Abstract
Waste generation is a major contributor to the current environmental crisis. Festivals have the potential to generate large volumes of waste and leave a harmful legacy. Two major organizational stakeholder groups affecting festival waste reduction are festival organizers and vendors. Research shows that organizational activity is a notable source of environmental impact, including waste generation.
Small organizations are distinguished from large organizations in relation to environmental action-taking. Actions that are perceived by organizations as having more influence on obtaining and maintaining legitimacy are prioritized over others. Legitimacy is based on various social, cognitive, and regulative demands present in an organizational immediate context. Environmental concerns that obtain the status of an institution are more likely to be associated with organizational legitimacy, and therefore result in organizational action-taking.
This thesis identifies institutional demands that are present and shape the institutionalization of waste reduction among small organizational stakeholders at a community festival. In doing so, the research aimed to critically analyse the interplay of the institutional factors (cognitive, normative, and regulative) and organizational action to uncover how the present institutional demands enable or constrain waste reduction. Institutional theory was used as a theoretical lens.
This thesis is based on an interpretive paradigm. Port Chalmers Seafood Festival in New Zealand was selected as a study site. Semi-structured interviews and participant observation were used to gather data to meet the aim of the research. Thirteen festival vendors and organizers were sampled. Using thematic analysis, the thesis found eight factors shaping institutional demands and organizational action-taking: multifaceted waste knowledge, complexity of waste reduction, limited non-coercive governance, absence of a collective waste minimisation ethos, focus on plastics and compostables, social expectation to stage a harmonious festival, social expectation to do the right thing, and minimal regulative consequences. The findings suggest that waste reduction is an emerging institution in this context. Pathways toward progress to a mature institution are discussed.
The application of institutional theory to organizational stakeholders at festivals demonstrates that a range of factors are at play in shaping organizational action. The findings suggest that the presence of cognitive and normative factors are stronger than regulative factors. In addition, the findings address the literature gap on knowledge and action.
In addition, there are a few practical contributions. These include enhancing socio-cultural interventions and policies toward stronger and more comprehensive cognitive and normative institutional demands as well as the presence of positive regulative demands. Specific recommendations are discussed based on the findings. These include distinguishing between various types of knowledge in the context of specific festival stakeholders, associating existing normative demands to specific and clear action steps for every stakeholder, and expanding the existing normative focus on plastic recycling to include a wider context of waste reduction. To do this, it is recommended to integrate the waste hierarchy as a tool to demonstrate the desirability of different waste reduction methods and encourage moving up the hierarchy. For example, while improving recycling is better than landfilling, it is inferior to reuse as a method.