Background: The world is facing environmental issues such as pollution, natural disasters, and climate change. A main cause of this is human activities such as urbanization and mining of materials. As the understanding of sustainability increases, new regulations from governments arise along with a surge in demand for sustainable solutions from customers. These factors will trigger a technological shift that companies need to tackle in order to stay competitive. Objectives: The aim of this research is to examine the barriers towards implementing bio-inspired methods for innovation. This will be done by studying innovators in relevant industries. Research question: What are the challenges with a large scale implementation of bio-inspired methods for innovation? Method: This study will be carried out by interviewing people working within the transportation and heavy construction industries. The candidates will, on a daily basis, work with innovation and thus contribute with their knowledge and reflections. The study will use semi-structured interviews followed by a thematic analysis to get results and draw conclusions. Results: The study shows that using methods for innovation is a common act. Furthermore, the candidates were asked how they integrate sustainability into their development. In general, the candidates had no unified answer to this question. However, several examples, such as lowering emissions, not buying from corrupt suppliers, and maintaining profitability, were mentioned. Moreover, the candidates states that the company works with identifying new methods for innovation. When asked about bio-inspired methods, most candidates were positive about an implementation. From another perspective, some candidates who work with biomimicry state the opposite. Conclusions: Using bio-inspired methods for innovation might be of interest, however, such an implementation takes long time due to organizational resistance. To understand this further, more industries and perspectives has to be studied.

The global market is very competitive due to fast changes in complex business environments and to survive or expand the business, organizations must embrace organizational change. However, adapting to change is not always easy, where organizations may experience obstacles and resistance along the way. Organizations may also experience that it is very hard to implement lean successfully, due to lack of know-how but especially resistance. The traditional way is to blame the blue-collars for the disturbing circumstances but in modern times the wind has changed its course where the managers themselves can be a contributor for implementation failures. Therefore, the aim of the research is to investigate what advantages that can be obtained by implementing a certain change initiative. Furthermore, to determine where resistance occurs and how to eliminate or reduce them. The change initiative in this research is implemented by conducting a case study in a Small Medium Enterprise (SMEs), where the main goal is to reduce the changeover time of a machine, by finding improvement suggestions using the Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) methodology. The results generated several improvement opportunities and gave an indication that there is a huge potential for improvements and elimination of waste during a typical changeover. The positive outcomes of implementing these improvement opportunities could theoretically reduce the changeover time, which directly reduces the overall cost but higher responsiveness, flexibility and efficiency can also be obtained. However, the evidence tells a story where the organization could experience obstacles during the implementation of the improvement suggestions, due to several factors. Surprisingly, the evidence points out that one root problem for resistance is difficulties of describing the underlying reason of the change initiative to the blue-collars. Moreover, there is in fact resistance and lack of awareness of the SMED methodology among the blue-collars and the managers, where fear of the unknown is another root problem for resistance.

The purpose of this research project was to analyze the dialectic of co-optation/domestication and resistance as manifested in the experience of racialized Canadian trade unionists. The seven research participants are racialized rank-and-file members, elected or appointed leaders, retired trade unionists, as well as staff of trade unions and other labour organizations. In spite of the struggle of racialized peoples for racial justice or firm anti-racism policies and programmes in their labour unions, there is a dearth of research on the racialized trade union members against racism, the actual condition under which they struggle, the particular ways that union institutional structures domesticate these struggles, and/or the countervailing actions by racialized members to realize anti-racist organizational goals. While the overt and vulgar forms of racism is no longer the dominant mode of expression in today’s labour movement, its systemic and institutional presence is just as debilitating for racial trade union members. This research has uncovered the manner in which the electoral process and machinery, elected and appointed political positions, staff jobs and formal constituency groups, and affirmative action or equity representational structures in labour unions and other labour organizations are used as sites of domestication or co-optation of some racialized trade unionists by the White-led labour bureaucratic structures and the forces in defense of whiteness. However, racialized trade union members also participate in struggles to resist racist domination. Among some of tools used to advance anti-racism are the creation of support networks, transgressive challenges to the entrenched leadership through elections, formation of constituency advocacy outside of the structure of the union and discrete forms of resistance. The participants in the research shared their stories of the way that race and gender condition the experiences of racialized women in the labour movement. The racialized interviewees were critical of the inadequacy of labour education programmes in dealing effectively with racism and offer solutions to make them relevant to the racial justice agenda. This study of race, resistance and co-optation in the labour movement has made contributions to the fields of critical race theory, labour and critical race feminism and labour studies.

The purpose of this research project was to analyze the dialectic of co-optation/domestication and resistance as manifested in the experience of racialized Canadian trade unionists. The seven research participants are racialized rank-and-file members, elected or appointed leaders, retired trade unionists, as well as staff of trade unions and other labour organizations. In spite of the struggle of racialized peoples for racial justice or firm anti-racism policies and programmes in their labour unions, there is a dearth of research on the racialized trade union members against racism, the actual condition under which they struggle, the particular ways that union institutional structures domesticate these struggles, and/or the countervailing actions by racialized members to realize anti-racist organizational goals. While the overt and vulgar forms of racism is no longer the dominant mode of expression in today’s labour movement, its systemic and institutional presence is just as debilitating for racial trade union members. This research has uncovered the manner in which the electoral process and machinery, elected and appointed political positions, staff jobs and formal constituency groups, and affirmative action or equity representational structures in labour unions and other labour organizations are used as sites of domestication or co-optation of some racialized trade unionists by the White-led labour bureaucratic structures and the forces in defense of whiteness. However, racialized trade union members also participate in struggles to resist racist domination. Among some of tools used to advance anti-racism are the creation of support networks, transgressive challenges to the entrenched leadership through elections, formation of constituency advocacy outside of the structure of the union and discrete forms of resistance. The participants in the research shared their stories of the way that race and gender condition the experiences of racialized women in the labour movement. The racialized interviewees were critical of the inadequacy of labour education programmes in dealing effectively with racism and offer solutions to make them relevant to the racial justice agenda. This study of race, resistance and co-optation in the labour movement has made contributions to the fields of critical race theory, labour and critical race feminism and labour studies.