Improving energy efficiency in operations: a practice-based study

Abstract

This article describes a practice-based framework for analysing how development efforts to improve energy efficiency in operations interact with corporate-level strategies for sustainability, as well as operations strategies, and whether they in fact improve energy efficiency in operations at the various organisational levels of the company. To develop the framework, a qualitative study following a multiple interview approach was conducted. Based on an analysis of such efforts at three companies, this article suggests that improving energy efficiency in operations is a dynamic process and involves interactions between the competing logics of actors. The findings reveal that development efforts to improve energy efficiency in operations, though varying in origin, can usually be attributed to the motivations of the actors initiating them. Therefore, this article proposes that any improvement in energy efficiency in operations is determined by the cumulative effect of interactions between competing logics of actors who are officially accountable for or personally interested in improving energy efficiency in their companies. By extension, by engaging different actors in contributing to continually achieving improvement, the process of improving energy efficiency in operations can be regarded as a context for sustainability-as-practice.