An assessment of sustainable process technology adoption in the Dutch chemical industry

An assessment of sustainable process technology adoption in the Dutch chemical industry

Tobé, Otto (TU Delft Technology, Policy and Management)

Ortt, J.R. (mentor)
Kamp, L.M. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Management of Technology (MoT)

2021-08-31

The chemical industry needs to quickly adapt to deal with climate change's environmental and economic challenges. The chemical industry is a sizable contributor to climate change. On the other hand, their contribution to financial stability and growth is considerable. Adopting sustainable process technologies is the most promising solution for the industry as the current processes are the leading cause of emissions. This thesis aims to formulate a model that describes the adoption decision of a production firm in the chemical industry. It focuses on the adoption criteria at play, the relative importance of these criteria and the influence that actors of the production companies' environment (further referred to as context) have on adoption. Research conducted for this thesis is done through the lens of the sectoral view, focussing on organisational level criteria and interactions. The Netherlands has a sizable presence of industrial activity. As such, this context is used for this study. The organisational level focus of this thesis, together with the specific context of the chemical industry, inspired us to choose the Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE) framework to describe the adoption of sustainable process technologies (SPT) in the chemical industry. During the creation of this thesis, it seemed no prior work applied TOE to the chemical industry. Therefore, the TOE framework is combined with industry-specific adoption criteria. The study provided three primary insights. The first insight is a new set of adoption criteria specific for the chemical industry. This insight is valuable as general adoption model literature criteria are purposely vague. Vague formulation of the adoption criteria is helpful to help potential customers evaluate radical innovations that they do not fully comprehend. However, managers in the chemical industry seem to know the exact criteria for assessing sustainable process innovations in the chemical industry. The second insight from the interviews concerns the tendency of adoption criteria to change in importance in particular situations. This variation is an essential addition to the existing literature in which adoption criteria are generally applicable and equally important across various adoption situations. The interviews identified four dimensions that demarcate adoption situations: three continuous technological dimensions and one discrete contextual dimension. The third insight of this thesis is the importance of the organizations surrounding the focal production firm. The adoption system refers to the businesses and organisations that influence production companies in their adoption decisions. The adoption system of the chemical industry consists of regulators, clients, competitors, engineering firms, development firms and feedstock suppliers. The collaboration with multiple stakeholders is of utmost importance when considering SPT adoption. In conclusion, the TOE framework with industry-specific adoption criteria seems to fit adoption in the chemical industry. However, due to the varying adoption situations in the chemical industry, it is crucial to consider the adoption dimensions. Future research could focus on finding the weight of these criteria. Whist doing this, it is essential to consider the adoption dimensions. It could be interesting to find out what influence the different dimensions have on adoption.

Master thesis
Chemical industry
adoption

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Student theses

master thesis

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