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The article delves into the crucial role of craft guilds in addressing the 'installation bottleneck' in Germany's low-carbon transition. It discusses the challenges of implementing climate action on the ground, particularly the shortage of skilled workers in the skilled trades. The study focuses on craft guilds as pivotal actors in the Middle-Out Perspective, examining their unique qualities and potential as facilitative change agents. The research reveals that guilds possess high agency and capacity but face internal and external challenges that hinder their propensity to act. The findings contribute to the Middle-Out Perspective, expanding its application to craft guilds and highlighting the importance of propensity as a critical factor for facilitative middle actors. The study also emphasizes the social potential of guilds in climate action, suggesting that leveraging their unique position and capabilities can enhance the effectiveness of climate governance.
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Abstract
Shortages of skilled workers and special expertise in the crafts and trades hamper the implementation of low-carbon transitions in many countries. However, research on effective governance arrangements targeting this ‘installation bottleneck’ is limited. To fill this gap, we adopt a Middle-Out Perspective (MOP) and use rich qualitative data including in-depth interviews to study the role of craft guilds within Germany's low-carbon transition, particularly in rooftop photovoltaic and heat pump installation. Our analysis demonstrates that guilds occupy pivotal ‘upper middle actor’ positions to resolve the ‘installation bottleneck’ from the middle-out. Situated between policymaking and on-the-ground installation, guilds have unique agency and capacity qualities deriving from preferential access to the local implementers of low-carbon transitions and legal commissions with critical tasks including training, informing, and associating installers. However, we find that guilds suffer from resource constraints, membership declines, and a lack of deliberate activation. Informal power structures and deficits of change makers exacerbate guilds’ propensity for inertia while unstable framework conditions and the dearth of strategic engagements leave guilds inactivated. Our extended MOP framework of agency, capacity, and propensity allows researchers and policymakers to attend to potentials and trade-offs between these qualities. By recognising the contextual social sphere of installation as potential, policymakers can design more effective implementation strategies that gain people’s support by ‘meeting them where they are’.
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Introduction
Globally, policymakers and societies are increasingly confronted with the questions of how and who is to implement climate action on the ground. Many low-carbon measures such as rooftop photovoltaic systems (PV) or building renovation have become cost-efficient and practice-proven and are included in national implementation targets (IPCC, 2022). However, accelerating their decentralised roll-out is hampered by a shortage of skilled workers and special expertise in the skilled trades (Briggs et al., 2022; García-García et al., 2020; HM Government, 2021; Jagger et al., 2013; Koneberg et al., 2022). Consequently, resolving this ‘installation bottleneck’ becomes a critical component of the governance of low-carbon transitions. This search for governance arrangements also includes the question of the most appropriate actor and pathway to influence practices in the skilled trades (Hampton et al., 2023; Janda & Parag, 2013; Parag & Janda, 2014).
Existing policies usually aim to increase the installation rate by encouraging households through financial incentives or advice to demand low-carbon measures. For example, the EU Renovation Wave endorses one-stop-shops to support homeowners (European Commission, 2020a). Fewer policies target installation enterprises as the suppliers of low-carbon measures. These policies mainly comprise offering and subsidising training and initiatives to attract more people into the skilled trades (European Commission, 2020a; HM Government, 2021). Moreover, policy initiatives such as the European Climate Pact (European Commission, 2020b) encourage voluntary networks of motivated enterprises but these networks are mostly focused on the commitment to reduce their own emissions rather than on resolving the ‘installation bottleneck’. Designated local support structures and the engagement with installation enterprises in local climate governance remain limited in many countries. This limitation has been identified as a major shortcoming of the European one-stop-shops (European Commission 2024) and an important action field in the UK’s net-zero strategy (Innovate UK 2022).
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Against this backdrop, we investigate the role of craft guilds in Germany in resolving the ‘installation bottleneck’ in climate action using a Middle-Out Perspective (MOP) (Janda & Parag, 2013; Parag & Janda, 2014). The MOP has been used to look at the supply-side of low-carbon installations1 and has also been recognised in the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC (Creutzig et al., 2022). Several authors previously touched on the importance of professional associations in low-carbon installations in countries such as the UK or France but without explicitly studying these as research objects (Janda et al., 2014; Killip, 2008). In Germany, craft guilds as long-established local employer associations of a specific craft trade in a district by design occupy a central position in advancing local climate action. They are responsible for essential tasks such as training, informing, and associating installers, have unique access to practice and decision-makers in craft enterprises, and are tightly embedded in the social, political, economic, and ecological context of their local municipality. Yet, to our knowledge, research on craft guilds in climate and transition governance is missing. To close this gap, our study addresses the following two research questions:
1.
How do craft guilds influence the provision of low-carbon installations by craft enterprises in Germany?
2.
Under which conditions do they act as facilitative change agents?
We here aim to contribute to the scientific understanding of craft guilds’ and professional associations’ potential to facilitate transitions, expand the Middle-Out Perspective beyond professionals and their immediate enterprises to the ‘upper middle’ of their professional associations, and inform international policymaking on developing promising governance arrangements to tackle the ‘installation bottleneck’ in the skilled trades.
The paper is structured as follows. The next section presents background knowledge on transformative governance of the skilled trades and craft guilds in Germany and subsequently reviews the literature on middle actors and associations in (low-carbon) transitions. “Research approach and methodology” outlines the research approach and methodology. The results are presented in “Results” and discussed in “Discussion” regarding their implications for theory and policymaking. “Conclusion” concludes.
State of Knowledge
This section provides background information on low-carbon installations in the skilled trades (2.1) and the German system of craft self-governance (2.2), reviews the literature on associations in (low-carbon) transitions (2.3), presents the Middle-Out Perspective (MOP) as the main conceptual framework for analysis (2.4), and synthesises qualities of change agents in the context of SMEs and professional associations in the skilled trades (2.5).
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Low-carbon installations in the skilled trades and their governance
Previous research has identified three key aspects of the way low-carbon installations happen on the ground. They are (1) place-based, (2) quality dependent, and (3) affected by social and work practices. These aspects have implications for effective strategies and governance arrangements to resolve the ‘installation bottleneck’.
First, place-based approaches to climate action realise higher emission reductions, safe money, and yield more social co-benefits than uniform, ‘place-agnostic’ approaches by adopting measures best suited for the local context, such as the building stock, the socio-demographic composition of the population, or economic and environmental conditions (Innovate UK 2022). This involves developing local installation workforces and training facilities (Briggs et al., 2022; Martiskainen et al., 2023) and requires a subsidiarity approach in climate governance building on place-based knowledge, decentralised presence of expertise, and empowerment of local public and private actors (Eadson et al., 2024; Hampton et al., 2024; Innovate UK 2022; Martiskainen et al., 2023).
