Champagnie, Leigh St Aubyn (2020) The role of institutional entrepreneurs in shaping the renewable energy subfield in the UK during the period 1986-2016. (PhD thesis), Kingston University, .
Abstract
Historically, energy systems have contributed significantly to global carbon emissions. To address this concern, countries such as the United Kingdom (UK) have embraced technologies such as renewable energy to try and reduce their carbon footprints. In the case of the UK, this led to the renewable energy subfield becoming partially institutionalised under the enabling role of actors, which suggests that this type of institutional change warrants being examined through the lens of institutional entrepreneurship theory. This doctoral thesis rises to the challenge by conducting institutional entrepreneurship research to investigate the institutionalisation of the renewable energy subfield in the UK during the period 1986-2016. Such an investigation is of social significance because the institutionalisation of the renewable energy subfield is likely to contribute to deinstitutionalising polluting technologies such as fossil fuels, thus contributing to the UK’s transition to a low carbon economy. The thesis is an exploratory, qualitative case study that combines thirty-nine semi-structured interviews of respondents connected to the field of energy provision in the UK with an analysis of archival documents. It finds that multiple actors practised as institutional entrepreneurs during the period, these being the state and its various agencies; renewable energy practitioners/activists; incumbent energy practitioners; the European Union and the United Nations. These institutional entrepreneurs played significant roles in shaping the renewable energy subfield by either creating new institutions and/or reforming existing ones, however, this had little impact on reshaping the field of energy provision in which it is embedded. This thesis makes three major contributions to knowledge: (1) it proposes the construct of a subfield; (2) it shows that institutionalised structural myths may serve as enabling conditions; and (3) it offers partial institutionalisation as a novel account of the state of the renewable energy subfield in the UK. The idea of an organisational subfield contributes to knowledge by showing that this sub-community has its own unique features. For example, a subfield is embedded within an overarching organisational field, consequently, it is constrained by factors such as subordinacy and competing institutional logics. The thesis also shows that institutionalised structural myths, such as energy policy (un)certainty, (de)motivated some actors from practising as institutional entrepreneurs during the study period. The partial institutionalisation of the renewable energy subfield in the UK has caused it to be relatively vulnerable to any major environmental shocks it may face and less widely accepted than the fossil fuels subfield. Being partially institutionalised also has three major implications: (1) business-as-usual for energy provision in the UK; (2) renewable energy deployment being patchy, and (3) most renewable energy practitioners remaining constrained as embedded agents. The conclusions of this thesis inform and deepen understanding of the role of actors’ agency in facilitating or hindering the institutionalisation of renewable energy in the UK.
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