Impact of Cognitive Factors on Managers’ Energy Saving Intentions: A Behavioural Reasoning Theory Perspective

Abstract

The growing awareness and intensity of environmental changes has captivated the attention of multiple stakeholders and has pressurized the manufacturing firms to act towards environmental responsiveness. Hence, sustainable manufacturing initiatives are gaining increasing attention with environment-friendly companies as these firms are discovering higher potential to not only lower costs but also boost overall performance through improved products. Further, the literature highlights the importance of the role of a manager and manager's cognition in shaping their environmental behaviour and hence the environmental behaviour of a firm. Hence, scholars have called for research to gain in-depth insights into managerial cognitive factors principally the influence of managers' personal values and context-specific reasoning in shaping their behaviour towards environmental issues in the context of a firm. Hence, to gain a deeper understanding of the subject and to bridge the research gaps this research conducts a three-step study. Firstly, by employing bibliometrics and content analyses it develops the intellectual structure of sustainable manufacturing. Secondly, by conducting a systematic literature review it examines the associations between managerial cognitive factors and the environmental behaviour of managers in the context of a firm. And finally, by employing the Behavioural reasoning theory as a theoretical background, it empirically investigates the relationships between manager's values, reasoning, attitudes, and intentions towards sustainable manufacturing initiatives like energy saving at the firm level. In this stage of the research, this study also examines the moderating role of industry experience of managers on the various relationships and the mediation role of reasoning and attitudes. The study did not focus on any specific industry type since the intent was to generate responses from a diverse group of industries. The data was collected from the managers working in the firms operating in the domain of Engineering, Automobile, Petrochemicals, Power generation, and Pulp and paper.The bibliometrics and content analysis of the SM literature helped to identify the paradigms into which SM literature has evolved. While the systematic literature review (SLR) helped us to understand the nature of relationships between managerial cognition in terms of manager's values, attitudes, and issue interpretation and the environmental behaviour of managers at the firm level. Finally, the results of the empirical study suggest that self-enhancement values have a positive association with reasoning for and against energy saving, while self-transcendent values are negatively related to the reasoning for and against energy saving. The reasoning for were observed to fully and positively mediate the self-enhancement values - attitude relationship. However, reasons for were observed to fully and negatively mediate the self-transcendent value - attitude relationship. Further, the attitude of managers was observed to partially mediate the reasoning for- intention relationship. The study also observed a significant moderation effect of industry experience of managers on the self-transcendence value-reasoning for relationship. The study presents various implications for multiple stakeholders. Firstly, the study extends the scholarly knowledge domain by providing an understanding of the importance of manager's reasoning in shaping their attitude and intentions towards energy saving. Secondly, this study highlights the significance of managers' personal values in shaping their reasoning and hence influencing their attitude towards energy saving. Thirdly, the study extends the geographical scope of research by exploring the energy-saving attitude and intentions of managers working in manufacturing firms based in India. Finally, the study extends the theoretical foundations in the domain of study as to the best of our understanding this is the maiden endeavour to apply BRT in understanding the energy-saving behaviour of managers at a firm level. The study also presents future research directions.