Second, realising the emission reduction potential of low-carbon measures highly depends on the quality of installation (Gleeson, 2016; Lutzenhiser et al., 1998; Miara et al., 2011). For example, replacing gas boilers with heat pumps may yield electrification but reducing energy demand also depends on the design, sizing, and installation of the heating system. Hence, climate action depends not only on the quantity (rate) of installed measures but also on the quality of their installation. Yet, persisting skills gaps identified in previous research (Gleeson, 2016; Janda & Killip, 2013; Killip, 2013) exemplify an urgent need for quality management, upskilling, and changing practices in the installation sector.
Third, the installation market of heating systems, rooftop PV, and building renovation is framed by the social and organisational structures of the enterprises doing the bulk of the work. This market is dominated by dispersed, owner-managed, and Small and Medium-sized or microenterprises (SMEs) in the skilled trades. SMEs are hard to reach by policies and governance interventions and often struggle to change their practices (Hampton et al., 2023). In the skilled trades, these practices are developed and maintained through practical engagement and social learning with peer practitioners coined Communities of Practice (Wade et al., 2016; Wenger, 1998). Previous research has provided ample evidence that economic incentives alone are insufficient to induce changes in SMEs’ and tradespeople’s practices due to internal factors such as resource constraints (Klewitz et al., 2012), lock-in effects of expertise to high carbon technologies (Banks, 2000; Wade et al., 2016), professional norms and risk-aversity (Murtagh et al., 2021; Simpson et al., 2020), or workforce demographics (Branford & Roberts, 2022). External barriers primarily relate to a lack of conducive policies or stem from policies ill-designed for craft SMEs due to high administrative requirements, misalignment with SMEs’ work practices, or induction of size discrimination, for example for accessing funds (Hampton et al., 2024; Wade et al., 2016). This indicates the importance of understanding organisational structures and the social and economic context in which they are embedded (Biggart & Lutzenhiser, 2007; Janda, 2014).
In summary, strategies addressing the ‘installation bottleneck’ should thus pursue place-based approaches to enable SMEs to better provide low-carbon installations while accounting for SME-specific requirements and the organisational and social potential of the skilled trades.
Guilds and the German system of craft self-governance
Craft guilds here are of particular importance in Germany. The German skilled crafts sector is legally distinguished from industry and commerce (Handwerksordnung, 1953, English: Craft Code) and comprises 130 state-recognised trades which require formal training and which are described in a trade profile listing activities essential and non-essential to the trade. Assigning an enterprise to a trade and its respective regulation (including its eligibility for guild membership and required certification) is based on the performed activities. In this work, all studied trades are subject to licensing, hence, require a Meisterbrief (English: Master Craftsman Certificate) and about five years of formal training for self-employment.
The sector is characterised by a high degree and centuries-long continuity of self-governance meaning that the state delegates sovereign tasks such as training to the democratically constituted institutions of craft self-governance (Will, 2017). Guilds are voluntary employer associations of specific craft trades in a district and legally established public corporations. They constitute the nuclei and lowest level in the self-governance system (see Fig. 1): all different guilds in a district by law associate as District Craft Association (DCA) and guilds of specific trades can voluntarily associate on state and federal levels as guild associations. Guilds use honorary offices of volunteering members, for example for examinations, but may employ appointed full-time officers as administration. The craft system’s principle of subsidiarity, the maxim that decisions should be made closest to the affected group, renders guilds the ‘first address’ for any issue of craft self-governance. Their legally commissioned tasks comprise external representation, organising training and education, facilitating internal networking, information and counselling, and support in founding cooperatives (Bundestag 1953; Will, 2017). The order of mentioning corresponds to the relative importance guild members ascribed to the tasks in a recent survey (Sack & Fuchs, 2022).
Fig. 1
The system of craft self-governance in Germany (own version, based on (ZDH, 2022))
While guilds as voluntary associations do not represent or reach all enterprises and employees of a trade, membership rates in guilds for the studied trades are particularly high compared to other voluntary associations: for the sanitary-heating-and-air-conditioning trade, 25,000 enterprises are guild members (approximately 50% of all enterprises). They employ two-thirds of the 340,000 employees in the trade and generate 62% of the turnover (Müller, 2015).2 Thus, guilds reach and represent major shares of the installation enterprises.
To provide a better understanding of guilds as research objects, the following section briefly reviews the literature on associations in (sustainability) transitions.
The role of associations in sustainability transition studies and social science energy and climate research
Research on industry, trade, or professional associations is sparse, particularly in sustainability transition studies and social science energy and climate research.
Scholars primarily studied associations of manufacturing industries such as the paper and board industry (Chappin et al., 2008) or hard drive and car industries (Intarakumnerd & Chaoroenporn, 2013) but also the newspaper industry (Nordqvist et al., 2010) and accountant profession (Greenwood et al., 2002). These studies mainly draw from institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) according to which associations execute institutional work as a form of collective action both internal and external to their organisational field (sector, profession…). Internally, they self-regulate their field by showcasing and imitating practices, imposing and enforcing rules, and setting norms, values, and beliefs (Greenwood et al., 2002; Nordqvist et al., 2010). Externally, they promote common interests of their members in society and policymaking (Chappin et al., 2008; Rajwani et al., 2015; Watkins et al., 2015). Particularly, associations are the available and most obvious means for members to organise collective action in the face of shared challenges such as transformations (Barnett, 2013; Greenwood et al., 2002).
Some scholars explicitly conceptualised associations as intermediaries linking and translating between members and the outside (Van Lente et al., 2003; Chappin et al., 2008; Intarakumnerd & Chaoroenporn, 2013; Watkins et al., 2015) but accounted little for associations’ own agency as pre-existing middle actors as argued in the next “The Middle‑Out Perspective and what it has (not) looked at”.
Associations are typically assumed to be conservative and change-resistant and working to preserve the status quo both in the interest of their members and due to their own institutional path dependencies (Fünfschilling & Truffer, 2014; Greenwood et al., 2002). However, several authors showcased associations as institutional change agents facilitating change (Greenwood et al., 2002; Nordqvist et al., 2010). Particularly in highly professionalised settings such as the German craft sector, professional associations can be important institutionalised arenas for legitimising change through normative’theorisation’, that is by justifying new ideas through their alignment with normative preconceptions (Greenwood et al., 2002). According to Greenwood et. al, “[l]egitimation in a professional setting […] is […] a function of […] professional appropriateness. What matters is the demonstrated conformity of innovation with the values embedded in traditional beliefs” (p. 75). At moments of (externally stimulated) change, associations can, thus, facilitate and mainstream transformation within their profession “by hosting a process of discourse through which change is debated and endorsed” (p. 59). Consequently and in the same line as Barnett, Greenwood et al. argue that the existence of “highly articulated arenas of social construction (such as professional associations) may make change easier to achieve despite the highly institutionalized setting […] because they enable theorization” (p. 74, italicisation original).
In summary, existing research on associations in (sustainability) transitions research and adjacent fields highlights their importance as means for collective action, internal self-regulation, and external interface for their members. However, research is not only generally limited, but has so far focussed on a few sectors and national or state levels. Consequently, research gaps remain regarding the local level occupied by guilds in Germany and the skilled trade professions installing low-carbon measures.
