Online Seminar – The Spread of Recycling in Universities

Professor Michael Lounsbury, University of Alberta School of Business

I will present early stage work that revisits my early research on the spread of recycling in universities (Lounsbury, 2001) to understand how the instantiation of activist recycling co-ordinators in the 1990s shaped the subsequent development of sustainability programmes. Drawing on the literature at the interface of social movements and organisations, we show how insider activists, seeded by the recycling movement, expand organisational opportunity structures in ways that enhance receptivity to a subsequent movement. We document that the expansion of opportunity structures relied on building a field-wide community of practice that provided social and technical support for localised efforts to deepen, stretch and expand recycling practices in ways that enhanced receptivity to sustainability across their university communities. These efforts were often more mundane and under the radar, and rarely involved efforts to agitate. Implications for the study of insider and outsider activists, and the study of how social movements can affect organisational change are discussed.

Speaker bio

Professor Michael Lounsbury is the Canada Research Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Alberta School of Business. His research focuses on the relationship between organisational and institutional change, entrepreneurial dynamics, and the emergence of new industries and practices. In addition to serving on a number of editorial boards, Professor Lounsbury is the series editor of Research in the Sociology of Organizations. He has previously served as Chair of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management. His PhD is in Sociology and Organization Behavior from Northwestern University.

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For more information, please contact Luke Slater.