Alex Hope | Northumbria University (original) (raw)

Papers by Alex Hope

Interest in the field of Purchasing Social Responsibility (PSR) can be traced back as far as the ... more Interest in the field of Purchasing Social Responsibility (PSR) can be traced back as far as the late 1960’s however in recent years researchers have returned to the concept as a subdivision of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Today, PSR finds itself at a critical juncture regarding its development with many remaining questions as to the scope, definition and application in practice. We undertake a meta-analysis of studies focusing on PSR over the past 16 years as means to better understand its definition and scope, application in practice, terminology and major research clusters. The results show that despite increased interest in the topic, research on PSR fragmented an immature. We suggest that PSR can play an important role in assisting firms to develop sustainable and responsible business practices and as such there is a need to formalise the PSR research agenda and provide lessons for practitioners.

It has long been established that routines can be sources of stability and change within organiza... more It has long been established that routines can be sources of stability and change within organizations. It has been suggested however that an understanding of routines alone is not enough for explaining how new actions emerge in organizations. In arguing that traditional forms of organizational structure are not flexible enough to adapt to new actions (Ansoff, 1980), some theorists have proposed projects as management methods for adapting to fast changes occurring in the business environment. At the centre of this argument is the notion that organisational routine, whilst facilitating cognitive efficiency, inhibits the strategic change which projects are intended to achieve (Feldman & Pentland, 2003). This does not dismiss the fact that strategic changes originate from both routine and non-routine actions (Obstfeld, 2012), but proposes that the balance between flexibility and stability requires expounding the nexus between project and organizational routine. Interaction within proje...

It is now widely accepted that there is a need to reduce CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gasse... more It is now widely accepted that there is a need to reduce CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gasses in order to mitigate global climate change. Coupled with this need is the additional challenge of maintaining security and continuity of energy supply and dealing with the problem of resource depletion, in particular peak oil. In response to these needs, the UK government has signalled its intention to move towards a low-carbon economy. This transition will have implications for the productivity and competitiveness of both public and private sector organisations. As a result, there is a need for organisations to prepare for a low carbon future and exploit the opportunities that may arise. The challenge for many is that they often do not possess the internal skills and knowledge to enable them to transition to more sustainable working practices, or exploit new low carbon opportunities.

Science on the causes and impacts of climate change is becoming increasingly certain, however pub... more Science on the causes and impacts of climate change is becoming increasingly certain, however public concern and opinion continue to vary widely. Public opinion, perceptions and attitudes are a critically important factor in the development of policy that seeks to drive climate change mitigation and adaptation practices. With this in mind it is important to recognise the way in which people access information as well as assess their legitimacy and accuracy. Whilst governmental information and media coverage exerts an important influence on the public understanding of climate change, increasingly people are turning to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and other social media sources to learn about what's happening in the world. It is necessary then for those seeking to communicate climate change, to develop an understanding as to the particular role that social media plays in communicating climate change impacts and opportunities. This paper presents results from a qualitative investigati...

Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access th... more Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University’s research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.html

Innovation can be described as the application of new ideas, devices or processes which in busine... more Innovation can be described as the application of new ideas, devices or processes which in business is most often seen as a catalyst to growth. The sources of innovation are many, however recent attention has focussed on the role of social and environmental drivers. This in turn has led to the notion of ‘responsible innovation’ which demands the consideration of ethical and social aspects during innovation processes as a means to lead not only to technological innovations which are socially acceptable but also socially desirable. Whilst the development of responsible innovation is welcome, we suggest that the concept has predominantly been applied from a technocentric perspective at the level of product and service thus maintaining the current paradigm that business’s primary role is to create economic value through profit. We argue that truly responsible innovation takes place at the level of the business model itself as a means to reconceptualise the fundamental role of business i...