The Middle-Out Perspective and what it has (not) looked at
Judging guilds by their design, we draw on the Middle-Out Perspective (MOP) as an appropriate framework for analysis (Janda & Parag, 2013; Parag & Janda, 2014).
The MOP posits that ‘middle actors’, situated between top and bottom actors, occupy pivotal positions to “initiate, motivate, support and upscale change” (Parag & Janda, 2014, p. 106) downstream (e.g. to members), upstream (e.g. to policymakers or umbrella associations), and sideways to other middle actors. Additionally, middle actors exhibit specific qualities “top actors lack (or are perceived of lacking) and bottom actors appreciate, such as trustworthiness, legitimacy, and ability to shape social norms and practices. They might also have resources essential for action, which the bottom lacks, such as pre-established procedures and information channels, available funding, administration and coordination skills, specialised tools and know-how, and/or the ability to influence and shape behavioural norms and practices” (ibid., p. 106). These qualities give them particular agency, as the authority to act in a context, and capacity, as the ability to execute an action, and they enhance middle actors’ ability to augment the agency and capacity of other actors. Thus, middle actors are particularly positioned and qualified to “prompt changes to happen” (ibid., p. 106).
Middle actors are active and pre-existing stakeholders in a system with their own critical agency and capacity to facilitate and impede change in their sphere of influence. They often have long historical roots and, thus, are not established for facilitating transitions but have their independent reason for existence and agenda. These characteristics differentiate them from intermediaries which are more widely studied in transition and innovation research (Parag & Janda, 2014). Guilds, as presented above, thus appear to exhibit distinctive characteristics of middle actors.
Middle actors influence through three modes: enabling, mediating, and aggregating. Enabling refers to “actions that allow or promote the deployment and adoption of technologies and techniques” (Simpson et al., 2020, p. 614); mediating “is about participation and change”, includes “knowledge-sharing and collaboration” (p.616) and discussion, and aims at enhancing strategies through contextual adaptation; aggregating refers to the development of accumulated knowledge across cases.
Previous research has applied the MOP to various groups based on their work responsibilities, including building professionals (Janda & Parag, 2013; Parag & Janda, 2014; Reindl, 2020; Simpson et al., 2020), heating installers (Wade et al., 2016), and energy advisors (Hampton, 2018; Willan et al., 2021). Work organisations or enterprises are a useful unit of study, as they are empirically bounded by who is (or is not) getting a paycheck. When aggregated, these enterprises become conceptually synonymous with a ‘profession’. When looking at the aggregate level, MOP authors have used a system of professions (Abbott, 1988) approach and professional cultures frameworks to extrapolate from the research unit to a larger group (Janda, 1998; Janda & Killip, 2013; Nösperger et al., 2011). However, to our knowledge, MOP authors have not yet explicitly studied professional membership associations as research objects although Hamilton et al. (2014) proposed them as promising research objects with a “potential to contribute to the growing, replication and mainstreaming of a socio-technical transition in a middle-out manner” (p. 473) due to their allegedly strong connections to members, other associations, and government bodies.
Therefore, this study expands the MOP by studying craft guilds in Germany. In doing so, it also answers Janda et al.’s calls, first, to expand the space of the ‘middle’ by moving from the ‘lower middle’ of installers to the ‘upper middle’ of their associations, and, second, to reflect on “degrees of middle actors” (Janda et al., 2019, p. 203), for example, to assess which of the possible middle actors “is “better” in promoting or discouraging change, the one with more agency or the one with more capacity?” (ibid. p. 203). For that, it refines concepts of agency and capacity in the context of professional associations and SMEs (see “Synthesis of guilds’ qualities as change agents”) and attends to contextual conditions influencing middle actors’ stances on change.
Synthesis of guilds’ qualities as change agents
To assess guilds’ suitability as change agents, we reviewed the literature presented above regarding respective qualities marking change agents in the context of craft SMEs and professional associations and synthesised them in Table 1. We conceptualised three main qualities according to the MOP: agency requires the legitimacy to act in an own sphere of influence; capacity requires social ties to the surrounding actors upstream, downstream, and sideways as well as respective resources, knowledge & skills.
Table 1
Qualities of guilds as change agents in the context of SMEs and professions (own synthesis)
We conducted a qualitative study following an exploratory research approach with iterative cycles of data collection, analysis, and conceptualisation that was inspired by Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2006). Such empirically grounded qualitative approaches are particularly appropriate for research fields where the scientific knowledge base is thin, as is the case for guilds and their role in low-carbon transitions, because they prevent premature narrowing down on questions of limited relevance or enforcing potentially misleading preconceptions and theories (Bryman, 2012).
Methods
Our study draws from empirical data collected with qualitative methods including desk research, conference participation, and interviews. Table 2 summarises the gathered material.
Table 2
Research phases, methods, and gathered material
How many / Which
When
First phase (broader exploratory scope)
Desk research on
• German system of craft self-governance
• Knowledge about craft-sustainability-nexus
• Webpages of German Craft Institutions
• Craft Code (Handwerksordnung)
• Official documents on legal demarcation of craft in Germany
• grey literature reports of German Craft Institute
April 2021 – November 2021
Semi-structured interviews
18 interviews with 19 interviewees
December 2021 – July 2022
Second phase (focussed scope on this paper’s research questions)
Desk research on
• Examples of guilds or DCAs engaged in activities of climate co-governance
• Responsibilities and structures of guilds
• Web research
• Craft Code
• Grey literature reports of German Craft Institute
October 2022 – January 2023
Semi-structured interviews
19 interviews with 18 interviewees
January 2023 – October 2023 + one interview in April 2024
Sector conferences
‘Internationale Handwerksmesse’, Munich
July 2022
‘Internationale Handwerksmesse’ and ‘Zukunft Handwerk’, Munich
March 2023
‘Grüne Wärme für alle’ hosted by Bundestag’s fraction of German Green Party, Berlin
May 2023
‘Berliner Energietage’, online
May 2023
‘Gesellschaftsprojekt Energiewende ‘ by Heinrich Böll Foundation, Berlin
September 2023
To first acquire an “intimate familiarity with the studied phenomenon” (Charmaz, 2006, p. 64) and inform the design of the empirical interview study including the interview guide, sampling, and case selection, we conducted desk-based research of websites, official documents, reports, and legal frameworks (Bassot, 2022). We further participated in sector conferences on the craft sector and sustainability issues in Germany3 as non-participant observers with interaction (Bryman, 2012, p. 444) where we followed panel discussions and held background conversations with conference participants. These observations and conversations were not included in our final analysis but were used together with the findings from the desk research to inform the design of the interview study. Thereby, we embedded our research not only in the scientific discourse but also in the timely debate of practitioners and policymakers facing the ‘installation bottleneck’. This enabled us to learn in real-time from experts about their acute challenges, initiatives, and research demands and to enhance the practical relevance of our study. Our final qualitative analysis draws on semi-structured interviews which we recorded and transcribed verbatim (Bryman, 2012, p. 469ff).
