast, the complexity of these products requires a diverse knowledge base that is rarely found within a single firm. The one-off nature of construction’s products further requires improvization and development by a distributed network of highly specialized teams. And because the product is complex, significant innovations in the end product require systemic shifts in the product architecture. Riitta Katila, Raymond E. Levitt and Dana Sheffer use an original, hand-collected dataset of the design and construction of 112 energy-efficient “green” buildings in the United States, combined with in-depth fieldwork, to study these questions. A key conclusion is that the mature US construction industry, with its particularly fragmented supply chain, is not well suited to implementing “systemic innovations” that require coordination across trades or stages of the project. However, project integration across specialists with the highest levels of interdependence (i.e., craft, contract integration) mitigates the knowledge and coordination problems. There are implications for research on how technology shapes organizations (and particularly how organizations shape technology), and on the supply chain configuration strategies of firms in the construction industry as well as building owners who are seeking to build the best buildings possible within their budgets.

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to compare trends, drivers, and best sustainable development (SD) practices in the Nordic region and California, USA.Design/methodology/approach – Four research propositions are explored: (1) SD is driven by governmental, economic, and social/cultural influences. (2) Social democracy and mixed economies in the Nordic region influence SD differently than the free market system of the United States. (3) The profit-centered, short-term view in the United States impacts SD differently than the longer-term approach in the Nordic region. (4) The egalitarian culture in the Nordic region influences SD differently than the entrepreneurial culture in the United States. The study incorporates a comprehensive literature review, 34 field interviews and research observations in the United States and the Nordic region.Findings – California and the Nordics have similar market economies where SD is largely driven by private sector; however, the role of government more directly influences SD in the Nordic region. Also, the profit-centered, entrepreneurial view of the United States drives innovation in SD based on short-term profitability gains, which ultimately hinders long-term solutions. Alternatively, the egalitarian culture in the Nordic region manifests in more focused and quicker adoption of SD policies. Lastly, the Nordics have a broad range of SD goals and a competitive advantage in key SD technologies. Conversely, California pursues a large variety of technologies without clearly defined goals that tend to be less effective than the Nordic countries.Originality/value of chapter – The chapter identified similarities and differences in SD trends, best practices, policies, and attitudes: California compared to Nordic countries.