Developing the contribution of discursive psychology to sustainable business and circular economy research.

在我的博士研究中，我探索了产品设计师如何应对产品的可持续性。在生产过剩和过度消费的危机中，许多设计教育者、设计学者和可持续发展活动组织正在就如何设计更可持续的产品提供指导。例如，可以选择可生物降解或可重复使用的材料，或者可以将产品设计得更容易拆卸和修复。然而，在公司工作或为公司工作的专业设计师可能无法做出这些决定。即使设计师自己想把重点放在可持续性上，关于产品的最终决定往往是由经理或客户做出的。为了了解专业设计师如何对他们的工作成果负责，我进行了采访，并收集了会议小组讨论的录音，设计师们在讨论他们的决定和责任。我使用了一种名为论述心理学的方法来仔细分析设计师的谈话方式，包括注意犹豫和使用的语言类型。我发现了反复出现的模式，设计师在他们说话的方式中假设或偏离了责任。在这项博士研究的基础上，在博士后研究期间，我将专注于三个领域。首先，我将寻求在学术期刊上再发表我的四个分析章节中的三个。这将使不同学科的研究人员接触到论述心理学方法的有用性。其中一个分析章节，关于谈论可持续设计的决策，已经发表在《设计研究》杂志上。其他三章分别是讨论个人价值观在设计中的作用；谈论责任的不同方式；以及谈论影响决策而不是做出决策。第二，我将进一步探讨话语心理学作为研究商业可持续性的一种方法的有用性。分析人们在商业环境中如何相互交谈在商业研究中很常见，通常使用批评性话语分析或对话分析(Fairclough 2013；Wodak等人)。2011年)。然而，话语心理学在商业研究中并不常用。我的目标是制定一个议程，利用话语心理学来研究可持续商业和循环经济的各个方面，找出有助于理解的具体研究实例。第三，我将扩大我的重点，关注话语心理学研究在现实世界中的潜在影响。许多话语心理学研究的重点是更好地理解与种族主义或其他形式的偏见等重要问题有关的社会实践(Edwards，2004；Huma等人。2020年；特金和德鲁里2021年)。然而，将这类研究的结果转化为能够为社会带来积极影响的不同类型的资源和工具并不是一个关键的重点。使用会话分析的学者，一种与话语心理学密切相关的方法，已经开发出从他们的研究结果中获得实际影响的方法(赫本等人)。2014年；斯托科2020年)。我的目标是研究如何将分析对话转化为实际影响，并阐明话语心理学学者更多关注研究影响的机会。

In my PhD research I explored how product designers navigate being held to account for how sustainable products are. Amid a crisis of overproduction and overconsumption, many design educators, design academics, and sustainability campaigning organisations are providing guidance on how to design more sustainable products. For example, biodegradable or reusable materials can be chosen, or products can be designed to be easier to dismantle and repair. However, professional designers working in and for companies may not be in a position to make these decisions. Even if designers themselves want to focus on sustainability, the final decisions about products are often made by managers or clients. To see how professional designers manage accountability for the outcomes of their work, I carried out interviews and collected recordings of conference panel discussions in which designers were talking about their decisions and responsibilities. I used a method called discursive psychology to closely analyse the ways the designers talked, including paying attention to hesitations and types of language used. I identified recurring patterns in the ways the designers assumed or deflected accountability in the ways they talked. To build on this PhD research, during the postdoctoral fellowship I will focus on three areas. Firstly, I will seek to publish three more of my four analysis chapters in academic journals. This would enable researchers in different disciplines to be exposed to the usefulness of the discursive psychology method. One of the analysis chapters, on talking about decision-making in sustainable design, has been published in the journal Design Studies. The other three chapters are on talking about the role of personal values in design; different ways of talking about responsibility; and on talking about influencing decisions rather than making them. I will seek to frame these chapters in ways that make them clearly relevant to sustainable business and sustainable production journals.Secondly, I will further explore the usefulness of discursive psychology as an approach to conducting research on sustainability in business. Analysing how people talk to each other in business settings is common in business research, often using critical discourse analysis or conversation analysis (Fairclough 2013; Wodak et al. 2011). Yet discursive psychology is not commonly used in business studies. I aim to develop an agenda for using discursive psychology to study aspects of sustainable business and circular economy, identifying specific examples of studies that would be useful to undertake.Thirdly, I will expand my focus on the potential real-world impact of discursive psychology research. A lot of discursive psychology research focuses on better understanding social practices related to important issues such as racism or other forms of prejudice (Edwards 2004; Huma et al. 2020; Tekin and Drury 2021). However, translating the findings from such research into different sorts of resources and tools that can lead to positive impacts for society has not been a key focus. Scholars who use conversation analysis, a method closely aligned to discursive psychology, have developed methods for achieving practical impact from their research findings (Hepburn et at. 2014; Stokoe 2020). I aim to study the ways in which analysing conversations has been translated into practical impact and elucidate the opportunities for discursive psychology scholars to focus more on research impact.