Data collection in two phases
We collected the data in two main phases.
In the first phase carried out between April 2021 and October 2022, we explored the German craft system in sustainability transitions more broadly to identify priority areas for governance interventions and further research. Interview participants were recruited through theoretical sampling (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) aiming to capture views from all levels of the craft system (see Fig. 1). In total, we conducted 31 semi-structured interviews in the first phase. Seventeen of these interviews were relevant to guilds and included in the analysis for this paper. The other fourteen interviews were excluded because they focused on different levels of the craft system.
This first scoping phase formed the basis for the second phase for which we conducted interviews between January 2023 and April 2024. According to the emergent priorities in the first phase, we narrowed the focus to the research questions of this paper, hence, the role of guilds in facilitating the provision of low-carbon installations, particularly rooftop PV and heat pumps. We chose guilds as research objects because the first phase suggested their potentially pivotal role in facilitating low-carbon installations. Focusing on the installation of PV and heat pumps allowed us to concentrate specifically on the ‘climate crafts’ of roofing, sanitary-heating-and-air-conditioning (SHC), and electricians. In total, we conducted an additional 19 interviews with 18 interviewees in these fields in the second phase. Accounting for our aim to explore guilds’ potential as facilitative change agents, we recruited our sample based on demonstrated facilitative guild actions which we encountered through desk research and the sector conferences. Due to several flagship projects such as the KlimaWerkstatt@Berlin (English: ClimateWorkshop@Berlin), we placed a first geographic emphasis on Berlin and interviewed representatives from four guilds (including the aforementioned trades and the chimney sweep guild), the city administration, and the Chamber of Crafts. Beyond Berlin, we interviewed representatives of the three central guild associations and the Central Association of German Crafts (ZDH), heads of two Environmental Centres serving as competence hubs for sustainability in the sector, one current and two former representatives of DCAs, one representative of another roofing guild, and one representative of a non-craft association focusing on renewable energy technologies.
The final interview sample of both phases is displayed in Table A1 in the Appendix. The interview length was 68 min at the mean and 63 min at the median. Limitations and future research discusses the limitations of our sampling and research approach.
Analysis
We analysed the interview transcripts by thematic coding (Bryman, 2012, pp. 578–581) using the software Atlas.ti. For that, we inductively coded arising themes regarding our two research questions (‘how do guilds influence low-carbon installations?’ and ‘under which conditions do they act as facilitative change agents?’). Since the MOP appeared a suitable framework for analysis, we subsequently categorised the inductively generated themes for the first research question according to the MOP framework of directions and modes of influencing (see The role of associations in sustainability transition studies and social science energy and climate research). For the second research question, we categorised the themes according to the deductively generated framework of change agent qualities presented in Table 1 in Synthesis of guilds’ qualities as change agents. We inductively added new categories to both frameworks when themes did not align with the existing categories.
Results
The results confirm our initial proposition that guilds have pivotal functions and key qualities in accelerating climate action and that some guilds capitalise on these predispositions to act as facilitative and proactive middle actors. Our findings also provide insights into impediments to enacting these roles.
Guilds as preexisting cooperative backbone – independent from climate action but facilitative
First and foremost, guilds serve as cooperative backbones to their small- or micro-sized member enterprises, independent from climate action. Members address resource constraints by outsourcing activities to their guilds or DCAs so to focus on their core activity: service provision. Yet, this also creates “acceleration effects” (#P2I3) for low-carbon installations.
Enterprises in the skilled trades do not have the size where they can afford their own HR department, […] PR department, […] occupational safety department. […] If they have a problem, […] our telephone number has to be on the table and they have to call us.[...] We have the time, human resources, and networks to deal with these issues so that the tradespeople have the time to fulfil their core task, which is to provide services to the customer and implement them properly on site.4 (#P2I6)
Related to transitions more broadly, guilds are particularly important backbones, filters, and translators in changing environments. During the unprecedented COVID pandemic and Ahr flooding,5 guilds informed and supported their members to cope with changing conditions, organised and coordinated self-help, and represented members in local emergency teams and round tables. Particularly the decentral presence of a “substructure of volunteers, of people who work selflessly and feel responsible” (#P1I3) was emphasised as an important safety net in these crises.
These results highlight guilds as preexisting actors which are not established to facilitate transitions but to serve their members – a distinctive feature delineating middle actors from intermediaries.
Guilds as middle actors facilitating low-carbon installations by craft SMEs
Situated in the middle between policymaking and on-the-ground installation, guilds exert influence upstream to local governments and higher associations, downstream to members and their workforce, and sideways to other guilds through enabling, mediating, and aggregating activities as presented in the succeeding section (see Fig. 2 and Table 3).
Fig. 2
Guilds' position and directions of influence in the system of low-carbon installations (own figure)
Empirically demonstrated activities of guilds conceptualised in the MOP framework
Upstream
Downstream
Sideways
Enable
• Support and urge central guild associations to embrace renewable technologies and acceleration strategies
• Support and urge policymakers to adopt policies conducive to accelerating installation
• Build capacity among members with knowledge and skills for installation through training, informing, counselling
• Equip members with tools and contacts to accelerate installation
• Signal and explain (new and trending) professional norms or requirements to members
• Activate, motivate, and support members to change business models and practices
• Provide fora for peer-to-peer social learning, self-help, and exchange as communities of practice
• Support members with the acquisition of apprentices and skilled workers
• Open new business opportunities by facilitating the founding of renewable energy cooperatives
• (Mutually) provide resources, knowledge, support, access to privileges etc. to other guilds to reap synergies
• Share best practices and benchmarking with other guilds of the same trade or other trades in networks
Mediate
• Influence training syllabus, qualification requirements, standards, and jurisdictions through involvement in central guild associations;
• Shape policymaking through lobbying, providing feedback in consultations, making proactive initiatives, joining task forces & commissions etc
• Shape technology development for easier installation by engaging with manufacturers
• Translate policy requirements, technological innovations, societal trends, or best practices from other sectors into on-the-ground practices of members as ‘transmission belt’
• Adapt (inter-enterprise) training courses to include more renewable energies and cross-trade competencies
• Co-create solutions with members to accelerate installation, e.g. Modular training schemes or optimisation of installation
• Formalised across trades in local DCA
• Cooperate with local guilds across trades to facilitate installation, reap synergies, and gain political and economic momentum (also outside DCA)
• Cooperate and collaborate with guilds of the same trade in other locations to gain momentum within trade and reap synergies
• Join local task forces and implementation alliances with non-craft actors
Aggregate
Aggregate on-the-ground knowledge of members and signal demands
• To governments, manufacturers, guild associations
• Back to members
• To other guilds
Enabling
Enabling upstream
Guilds exert enabling influence upstream towards their central guild association and policymaking. Through formalised and institutionalised channels, guilds can influence their associations’ stances to enable climate action, for example, to support climate policies and embrace low-carbon measures in their strategies. Usually, enabling activities upstream seek to influence framework conditions to make installation easier for their members. However, due to the participative nature of lobbying, we conceptualise upstream activities mainly as mediating (see mediating upstream).
