This research aims to address business challenges underpinning the provision of grocery products in a convenience store setting. The CSR concepts explored contribute to an understanding of how retail managers may commence solving the wicked problem (Rittel and Webber, 1973) of their reliance on single use plastic packaging and its symbiotic relationship with convenience grocery. Leadership is required to influence members of organisations to build the socially constructed reality needed to break this vicious cycle. Being seen to have strong social and environmental corporate responsibility credentials is a pressing need of the organisation affecting brand legitimacy. They provide powerful commercial attributes that the business will need if it is to engender the resilience required to survive in a future defined by digitally connected stakeholders.
In the next posts I will discuss my experiences of leading a project in a high street convenience retailer to reduce its single use plastic packaging footprint. Quantitative research methods will be employed to investigate customer perceptions of plastic packaging, followed by an overview of the efforts of the firm to reduce its plastic footprint, and my work to develop a sustainability strategy for packaging. The research attempts to answer the questions posed above: how will a strategy of plastic reduction be perceived by customers, is it possible to break the mutual interdependence of convenience grocery and single-use plastics, and how can this project work contribute towards the social construction of a reality that portrays me as a Senior Leader?
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