Organizational structure and effective environmental management

Success in ‘greening’ a business organization is likely to depend on an appropriate environmental management structure being developed in accordance with the general structure of the organization and then receiving the appropriate support from senior and middle management. The failure to assure such a relationship may provide an explanation of the development of gaps between policy and practice. This article explores differing choices in the structure of the environmental function in a number of UK regional electricity companies and how these choices impact upon the management of environmental issues, producing different outcomes. The paper argues that the environmental structure that is, either consciously or by default, adopted by a company would seem to have some impact on how environmental issues are perceived and dealt with by that company. Therefore, such a decision has the capacity to shape environmental strategy in its implementation and possibly even its conception. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Promotion Tournaments and Individual Performance Pay

We analyze the optimal combination of promotion tournaments and linear individual performance pay in an employment relationship. An agent's effort is nonobservable and he has private information about his suitability for promotion. Thus, the two incentive schemes need to be combined to serve both incentive and selection purposes. If harder working agents respond less to intensified effort incentives, we find that the principal puts less emphasis on individual performance pay when selection becomes more important. Thus, we provide a possible explanation as to why, in practice, individual performance pay is less prevalent than promotion‐based incentives.     

Combining verbal analysis protocol and wireless audiovisual observation to examine consumers' supermarket shopping behaviour

The study investigates the benefits of using a verbal analysis protocol combined with wireless audiovisual observation technology to collect information about consumer behaviour in real‐life environments. A sample of consumers (n = 36) were given a task to select food products in 11 different categories in a supermarket. Combining methods enabled simultaneous collection of multiple forms of qualitative and quantitative data by recording data simultaneously from different perspectives: the consumer's visual range; the wider shopping environment, to provide context; the consumer's verbalizations. Qualitative data on extrinsic and intrinsic factors that affect decision making and quantitative data on product selection time were taken as an example of rich and real‐time data obtained using the combined methods. Audiovisual material was analysed by Usability Test Software 2.0, verbal analysis data were sorted by a database programme and quantitative data were processed using SPSS 17.0. The study design provided sensitive verification of the nature of consumer interaction with the shopping environment: e.g. during the product selection time (average 23 ± 10 s/product), the interaction with the environment varied between individuals and among products selected. The approach represents a useful technique to enable the value of consumer input to direct innovation in consumer‐oriented product development. It also offers new perspectives to consumers and authorities and related organizations to understand shopping behaviour and the role of critical factors behind the food choices at the supermarket.     

The Transformation of a Neutral Lake Landscape into a Meaningful Experience – Interpreting Tourist Photos

The purpose of this article is to present the mental images of the Finnish lakeland held by potential Italian and German tourists. Image analysis was used in order to find the attributes tourists connect to pictures of lake landscape and to their own mental images of the places shown. The attributes found were classified under categories through which the touristic potential of the lake could be approached. The mental images evoked by the pictures emerging in the present study are individual and cultural at the same time. Although the individual nature of the mental images became prominent in the analysis, there were identifiable similarities in them. From the marketing point of view, each picture proved to have a special function in a given country. The respondents approached the pictures both as outside observers and as participating actors. The transformation of a neutral lake landscape into a meaningful experience depended on the mental images evoked by both the aesthetic content of the picture and its internal elements. The neutral lake landscape was turned into a meaningful place through the experiences and sensations the respondents attached to the pictures.     

Unsettling Neoliberal Rationalities: Engaged Ethnography and the Meanings of Responsibility in the Dominican Republic and Mexico

Neoliberal urban environmental governance is premised in part on the development of collaborative arrangements between state and non‐state actors through which residents in informal settlements are encouraged to participate in their own governance. The neoliberal rationality of participation is implemented through governmental techniques such as responsibilization, whereby residents are rendered responsible for provision of basic environmental services previously seen as the responsibility of government authorities. However, neoliberal urban governance is incomplete, fragmented and fractured, affording room for maneuvering and innovative social agency, whereby residents mimic, reinterpret, negotiate and contest neoliberal subject formations. In this article, we discuss how engaged scholarship can facilitate such alternative productions of neoliberal subjectivities through the development of ‘knowledge encounters'. We draw on cases of solid waste management and environmental risk governance in the informal settlements of Los Platanitos, Santo Domingo Norte, Dominican Republic, and Gaviotas Sur, Villahermosa, Mexico, to suggest that knowledge encounters facilitated through engaged ethnography furnish stages for alternative conceptions of responsibility, whereby residents negotiate neoliberal techniques of governance through diverse forms of acquiescence, reconfiguration and contestation.