Enabling downstream
Corresponding to their primary commission to serve their members, guilds’ main enabling activities are directed downstream.
First, guilds enable their members and their workforce downstream by “keeping them up to date” (#P2I4) with respective knowledge and skills through training, informing, and counselling. Deciding on the requirements for passing the journeyman examination and using their scope in adjusting obligatory courses in the inter-enterprise training (IET)6 guilds influence the capabilities of the future workforce. For example, Berlin’s SHC guild purposely adjusted their obligatory IET courses to incorporate more heat pump practice and developed a novel voluntary IET course dedicated to renewable energy. Apart from apprentice training, guilds also offer courses for up- and reskilling the existing workforce. Moreover, guilds inform members through practice guidelines and presentations in their guild assemblies. This capacity building for low-carbon installations is partly directed at enhancing technical knowledge and installation dexterity but also to administrative knowledge of the regulatory and funding frameworks.
There are so many regulations I have to be informed about so that I don't fall into the trap of doing something wrong and having to pay for it. And that is a problem for those who are not in the guild, they are ignorant. They don't even know what they're doing wrong and [...] that I must follow certain rules [...], that hydraulic balancing7[...] has to be part of the process when I install a new heating system [...] And I get this information from the guild. I exchange information there. (#P1I14)
Second, guilds equip members with tools and contacts to create “acceleration effects” (#P2I3) for the provision of cross-trade low-carbon installations. For example, the guild associations of roofing and electrician trades developed tools to facilitate cross-trade PV installation and to expedite time-consuming proposal preparations. While these tools are developed on the federal level, “nobody knows” them so “guilds then have to pass it on to their people” (#P2I7). Guilds also encourage their members to forge implementation alliances to simplify cross-trade installation. For example, Berlin’s guilds co-hosted a networking event for roofing and electrical enterprises together with the municipality. In Mülheim, guilds merged their assemblies on several occasions to facilitate cross-trade networking.
In the end, we are not just talking about enterprises and organisations working together, but that people need to work together. [That's why] the basic idea of establishing personal contact and developing projects from this personal contact, developing ideas for collaboration [...] is exactly the right approach. (#P2I6)
Third, guilds signal and explain professional norms and requirements to members, and activate and support them to transform their business models and practices. Showcasing best practices and trends is an important strategy for guilds to signal the need for change to members. These trends involve sustainability issues, digitalisation or demographic and cultural changes.
Take a look at this and think about where you want to be involved if you don't want to become a [transition looser]. If you want to be involved, you have to be prepared. (#P2I2)
[The guild is] an initiator in the sense of activating companies, not only enabling them to participate but also motivating them to a certain extent to get to grips with the issues. (#P2I6)
There really needs to be a kind of ‘move’, which […] can only be spread via the guild. (#P1I7)
However, guilds’ most important means for activation and support is just providing fora for social learning and self-help among their members as Communities of Practice. Both in guilds’ informal and formal settings, craft entrepreneurs discuss challenges and strategies to engage in low-carbon installations and manage changing framework conditions. In the interviews, practising entrepreneurs stressed the importance of this peer-to-peer exchange or “guild life” (#P2I4) particularly for microentrepreneurs to “come together […] without being in a competitive situation, exchange ideas and […] quickly realise: they all have the same problems and the same worries and you can help each other much better.” (#P2I4). Full-time executives illustrated how they purposely leverage this peer exchange for the diffusion of innovations:
You can steer this by simply nudging this peer-to-peer concept or this trust marketing. By saying: “He did it. Talk to him. Don't take my word for it. Talk to your colleague.” [...] I just need to get people to [...] look through the eyes of someone who has already solved the problem. (#P1I8)
Fourth, guilds support members in the most pressing concern both for enterprises and climate action: the acquisition of new apprentices. Generally, guilds organise or participate in job fairs, career orientation events, and image building. Specifically, guilds of the studied ‘climate crafts’ deliberately capacitate on their role in climate action as an opportunity for worker acquisition. For example, Berlin’s SHC guild organised a ‘Climate Camp’ as a new form of career orientation. Since the number of middle school students as the traditional target group for apprenticeship is decreasing, guilds also develop new programs to attract other groups. For example, Berlin’s SHC guild developed a new training program “From Auxiliary to Journeyman” to upskill experienced migrant auxiliary workers without recognised qualification to full journeyman qualification. It further launched a vocational A-level course to attract high-performing high-school students and women. Similarly, Berlin’s electrician guild currently develops a new program integrating apprenticeship with a university degree.
Lastly, guilds facilitate the founding of local renewable energy cooperatives. Through their own energy cooperatives, enterprises engage more in low-carbon installations, develop expertise, and outsource tasks such as bureaucracy to the cooperative to reap “acceleration effects”. For example, members of Hamburg’s SHC guild founded the energy cooperative Alsterwatt and the DCA Mülheim/Oberhausen founded the Energy Cooperative of the Crafts Oberhausen.
We [local guilds and the energy cooperative] thought about how we could benefit from each other. The [energy cooperative] is always looking for enterprises to do all the work [PV installation]. Our enterprises are perhaps also somewhat reluctant to get involved with the topic, especially, I'd say, the electricians are reluctant to deal with the applications that are associated with it [...] We simply sat down with the representatives and thought about how we could prepare this so that more companies are willing to get involved. (#P2I4)
Enabling sideways
Guilds also enable other guilds across regions and trades sideways by mutually sharing resources and expertise to reap synergies. For example, Berlin’s SHC and electrician guilds mutually provide training courses and certifications for Master craftspeople across trades to facilitate the provision of low-carbon installations. Moreover, guilds and DCAs also share best practices such as self-developed training courses, service spin-offs, or institutional restructurings with other guilds across regions in voluntary or formalised networks. At the general assembly of all German Masters of roofing guilds, for example, the Master of Mülheim’s roofing guild presented their local cooperation with the electrician guild as best practice towards the other roofing guilds.
Mediating
Mediating refers to actions which enhance solutions through contextual adaptation such as making physical alterations to a particular technology. Yet, mediating has a procedural and conversational aspect since it requires an involvement with the solution and the respective context, often in the form of participation, discussion, collaboration, or knowledge-sharing. This procedural conversation aspect of mediating was particularly pronounced in this study.
Mediating upstream
Most of the guilds’ upstream activities have such a mediating and participative quality.
First, guilds engage in upstream mediating through active involvement in their central guild associations via formalised channels. These activities correspond to enabling their members downstream but require upstream lobbying for issues beyond guilds’ influence sphere. To gain upstream influence, guilds forge alliances and urge their higher associations to either develop their own facilitative contributions, for example, to update regulated training curricula or develop tools to enhance installation, or to mainstream innovations developed by the guilds themselves, such as voluntary inter-enterprise training (IET) courses.
