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Chain of custody certification adoption, innovation, and change management in the British Columbia value-added wood products sector

University of British Columbia

This study investigated the chain of custody certification adoption, the state of innovation, and change management in the BC value-added wood products sector. To achieve this goal, a survey was conducted in the fall of 2013 to determine attitudes, motivations, and barriers of a selection of value-added wood products manufacturers with regard to their current and potential participation in CoC certification. In addition, the innovativeness of the firms, as well as the change management attributes using the ADKAR (awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement) model, were assessed. The study revealed that 41% of the respondents were certified, with remanufacturers having the highest adoption level. Another 13% of the companies were interested in becoming certified in the next 5 years and the remaining 46% were not certified and were not interested in certification citing a range of barriers including lack of customer demand, high costs, and a lack of price premiums. Certified and interested companies seemed to be ambivalent about the motivations regarding certification. For certified companies, improved corporate image and participation in LEED building projects were the two biggest motivations for adopting certification. However, for interested companies, the ability to command price premiums was the top motivation. To assess value-added wood products industry practices with respect to innovativeness, an indirect self-evaluation scale was used to assess the propensity to create and (or) adopt new products, processes and business systems. Respondents rated themselves more innovative with respect to business systems innovation as compared to product and process innovations. The two-cluster solution in cluster analysis found that companies in the cluster with the greater proportion of certified companies had more positive views about innovativeness although no statistically significant relationship was found. The ADKAR model for change management revealed that the ability to implement the change was a significant barrier for value-added wood products manufacturers in adoption of CoC certification. Suggestions made for policymaking and change management include strategies for the creation of awareness, desire and knowledge for CoC certification. Others include providing resources to enhance the ability of companies to adopt certification, and reinforcing the change through recognitions and rewards systems.

Text

2015-04-15

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/52766

Forestry

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/