| dc.description.abstract | Corporate car sharing, defined as the sharing of cars between multiple users, where an employer and/or employee is/are involved as a user and/or provider, has considerable environmental and practical benefits by increasing the utilised capacity of vehicles. Because scientific knowledge about corporate car sharing is still very scarce, this thesis studies how the adoption of corporate car sharing can be stimulated. To do so, research on innovation adoption/diffusion studies with institutional work is combined. These scientific disciplines have recently been bridged by other scholars, but rarely to analyse the adoption of non-technical innovations in organisations. The study has practical implications for organisations that market and/or adopt corporate car sharing. To find an answer to the research question, fourteen Dutch organisations that adopted corporate car sharing or planned to do so were studied. Semi-structured interviews with employees responsible for mobility in these organisations formed the main source of data.
Adoption, distinguished in an organisational and individual level, is influenced by the characteristics of the corporate car sharing arrangement as perceived by the adopting actor. This perception is influenced by institutions, which can in turn be influenced by institutional work. Several types of corporate car sharing are distinguished, respectively in order of current institutional embeddedness: sharing within organisations (B2E & E2E), between organisations (B2B & CSO), and between organisations and private persons (B2P, P2B & CSO). These different types exist in different institutional fields and therefore require different institutional work to shape institutions in favour of their adoption.
Mobility professionals (such as those interviewed during this study) stimulate individual level adoption by doing institutional work within their (adopting) organisations, whereas providers of corporate car sharing products and services mainly do institutional work to stimulate organisational level adoption. To effectively stimulate individual level adoption, employers should first establish an arrangement and enforce rules and procedures that are compatible with the organisation’s internal characteristics and external conditions, and educate their employees about this. Interorganisational normative networks are a powerful stimulus for organisational level adoption: by enabling the sharing of experiences, challenges and best practices, it generates and enhances management support for corporate car sharing. | |