The world is changing rapidly and new demands face business leaders to deal with the planet and e... more The world is changing rapidly and new demands face business leaders to deal with the planet and environment more sustainably, to deal with the numerous societies their organisations operate in more equitably and with greater cultural understanding, and to be more open, transparent and responsible with respect to their stakeholders. Recent events such as the credit and banking crisis alongside general global corporate social responsibility and sustainability concerns, have led to questions as to whether current management education is adequate to equip and develop future leaders with the requisite skills to meet these new demands (Colby, Ehrlich, Sullivan, Dolle, & Shulman, 2011; Datar, Garvin, & Cullen, 2010; Weybrecht, 2010). For these reasons it is essential that universities and business schools seek to embrace principles of sustainability and responsible management into their teaching, research and enterprise activities. Newcastle Business school is ideally placed to make a sign...

The demand for sustainable buildings is increasing driven in part by legislation, rising energy c... more The demand for sustainable buildings is increasing driven in part by legislation, rising energy costs and growing environmental concerns amongst consumers. As a result clients and developers are increasingly seeking to incorporate environmental attributes into buildings and demonstrate these sustainability credentials by certifying a development using an environmental assessment methodology such as BREEAM or LEED. One of the major issues in delivering sustainable buildings is ensuring that measures incorporated into a building at design stage are translated into action during building construction. This disconnect between design and construction phases of a project often results in the need to undertake costly remedial measures to achieve a targeted sustainability rating, or the building failing the assessment. This paper suggests that by integrating BIM with Environmental Assessment Methodologies decisions made with regard to sustainability attributes at the design stage can be cle...

As the world’s largest developing country, China is facing challenges in providing high quality, ... more As the world’s largest developing country, China is facing challenges in providing high quality, sustainable public infrastructure to its rapidly urbanising population. In March 2016 the 12th National People’s Congress approved a new Five-Year Plan defining China’s development as innovative, coordinated, green, open, and shared. In the coming years, China will seek to improve the quality, efficiency and sustainability of its development with the government indicating that it is looking to Public Private Partnerships (PPP)s to deliver new schools, hospitals and housing. As such there is increased interest in the role the market should play through Public Finance Initiative (PFI) projects. In the UK the use of PFI has proved controversial due to the long term cost of servicing contracts and there have been questions as to whether PPP/PFI is an appropriate model to deliver ‘sustainable’ public infrastructure. Despite this evidence suggests that appropriately negotiated PFI contracts th...

Events such as the credit and banking crisis alongside general global corporate social responsibi... more Events such as the credit and banking crisis alongside general global corporate social responsibility and sustainability concerns have led to questions as to the legitimacy and purpose of business in society. Many are now calling for a new approach, one that eschews the profit orientated exploitative business practices of the past for a new model of ‘responsible management’. Indeed, many business organisations are already moving beyond social and environmental compliance and fundamentally rethinking the role their business should play in light of broader societal changes (Barkemeyer, Holt, Preuss, & Tsang, 2011). In addition to this business leaders themselves are increasingly aware of the need to embrace the principles of sustainable development (Elkington, 1997; Porter & Kramer, 2006). There is then a recognition that far from a niche area of business, sustainability and sustainable development are considered global megatrends in the 21st century which result in profound implicati...

What explains the success and prosperity of many Quakers in business and commerce throughout the ... more What explains the success and prosperity of many Quakers in business and commerce throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Quakers have a long tradition in the world of commerce and business, from their involvement in the chocolate industry, but also banking and finance, life assurance, biscuits, shoes, pharmacy, soap, chemicals, railways, canals, agricultural equipment, and industrial manufacturing which became no less than the seed of the industrial revolution. However, within a few decades of the emergence of the shareholder economy in the mid-1850’s, many Quaker businesses were confined to history. This public lecture essentially asks two questions: what went wrong? what lessons can we draw from the Quakers in designing businesses today? We explore how different models of business such as cooperatives and commonwealth businesses may help Friends, and the business community at large, practice a responsible and ethical approach in the world of commerce.

Since the emergence of the formal discipline of project management, academics and practitioners h... more Since the emergence of the formal discipline of project management, academics and practitioners have sought to define criteria against which project success can be measured. Perhaps the most well known criteria are encapsulated in the ‘Iron Triangle’ that places Cost Time and Quality at the center of project success. However it has been suggested that whilst this triple constraint is important, it can also narrow the focus away from other crucial project success factors. One area that is gaining prominence within the field of project management is the consideration of sustainability principles and there is an increasing understanding of the need to develop methods, tools and techniques to integrate sustainability criteria into the management of projects. This paper presents the results of an empirical study in which project managers were asked to re-draw the traditional Iron Triangle with the inclusion of sustainability. The results of the study indicate that whist sustainability is...