Some things just happen top-down. […] But a lot also happens bottom-up, because the guilds themselves said ‘We want to do something […] and there was nothing there yet.’ (#P2I17)
Second, guilds shape policymaking through lobbying, providing feedback in consultations, and joining task forces, for example for energy-efficient district renovations. On the federal level, this occurs through central guild associations while on the local level, guilds engage with their municipality directly or through their DCA. In some cities such as Essen, Krefeld, or Düsseldorf, DCAs entered ‘Climate Pacts’ with their municipality to forge implementation alliances and climate partnerships.
Third, guilds shape the development of technologies, support tools, and efficient installation processes by engaging with manufacturers and research. These activities are linked to aggregating on-the-ground knowledge upstream and mediating downstream because they involve active engagement with guild members. For example, Berlin’s SHC guild participates in a large transdisciplinary research project on accelerating and optimising installation processes of heat pumps.
Mediating Downstream
Downstream, guilds and their associations mediate by transferring landscape trends such as policy requirements, technological innovations, or best practices from other sectors into the practice of their trade. They monitor developments, reflect on the implications for their trade, and develop strategies to incorporate these novelties. For example, guild associations develop AI and other digital tools (see enabling downstream), translate changing norms and expectations of younger generations into craft practice, and reflect on their trade’s role in solving societal challenges such as sustainability.
[Our role in sustainability is] seeing ourselves as part of the solution at the most local level, at a tangible level. [...] For the discussion process in the guild committees […], we have just started to distil [tangible] goals from these general SDGs – No Poverty, No Hunger, Clean Energy and so on – to explore what is possible at the middle level? If I have a topic such as ‘No Hunger", then it is striking how much food is wasted. And then my task is to ask the question: "How do I get from the topic of 'No Hunger' to processes that are part of the solution?" And that is to contribute to concepts against food waste. […] By this middle level, I mean when you actually touch an entire guild or an entire sector of the economy. For me, it's not about the individual shop, but about the city, the middle level, so to speak. So how can "the bakery trade" contribute to reducing food waste, for example? (Interviewer: And the guild is your heuristic for "the bakery trade"?) Yes. (#P1I7)
Interviewees referred to this role as “transmission belt”, “seismograph”, and “think tank”. As indicated by the quote above, downstream mediation in guilds often has a participative character because it occurs in the established fora of guilds such as assemblies, committees, or regulars’ tables. Participation and discussion are crucial also for full-time executives or boards to get orientation, feedback, and legitimation for their activities, and to engage members in transitions by co-creating practically robust and accepted solutions so that “they also have fun developing things with us” (#P2I2).
We really need to ensure that we take our members with us and don't let them think they’re crazy up there. It mustn’t be top/bottom at all. [...] Of course, you have to be able to develop and create things and not just wait and see. [...] I have to develop things that seem sensible […] and say: Is this something for you? Can you use it? And I have to make offers. And when you realise: okay, the direction is right, then you can keep working on it. Then it's also worthwhile. (#P2I2)
A particular form of downstream mediation is the adaptation and development of training courses in guilds’ own sphere of influence such as IET courses, to incorporate more low-carbon installations and cross-trade competencies as pursued by Berlin’s electrician, SHC, and roofer guilds (see mediating sideways).
Mediating sideways
Sideways mediation between local guilds is formalised in DCAs but it also exists independently in more informal settings. Sideways mediation for climate action takes several forms:
First, guilds collaborate locally with other trades to facilitate cross-trade low-carbon installations, reap synergies, and gain momentum. As mentioned above, guilds, for example, merge their assemblies to discuss enhanced strategies of PV deployment. In Berlin, guilds collaborate for the KlimaWerkstatt@Berlin as a cross-trade competence hub and training centre for ‘climate IETs’ because they are “convinced that the energy transition will only succeed if we work together” (#P2I5).
We are currently formulating so-called “cross-trade climate IET courses”. [...] My apprentice learns about energy generation systems such as PV and so on. But does he learn anything about […] high voltage in the car? Mhh Not. Or heat pumps? Maybe not so much. […] That's why we've joined forces with the roofers and […] the SHC guild and want to get something like this off the ground. This is new territory. You’ll laugh, that doesn’t exist in Germany. (#P2I3)
Second, guilds collaborate with guilds of the same trade to gain momentum within their trade and reap synergies. A proactive alliance of SHC guilds, for example, collaborates for the development of training courses for enhanced renewable energy installation.
Third, guilds or their DCAs also mediate towards non-craft actors in local task forces, implementation alliances, and stakeholder committees such as Berlin’s round tables. Some guilds proactively build partnerships with non-craft actors such as local energy cooperatives or municipalities (see enabling downstream).
Aggregating
Aggregating refers to the accumulation of knowledge across cases which can be applied to new cases or to inform other actors. Although aggregating takes the least space in our deliberations, it constitutes the basis for many of the enabling and mediating activities performed by guilds.
Guilds aggregate members’ on-the-ground knowledge including difficulties and demands related to regulation, business incentives, special expertise, and work processes. Structured aggregation occurs through surveys, individual consultations, and institutionalised fora of assemblies and committees. Moreover, guilds can estimate the expertise levels and activities of their members from their demand for guild services such as (further) training courses or information events.
We conducted structured opinion-forming surveys, both online surveys and postal surveys, for which we sent out questionnaires. We had a very intensive exchange of opinions by simply visiting the enterprises on-site, personally, not just myself but also colleagues, talking to the enterprises about projects and so on […]. Above all, we used the organisational structures, such as the guild plenary assemblies, and the assemblies of the DCA. But there are also things like examination committees. (#P2I6)
Subsequently, guilds signal these insights upstream to policymakers, guild associations, and manufacturers as well as sideways to other guilds. Moreover, guilds adapt their own activities such as training courses after aggregating which results in downstream mediation back to their members. Berlin’s SHC guild, for example, surveyed its members on their experience with heat pumps and initiated an aggregation process via committees to identify training demands. On that basis, the guild developed a new modular training scheme to upskill auxiliaries to journeymen, had it certified by the employment agency, and exchanges this sideways with other guilds. It also uses this knowledge to inform Berlin’s climate policy and suggest effective measures upstream.
Guilds’ predispositions and challenges for acting as change agents
The following section analyses how far guilds exhibit particular qualities to promote change in the installation sector and which conditions are conducive and obstructive to leveraging their potential. Table 4 summarises these findings.
