Energizing organizational research: Advancing the energy field with group concepts and theories

Abstract

While energy research has examined behaviors and decision-making in residential settings, it has largely failed to study these behaviors within the commercial sector. It has also neglected investigating these dimensions from a group level of analysis. Yet groups influence behaviors like energy consumption in addition to individuals, and forms of such influence – like collective outcome efficacy or team cohesion – requires research at the group level. This review offers an overview of the area and tools to start this work, first by examining how three levers of behavior change in energy studies – cognitions, social structures and technologies – have mainly been studied from an individual level of analysis. Second, it reviews energy research in commercial environments and finds that only a small number of studies since 1980 have been undertaken with a group level focus. Given this gap, a typology of key group constructs and levels of analysis was developed and measures were reviewed that fit into this typology. This led to the identification of types of questions that can be asked in each of the technological, structural and cognitive energy areas with a group focus.