“If Chemists Don’t Do It, Who Is Going To?” Peer-driven Occupational Change and the Emergence of Green Chemistry

Abstract

We investigate the emergence and growth of ''green chemistry''-an effort by chemists to encourage other chemists to reduce the health, safety, and environmental impacts of chemical products and processes-to explore how occupational members, absent external triggers for change, influence how their peers do their work. Using extensive interviews, archival data, and observations, we find that advocates simultaneously advanced different frames that specified the utility of making the change: (1) a normalizing frame, positioning green chemistry as consistent with mainstream chemistry innovation; (2) a moralizing frame, positioning it as an ethical imperative; and (3) a pragmatizing frame, positioning it as a tool that could help chemists tackle problems they encountered in their day-today work. Each frame resonated differently with chemists in their various occupational roles. Though this pluralistic approach generated broad acceptance of the change effort, it also exposed tensions, which threatened the coherence of the change. Advocates' diverse responses to these tensions contribute to a persistent state of pluralism and dynamism in the change effort. We uncover a process through which occupational members generate and sustain change, show how occupational heterogeneity can enable and delimit change, and show how wellmeaning efforts to ''moralize'' occupational work can heighten resistance, inhibiting the very changes that enable experts to address urgent societal problems.

A New Methodology for Supply Chain Management: Discourse Analysis and its Potential for Theoretical Advancement

“…In the 1970s and 1980s, the environmental movement started to challenge the assumption that the benefits of chemistry automatically outweighed any harm that it might cause to human health and the environment. One response was to harness the discourse of sustainability by introducing green chemistry (Howard‐Grenville et al, ), which changed the original meaning that emphasized harm reduction (allowing for the use of dangerous chemicals and regulating exposure to them) to one that focused on eliminating harmful chemicals from industrial processes. This change in meaning was achieved with the publication of an authoritative text—the field’s first green chemistry textbook (Anastas & Warner, )—which articulates twelve principles underlining a commitment to harm elimination.…”

Career Resourcing and the Process of Professional Emergence

“…Professions are important institutions in contemporary society that organize and structure work (Freidson, 1994;Muzio et al, 2013;Scott, 2008;Suddaby & Viale, 2011). Accordingly, researchers have studied the creation of new professions, the formation of new professional associations, and changes in professional identities, roles, and knowledge systems as important institutional events (Anteby, Chan, & DiBenigno, 2016;Chreim, Williams, & Hinings, 2007;Dunn & Jones, 2010;Empson et al, 2013;Goodrick & Reay, 2010;Howard-Grenville, Nelson, Earle, Haack, & Young, 2017;Kyratsis, Atun, Phillips, Tracey, & George, 2017;Loewenstein, 2014;Lounsbury, 2002;McCann, Granter, Hyde, & Hassard, 2013;Siebert et al, 2016).…”

“…Relatively few studies explore and theorize processes of professional emergence. In these studies, the work practices and values of a community shape how they interact with others in a way that establishes a new occupation's distinctiveness and mandate (Fayard et al, 2017;Nelsen & Barley, 1997), or storytelling and strategic framing drive emergence (Granqvist & Laurila, 2011;Howard-Grenville et al, 2017). Our study's careers lens reveals other grounded explanations about professional emergence that extends existing theory by showing how individuals encounter each other in the first place to form communities, why they act to make new professions, and how they resource their profession-building actions.…”

“…Similarly, future research can focus more specifically 43 on relationship between career actions and various forms of discursive action. Publishing research, framing key research topics, and linking research with key policy concerns are discursive actions (Howard-Grenville et al, 2017) but also career actions. Understanding the interconnections between different emergence mechanisms and individuals' motivations for taking specific actions can give us a richer account of why people act in ways that help build a new profession.…”

“…In addition, the establishment of new types of jobs in organizations, or the adjustment of existing jobs, changes the nature of work in those jobs (Barley, Bechky, & Milliken, 2017). For example, chemists' jobs were expanded to include environmentally responsible principles concurrent with the emergence of green chemistry (Howard-Grenville et al, 2017); new recycling manager jobs were created or existing jobs adjusted in order to staff campus recycling initiatives (Lounsbury, 2001). Future research can explore the coevolution of new professions, careers, jobs, and work in organizations.…”