Table 4
Agency, capacity, and propensity qualities present in guilds and related challenges
Quality
Presence in guilds
Challenges
Agency (authority to act)
Legitimacy
• Legal commission and preferential responsibility to act in own sphere of influence (subsidiarity)
• Democratic self-governance by design is particularly pronounced (input legitimation)
• High trustworthiness among members due to not-for-profit status, peer exchange, and legitimation through output due to voluntary membership
• Customary and commissioned ability to shape professional norms and practices through training, informing, and providing fora for social learning as a Community of Practice
• Primary means for collective action and self-help
• Limited sphere of influence in small guilds
• Informal power structures undermine input legitimation
• Jurisdiction conflicts in craft self-governance
• Honorary offices biased towards larger enterprises and senior owners
• Declining membership reduces the sphere of influence and legitimacy to speak for the trade
Capacity (ability to act)
Social ties
• Longstanding personal contacts, established channels, and institutionalised fora for external exchange and influencing
• Personal relationships and established channels to members (emails, assemblies, counselling…)
• Established fora for internal discussion and self-help (assemblies, committees, regulars’ tables…)
• Local embeddedness in the district
• Long-term stability
• Local retreat of guilds weakens ties to externals and members
• Social capital and connections among members vary and limit internal influence if low
• Low external awareness and involvement of guilds limit external channels
Resources, knowledge & skills
• Resources determined by available funding and commitment to honorary work
• Primarily membership fees, partly external/ public funding
• Peer-to-peer advice as Community of Practice
• Specialised and comprehensive knowledge through voluntary engagement of practitioners
• Knowledge of local conditions and firms’ individual requirements due to proximity
• Declining membership and commitment to honorary work
• Self-governance challenged by the speed of external changes
• Risk of ‘vicious cycles’ of membership and performance decline
Propensity (willingness to act)
Internal
• Presence and activation of internal change agents
• Good cooperation in the guild team, particularly between honorary and full-time offices
• Open, anticipative, proactive stance on transformation and self-understanding as shapers and facilitators
• Status quo inertia, reactive and refusing stance on change and innovation
• Informal power structures
• Perceived closedness and deterring culture to outsiders
• Inward orientation and narrow interpretations of commission
• Internal conflicts between change makers and veto players
External
• Ambitious, reliable, and clear political priorities
• External pressure by new competitors
• ‘pulling’ participatory climate co-governance including conferring of agency (subsidiarity), capacity building, and local multi-actor alliances
• Facilitative and inducing upstream actors
• Unstable and unclear political framework conditions
• Low external awareness, involvement, strategic co-governance, support, and capacity building
Agency qualities and challenges
Our results suggest that guilds have particularly high agency, that is authority to influence, in the system of craft installation services. This agency derives from various sources of legitimacy.
First, guilds are legally commissioned to act in their sphere of influence including essential tasks such as training, informing, and representing members and the subsidiarity principle of craft self-governance grants guilds preferential rights. Thus, if a guild is capable of delivering a service, it is preferentially authorised to do so. Moreover, if commissioned by their members, guilds or their DCAs can even extend this influence sphere through founding spin-offs in service of their members.
Second, the principle of democratic self-governance (input legitimation), is particularly pronounced in guilds since “the guild is the only fundamental self-governing corporation […] of the economy as a whole, in which the highest decision-making body – the guild assembly – […] does not consist of elected representatives, but of all members of the corporation itself.” (Will, 2017, p. 22, translated with DeepL). Moreover, the manageable size and proximity of guilds enable “authentic decision-making” (#P2I6). This principle of input legitimation also applies to the activities of full-time staff who need approval by the elected board to act (see mediating downwards).
Third, guilds can be assumed to enjoy particularly high trustworthiness among their members. Guilds are non-profit and aim to serve their members. In contrast to Chambers of Crafts, guild membership is voluntary, so members have an exit option to withdraw legitimacy and trust (see also Sack et al. (2014)). This output legitimation depends on their performance and ability “to offer appropriate services which enterprises like and value so that they then also pay their membership fee.” (#P2I3). It draws from previous experience and needs constant renewal.
We are now also known for the large number of projects we do and that stuff happening through the guild is generally pretty good. We also take great care to ensure that not too many people are involved because we are afraid that the enterprises will get burnt for such things. [...] And since they know that we're really making an effort and that things coming through us are accepted, they also say "okay, then we'll go along with it.” (#P2I2)
Additionally, peer-to-peer exchange as pronounced form of influencing in guilds builds exactly on the “trust-marketing” and credibility of peer entrepreneurs (see enabling downstream).
Fourth, guilds are in prime positions to shape professional norms and practices. This ability is customary, institutionalised, and commissioned. It occurs through training, informing, counselling, and by providing the fora for exchange as Communities of Practice (see enabling downstream). Similarly, guilds are the primary means for collective action and self-help among craft entrepreneurs. By utilising the structure to coordinate joined actions and self-help, members confer legitimacy to the guild.
However, these predispositions and potentialities may not completely manifest due to several challenges. First, the authorised sphere of influence is often limited for small guilds. For example, small guilds often lack own training centres where they can develop specific training courses. Second, the diversity and complexity of craft self-governance often result in conflicts about jurisdictions between different institutions which produces friction losses and paralysis. Third, informal power structures undermine democratic legitimation and create power-related path dependencies.
On the one hand, you have the formal situation which is regulated in the statutes [...] and then there are the informal structures. You might have an Honorary Master who says "That's how it has to be". Then you have the former Managing Executive, who still plays a role in the background. You have the examination board […]. Thus, there are lots of different players. […] In the end, it's a classic political issue. [...] You need to organise majorities. [...] Whether you are convincing in terms of content, whether you are personally convincing. Yes, there are all kinds. They're not always just nice and honest, they're also non-transparent and backhanded and all sorts of things. (#P2I6)
Fourth, decision-making offices are often biased towards owners of larger enterprises and seniors because these can afford the time for volunteering. This can reinforce path dependencies. Lastly, membership declines reduce guilds’ spheres of influence but also their legitimacy to represent their trade externally. However, guild membership in the studied trades is still high and guilds probably remain the voluntary associations with the highest proportion of members in the skilled trades.
Capacity qualities and challenges
Guilds’ capacity as ability to influence lies in their social ties and resources. Our results suggest that while guilds have the strongest social ties in the system, they suffer from resource constraints.
Social ties, infrastructure, and channels
Guilds have particularly good connections to other actors. Relationships to other guilds are longstanding due to personal contacts and institutionalised fora such as DCAs.
The last Master before me [...] had been working there himself from the beginning and so we always had a point of contact. He knew all the people, he knew exactly what they were doing. (#P2I4)
They also often have personal relationships with members which offers them “optimal access” (#P2I2) to on-the-ground practice.
Because unlike Chambers […] and unlike associations, you don't just have to deal with functionaries […], but you actually deal with all enterprises. […] You are very, very close to them. [...] We are the most suitable interface. (#P2I6)
As elaborated above, guilds constitute primary fora for exchange and self-help among their members. These strong relationships are fostered by their local proximity and stability.
Guilds’ and DCAs’ longstanding local embeddedness also makes them essential partners for local climate action and facilitates the founding of implementation alliances and initiatives such as the local energy cooperatives. Neither Chambers nor state guild associations can provide this embeddedness since their responsibility lies at higher governance levels and larger geographical areas.
