Beyond feedback: introducing the ‘engagement gap’ in organizational energy management

Abstract

This paper discusses socio-technical relationships between people, organizations and energy in workplaces. Inspired by Sherry Arnstein's ladder of citizen participation, it explores widening energy management beyond energy managers to other employees, introducing the idea of an 'engagement gap' to support a move beyond unidirectional forms of engagement (e.g. feedback and nudging) to more socially interactive processes. Results are drawn from two projects researching energy practices in public authorities and retail organizations. The first project, 'GoodDeeds', collaboratively created an information and communication technology tool and explored participatory processes within a municipality. The second project, Working with Infrastructure, Creation of Knowledge, and Energy strategy Development (WICKED), explored energy management in retail companies. The paper uses a '4Cs' framework to articulate the influences of concerns, capacities and technical conditions within organizational communities. The results concur with previous research that energy management sits against a backdrop of competing organizational, institutional and political concerns. New data reveal discrepancies across organizations with regard to energy management capacities and technical metering conditions. The authors suggest employee engagement can be broadened by treating energy as a communal subject for discussion, negotiation and partnership. This objective moves beyond the 'information-deficit' approach intrinsic in the existing focus on analytics, dashboards and feedback.

Strategy Context of Decision Making for Improved Energy Efficiency in Industrial Energy Systems

“…The following were identified as the most important principles of the approach being developed. First, consideration of the high degree of mutual influence of energy saving and energy efficiency improvement processes and innovative development processes [118]; second, the need for coordination of managerial decisions related to energy saving and energy efficiency improvement, on the one hand, and related to the innovative development, on the other [53,92,119]; third, active participation of company's management in the management of the processes under consideration [52,91,120,121].…”

Top Energy Saver of the Year: Results of an Energy Saving Competition in Public Buildings

“…In most cases, energy cost savings will not work as monetary incentive. Furthermore, employees trying to change their energy use behaviour could experience what Bull and Janda [6] name competing priorities. Considering the various duties and tasks employees must perform, the repercussions of their actions on energy consumption are given low priority.…”

“…Considering the various duties and tasks employees must perform, the repercussions of their actions on energy consumption are given low priority. Based on focus groups and interviews in one public authority in the United Kingdom, Bull and Janda [6] note that this is an existing concern. On the other hand, there are factors associated with workplaces and schools that can help to make interventions more successful.…”

Three Dimensions of Design for Sustainable Behaviour

“…Arnstein believes that 'citizen control' should be at the top of the ladder, thus signifying a redistribution of power to those who are often excluded from the decision making processes within society [43]. This model has been successfully applied to a range of disciplines, most recently energy behaviours in buildings and organisations [44].…”

“…Hence, more variables, such as types of information, presentation of visuals and frequency of feedback, should carefully be considered when constructing the strategies within the spectrum of the 'Information' dimension; but also the way in which feedback aspects are associated with other dimensions should be accounted for. For example, research into energy behaviour change strategies in organisations has shown that behaviour can be heavily influenced by social, organisational and cultural factors [44]. It has been suggested that the combination of influences of attitude and contextual factors, such as incentives or penalties, is much more effective at bringing about pro-environmental behaviour [24].…”