An organisation is constructed as a responsible and legitimate entity through its discursive acts... more An organisation is constructed as a responsible and legitimate entity through its discursive acts and by conforming to social practices that are dominant and considered legitimate. The visual representations used by organisations in their CSR reports are highly influential in the sense-making of the readers and in constructing a social reality for them. Accounting researchers have made use of popular theories in meaning making and rhetoric to make the case that photographs are often merely symbolic representations of an organisation’s responsible behaviour. This paper reviews some of the popular theories of visual rhetoric and juxtaposes them with current knowledge of stock images leading to the conclusion that due to certain inherent characteristics of stock images-abstractness, decontextualized and polysemous nature, ambivalence, dissociation with reality and propensity to be manipulated, the nature of use of stock images in CSR discourse is similar to their use in advertising or ...

Climate change is the greatest environmental threat facing the UK. In response the British Govern... more Climate change is the greatest environmental threat facing the UK. In response the British Government has set a number of challenging targets to limit climate change through reducing greenhouse gas emissions such as Carbon Dioxide. As the built environment accounts for almost half of the UK’s total carbon dioxide emissions, the design, construction and operation of buildings has a major role to play in reducing the level of greenhouse gas emissions. This Sustainability Evaluation Tool has been created to assess the sustainability of building designs procured through the Private Finance Initiative, and other procurement routes which utilise a ‘dialogue’ style procurement. This version of the Tool has been designed specifically for use on the procurement of sheltered accommodation and extra-care schemes, however, many of the issues examined cut across all building types. The Sustainability Evaluation Tool aims to highlight the strengths and weakness of new build or refurbishment schem...

This paper describes the need for organisations to develop adaptive capacity in the face of envir... more This paper describes the need for organisations to develop adaptive capacity in the face of environmental challenges. It argues that "knowledge transfer" can provide a useful mechanism for developing this environmental adaptive capacity and outlines the experiences of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between North Tyneside Council and Northumbria University. Initial findings from the partnership suggest that the knowledge and skills transferred to the local authority through knowledge transfer, are already building capacity within the organisation, and beginning to filter down to private sector companies involved with the authority and the communities who they represent.

CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance

Sustainable and Responsible Business has become a mainstream concept as organisations seek to ada... more Sustainable and Responsible Business has become a mainstream concept as organisations seek to adapt to a changing business environment and address social, environmental and economic challenges. However many academics and practitioners suggest that such efforts are prone to inevitable failure as they are peripheral, uneconomic, and incremental. It is common for businesses to innovate at the level of their products and services yet to be truly sustainable and responsible, activities should be linked with the core business of the firm and requires more radical innovation. There is then a need to that innovate at the level of a firm’s value creation process, at the level of the business model. Whilst there is much research which present case studies of companies who utilise sustainable business model designs, only recently has attention turned to the development and application of tools and techniques which can assist business leaders in developing models to apply to their own organisations. This chapter discusses sustainable business model design before reviewing a range of toolkits designed to integrate sustainability principles into business strategic planning and assessing their applicability to sustainable and responsible business model design. The aim is to identify and review some of the key tools available for firms to utilise when developing new sustainable business model pathways.

CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance

The need for the transformation of management education in order to meet the increasing demand fo... more The need for the transformation of management education in order to meet the increasing demand for responsible business is becoming increasingly clear. The challenge for business schools is how to develop effective management education that equips future leaders with capabilities for sustainable development and responsible management practice. The first step must be to ensure students have appropriate knowledge of the social, environmental and economic issues faced by business and society. Whilst many business schools have made significant progress in arming students with the necessary skills required to engage in ethical and responsible business, knowledge of social and environmental issues among business and management undergraduates remains low. This paper argues that introductory to management courses are an essential component in setting the foundations for developing future managers and leaders with the capabilities and knowledge necessary to contribute to sustainable development and responsible management practices. It draws on an ongoing research project that reviews business ethics and sustainability curricular of 200 top ranked business schools who provide undergraduate education to establish if, how, where and when responsible management and sustainable development topics are explicitly dealt with within programme curricula. The study finds that whilst many business schools have made significant progress on developing courses that expose students to responsible management issues, more than half do not explicitly identify sustainability in their introductory level curricula.

