Toward the Sustainable Development of Operations: Improving Energy Efficiency as a Means to Sustainability as Practice

Doctoral thesis, 2022

Addressing the challenges of sustainable development demands companies to understand the “how” to actualize sustainability-related objectives and cultivating conditions that encourage practicing sustainability. It also demands companies to structure their operations around less costly economic processes while maintaining the efficient use of resources and standards for workers’ well-being at the operational level. Given companies’ reliance on and increasing demand for energy-dependent operational processes to produce and transport products and services, sharp upward pressure on energy bills for industries directly exposed to rising prices, and shortages and supply chain disruptions, requires companies to make unprecedented changes. Therefore, as the need to use alternative energy sources has increased, the importance of accelerating improvements in energy efficiency in operations as an energy source itself has been increasingly acknowledged.

In response, this thesis seeks to expand current understandings of improving energy efficiency in operations in order to facilitate sustainability as practice, namely by embedding the concept of sustainable development into the theoretical framework of operations management. First, improving energy efficiency is analyzed as a firm-based practice that results in the actualization of corporate-level objectives for energy efficiency in operations by utilizing resources and influencing individual and/or collective action. Second, operations strategy is the analytical construct used to analyze the strategic–operational alignment of the resources needed to allow engaging in and replicating such an improvement-oriented process constructed and enacted by multiple individuals within and across organizational levels. Third and last, the thesis focuses on development via changes in individual and collective actions and understandings toward promoting sustainability as practice by building up people’s skills and competencies.

Drawing from findings in the five appended papers, the thesis first characterizes the improvement of energy efficiency in operations as a practice.  Second, the thesis analyzes strategic–operational alignment in organizations by investigating the improvement of energy efficiency in operations as a practice in relation to organizations’ strategic intentions for sustainability as well as existing operations strategy. The results showcase examples of the bidirectional perspective on synergy between operations management and energy management. Last, whereas energy efficiency indeed requires focusing on the improvement process, the thesis argues that it also sustains such improvement and creates a constellation of practices that result in changes in people’s behavior. Achieving such continuity creates a context for practicing sustainability and gaining leverage to accomplish the sustainable development of operations.