Decoupling the implementation processes of Corporate Environmental Management in the Danish Hospitality Industry. An Explorative Analysis

Organizations are progressively being pressured by stakeholders to acknowledge and achieve their interests. Conflicts can arise where multiple stakeholders have differing interests, especially if certain stakeholder groups are prioritized above others when decisions are made about the allocation of scarce resources. Consequentially, it is argued that not all stakeholders can be satisfied simultaneously. Responding to stakeholder concerns for environmental preservation is a relatively recent requirement for managers, who face a great deal of ambiguity in understanding the issues in general, the implications for their organizations, and the ways to respond to these issues. This study is concerned with the general area of organizational sensemaking, stakeholder theory and environmental management. More attention should be given to effective actions and processes that facilitate this kind of interactions as the sensemaking and sensegiving literature do but in regarding of stakeholders. The overall aim of the study is to investigate and evaluate the impact of stakeholders’ engagement in making sense of environmental issues through as a result of implementation of Corporate Environmental Management practices. The empirical analysis is based on a qualitative case study approach. To address the nature of the research problem a qualitative approach using in-depth-semi-structured interviews as the data collection method was deemed to be the most appropriate methodology for gaining an understanding how the processes of sense making influence stakeholders relations. Therefore the idea is to study, in the Danish Hospitality Industry how companies (hotels) implement their Corporate Environmental Management practices engaging with stakeholders in different sensemaking activities. Case study research is preferable in this context, since it allows the investigation to retain the holistic and important uniqueness of daily events (Yin, 1994). That is why the choice of the industry and of the cases is so important. The aim of the study is to understand the internal and external dynamics that facilitate the implementation of Corporate Environmental Management Practices so both practitioners and academics can use my results to orientate future directions of studies and works on this topic.