The Religious Society of Friends (known as ‘Quakers’) has a long tradition in responsible busines... more The Religious Society of Friends (known as ‘Quakers’) has a long tradition in responsible business, dating back to at least the 17th Century. Today, the legacy of Quakers in business can still be witnessed in industries as diverse as chocolate as banking. In fact, many of today’s global organisations can either be traced back to their Quaker roots (such as Barclays and Lloyds). The Quakers were also the first entrepreneurs to trade based on their trustworthiness and ‘modern inventions’ such as fixed prices and socially responsible investment have Quaker roots.
Quaker entrepreneurs were and are well-known for strong ethical values, derived from a theology committed to finding “that of God in everyone” and enacted through testimonies to equality, honesty, simplicity and peace. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Quakers saw trade and business as social reform, a possible route to eradicate poverty and social ills among the working, urban population. In fact, it is argued that Quakers’ concern with social reform was a key ingredient as the engine of the Industrial Revolution. Examples included the ironworks established by Quakers at Coalbrooke in Shropshire. Later Quaker concern with the over-use of alcohol led to the emergence of the chocolate entrepreneurs such as Cadbury’s and Rowntree.

If there is a distinct set of Quaker business ethics that characterised Quaker entrepreneurs it was often based on (1) honesty and truth in all business dealings, including financial matters and truth in advertising, (2) a commitment to improving the life conditions of its employees through mechanisms such as pay well-above the average and access to suitable housing and healthcare, which often manifested itself in the canonical ‘model villages’ of Bourneville in Birmingham and Earswick in York, (3) full payment of taxes due, (4) using a proportion of profits for philanthropic purposes, and (5) more recently, an environmental concern.
With growing contemporary interest in how firms manage the triple bottom line, and in the wake of the economic turbulence of the last decade, how alternative business models can contribute to innovation, the Quaker approach to responsible business has much to tell us.
This short presentation aims to show how responsible approaches to business are perhaps nothing new – and how Quakers concern for social reform can provide contemporary business with lessons about leadership, organisation design, human resource management, marketing and advertising, corporate governance and entrepreneurship for social purposes.

Distilling a Quaker approach to responsible business is an exciting and valuable new research area that will help inform the field of responsible business and ethics.

Events such as the credit and banking crisis alongside general global corporate social responsibi... more Events such as the credit and banking crisis alongside general global corporate social responsibility and sustainability concerns, have led to renewed debate as to the legitimacy and purpose of business in society. Some are calling for a new approach, one that eschews the profit orientated exploitative business practices of the past for a new model of ‘responsible management’. Indeed, many business organisations are already moving beyond social and environmental compliance and fundamentally rethinking the role their business should play in light of broader societal changes. In response to this some business schools are seeking to realign their curriculum, research and engagement activities around the core concept of responsible management. There is a need however to better understand the drivers and enablers of responsible management education and related practices within the business school and wider university environment. This paper seeks to construct a theoretical framework for interpreting the implementation of responsible management in business schools. Three relevant theories are suggested; institutional theory, stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory. The intention is to develop a theoretical framework though which to establish the key motivators for business schools to develop responsible management activities.

Project Failure is a major topic of discussion amongst management practitioners, policymakers and... more Project Failure is a major topic of discussion amongst management practitioners, policymakers and academics. The significance of this topic stems from the severe economic loss associated with many failed projects. In addition to this, high profile public sector project failures attract a great deal of press interest and public debate which can negatively effect an organisations reputation. Previous investigations of project failure project have focused on reflective studies of specific industries or projects and related sub-discipline themes. There is then a need to examine project failure from a wider cross discipline perspective in an effort to identify causes and generate solutions. This paper reports on a research project which set out to understand the mechanisms through which projects fail from a socio-cognitive perspective. In doing so it aims to assist practitioners and academics in better understanding the “early warning signs” of project failure as and develop appropriate responses.