2020 news green chemistry 883x432 1

Green chemistry

26 February 2020

The article at a glance

The impact of research by Professor Jennifer Howard-Grenville of Cambridge Judge Business School on the green chemistry movement is featured on the …

The impact of research by Professor Jennifer Howard-Grenville of Cambridge Judge Business School on the green chemistry movement is featured on the website of the Network for Business Sustainability.

Scientist holding and examining samples with plants.

An article on the website of the Network for Business Sustainability discusses the impact of research by Professor Jennifer Howard-Grenville of Cambridge Judge Business School on the “green chemistry” movement that aims to reduce health, safety and environmental impacts.

The research was “so relevant to our work”, says Jennifer MacKellar, who manages educational programmes at the Green Chemistry Institute of the American Chemical Society. “The insight that came from this paper is something my colleagues and I had observed serving our community. But it was never articulated in a way that was meaningful. We have a lot of ‘anec-data’ out there, stories people had shared with us, but we never had data to back it up.”

Professor Jennifer Howard-Grenville.
Professor Jennifer Howard-Grenville

The paper co-authored by Jennifer Howard-Grenville, Diageo Professor of Organisation Studies at Cambridge Judge, is entitled “‘If chemists don’t do it, who is going to?’ Peer-driven occupational change and the emergence of green chemistry”. Published in 2017 in Administrative Science Quarterly, the research looked at the emergency of green chemistry over several decades and highlighted the potential tensions between people with different motivations.

The article on the Network for Business Sustainability website notes that “researchers want their findings to have an effect”, and details how the Green Chemistry Institute used Professor Howard-Grenville’s research findings to craft messages for people with different views and motivations.