Managing sustainability through decision processes: the influence of values and frames

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceeding with ISSN or ISBNConference contribution with ISSN or ISBNpeer-review

Abstract

Delivering projects to minimum requirements in the UK construction industry can come at the expense of longer-term sustainability goals and unseen impacts. Without measurement, such trade-offs often remain unaccounted for. Therefore, managing sustainability becomes a significant challenge, with subsequent downgrading to a ‘box-ticking' exercise-itself a process-orientated procedure with little attention to broader project impacts or end conditions. A more direct and holistic approach to understanding and later influencing sustainability in design decision making is to research the values and problem framing which occurs in early practitioner-client interactions. By reinterpreting underlying processes in human decision-making for architectural sustainability, key themes and sub-processes can be transparently examined, thus facilitating their engagement and enabling. Early findings suggest that reciprocal influences of human values and decision-problem framing play a fundamental role in shaping sustainability decision processes. Explicitly and implicitly, practitioners appear to gather and evaluate interpersonal and values orientated information, on which they base assessments of a client, their position on sustainability, and its flexibility. Such intuitive analyses provide practitioners with beneficial psychosocial heuristics to approach and advance sustainability issues. These ‘indicators' provided guidance on using situation-appropriate communication frames to achieve particular results. Thus, values engagements and influences, on and in conjunction with problem-frames, structure and guide sustainable design decision processes. Values and communication frames appear reciprocally influenced and self-reinforced amounting to structural psychosocial drivers, or barriers, of sustainability.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of 31st Annual ARCOM Conference
Place of PublicationLincoln, UK
Pages437-446
Number of pages10
Publication statusPublished - 9 Sept 2015
EventProceedings of 31st Annual ARCOM Conference - 7-9 September 2015, Lincoln, UK
Duration: 9 Sept 2015 → …

Conference

ConferenceProceedings of 31st Annual ARCOM Conference
Period9/09/15 → …

Bibliographical note

Original paper first published by ARCOM as part of Conference Proceedings

Keywords

  • decision-making
  • human values
  • stakeholder engagement
  • sustainability management

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