Institutions and agency in the sustainability of day-to-day consumption practices: an institutional ethnographic study
Consumption is essentially an institutional action. While both the formal institutional environment and cultural embeddedness shape consumption, individuals may reciprocally amend the institutional setting through consumption choices that challenge the prevalent institutional constraints. This paper...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer Science + Business Media B. V
2021
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| In: |
Journal of business ethics
Year: 2021, Volume: 168, Issue: 2, Pages: 241-260 |
| Further subjects: | B
Practices
B Agency B Sustainable consumption B Cultural Context B Institutional ethnography B Unintended sustainability behaviour B Aufsatz in Zeitschrift B Informal institutions B Institutions B Culture |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Consumption is essentially an institutional action. While both the formal institutional environment and cultural embeddedness shape consumption, individuals may reciprocally amend the institutional setting through consumption choices that challenge the prevalent institutional constraints. This paper reconciles theoretical and conceptual premises from institutional and practice theory literature to study the sustainability of consumption. Using institutional ethnography as a methodological approach, the study explores the pendulum between embeddedness and agency in shaping the sustainability of day-to-day consumption of necessary goods; and further, how the external institutional environment may interact with human behaviour to contribute towards sustainability. The study finds a hierarchy of informal institutions, each level of which interacts differently with external changes. For example, sustainability is found to be more widespread the more it is embedded in practices, and this is a result of overall institutional development beyond regulation and choice editing. The results also highlight the importance of understanding unintentional sustainability in consumption practices. |
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| ISSN: | 1573-0697 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10551-019-04419-x |