When it comes to local problems, [...] a state guild association […] would simply be overwhelmed with this local representation. There are too many local authorities for that […]. #P
Climate action [takes place] where people work and live. And that’s where our District Craft Associations are. And that's where I can identify the guilds, […] I can talk to them [...] (#P2I11)
Guilds as historically evolved institutions also have a plethora of pre-established procedures and channels to influence as well as institutionalised arenas for internally discussing change: downstream channels include guild magazines, regulars’ tables, assemblies, counselling, and training. Upstream channels include customary access to policymaking such as regular meetings of guild functionaries with mayors. Sideways exchange between local guilds is institutionalised in DCAs while guild associations and Chambers provide fora for discussions beyond the local district.
They meet almost weekly in this cross-trade constellation. For them, this is normality in practice, routine: that an electrician sits together with a roofer and talks about the problems, also with the municipality. If you say, for example, "We are now renovating the buildings in this district", you can gather the DCA, the Guild Masters, [...] and put these five Masters of the relevant trades together for this one project and they organise it on site. (#P2I7)
However, social ties to the surrounding local actors, constituting guilds’ key predisposition of transformative capacity, are weakened by the retreat of local guilds. This retreat reduces their proximity to members and other local actors, dissolves their embeddedness, and impedes participative decision-making.
I am not a fan of creating ever larger units, which then automatically move further away from the enterprises. Be it in terms of space or the multitude of opinions that are represented, so that individuals are no longer heard. Instead, they must be able to retain the advantage, that the guilds and DCAs have, of being approachable locally. (#P2I6)
Additionally, members’ involvement in guilds, their internal cohesion and communal spirit vary substantially across guilds. Hence, guilds’ capacity for influencing (among) their members depends on the ‘vitality’ of their “guild life” and their social capital.
Moreover, low understanding of the craft sector among externals and a lack of strategic participation reduce guilds’ external channels. As a city official admitted: “The guilds [were not involved] back then. […] It wasn't yet clear to us that we also needed the guilds.” (#P2I18).
Resources, skills, and knowledge
Resources and capabilities in guilds are mainly determined by funding for full-time executives and commitment to honorary work among members.
Guilds are mainly funded by membership fees but some guilds or their DCAs also have public funding for specific services or projects. Funding is particularly important for hiring full-time staff for administration and coordination of activities including strategy development and “transmission belt” activities (see mediating downstream), but also for services such as counselling. In smaller guilds, administration and coordination are partly assumed by honorary offices while everyday administration and counselling are outsourced to their DCA or guild association.
As for counselling, however, guilds are the most important arenas for peer exchange and social learning which are fundamental for capacity building and practice diffusion in the skilled crafts as Communities of Practice (see enabling downstream). This social learning is fostered by intimate relationships which can be especially vivid in small guilds.
Specialised and comprehensive knowledge of their sector is particularly pronounced in guilds, more than in other actors such as Chambers, because of the active grassroots engagement of practising craftspeople, for example in technical or examination committees. In fact, this active and voluntary participation of practitioners is the main rationale behind the self-governance of professions and economic sectors. Arguably, practitioners have better knowledge of their organisational field than the state and their voluntary engagement in self-governance makes the provision of public goods such as training more cost-effective (Sack et al., 2014, pp. 122–123). However, due to limited voluntary capacities in guilds, highly specialised knowledge, tool development, and monitoring of trends are usually outsourced to guild associations on state or federal levels or might be complemented by full-time staff in larger guilds.
Lastly, their local embeddedness not only strengthens guilds’ ties but also their knowledge of local conditions and firms’ individual requirements compared to higher associations or Chambers.
However, declining membership and commitment to voluntary work among craft entrepreneurs reduce guilds’ resources and capacities while enterprises’ demands for guild services increase due to trends such as demography, digitalisation, or climate change. This can result in ‘vicious cycles’ if enterprises leave guilds due to perceived performance declines. Several interviewees expressed worries that guilds, DCAs, and other craft institutions in their current organisational structure may be overtaxed by the speed of external changes:
"We have to rethink the DCA, set it up differently, become more agile, […] become faster, we perhaps also have to become more offensive in our communication. […] The speed of change [...] will never again be as slow as it is today. (#P2I6)
Yet, some guilds and DCAs manage to increase their capacities. They attribute this to internal re-organisation, forging strategic partnerships to reap synergies and attract external funding, founding service spin-offs, and ‘institutional entrepreneurship’ (see next section).
Propensity and its influencing factors
While the previous sections illustrated that guilds might be particularly positioned and qualified middle actors, a new theme emerged during the interviews that was inductively added to the evaluation: guilds may have the agency and capacity to act as facilitative agents in climate action, but the pivotal challenges lie at guilds’ propensity as their willingness to make a change in the interest of the public. Unlike intermediaries, guilds as long-established actors in the craft system are not “necessarily devoted to make positive environmental change” (Janda et al., 2019, p. 202) nor to act on societal problems more broadly, but need activation. Accordingly, we propose propensity as a third criterion of actors’ suitability as change agents in the MOP besides agency and capacity. Thus, developing strategies to activate guilds requires attention to conducive and obstructive conditions determining their propensity. The following paragraphs present the identified conditions internal and external to guilds.
Internal factors
Above all, the role of individuals and personal relationships was highlighted most frequently as determining guilds’ stances on transformation. Several interviewees portrayed guilds as ideal multiplication platforms for individuals to make a change.
How encrusted or […] innovative a guild is, is actually decided by the people who are involved on the ground. […] You can achieve a great deal as an individual in such a structure if you get involved yourself. If you have your own ideas about what you want to change (#P2I4)
Consequently, the presence of internal “inciters” (#P2I10) constitutes a prime precursor for prompting changes and developing propensity. Attracting these change agents requires an openness to pioneers and targeted activation and offers for participation.
I made a very conscious decision to develop lighthouses, [...] to include positive examples in my communication, to specifically address people and encourage them to apply for certain positions and get involved. In other words, to move away from representing everyone, but to specifically involve those who are pursuing future-oriented policies. (#P2I6)
Yet, pursuing changes requires more than individuals but good collaboration in the team, particularly of full-time executives and decision-making honorary offices, so that “ideally, the Guild Master and the managing executive should work hand in hand and […] assume a leadership position” (#P2I6) to work towards a common vision.
Crucially, this common vision and prevalent self-understanding of guilds determines their propensity. Facilitative guilds tend to understand their work as institutional “entrepreneurs” (#P2I2, #P2I6) and proactive shapers of their environment, in other words, as bodies of governance rather than administration. This requires embracing the necessity of transformation, an anticipative perspective, and a proactive creative drive to develop facilitative initiatives based on own strengths. By appropriating and incorporating transformation as their own project, guilds also win their members for transformative endeavours.
[Guilds need to] create a mentality, both at a personal level and at an organisational level, that makes them open to the future. [...] We must become change makers. We must get ahead of the wave. […] We need to have the ambition to not just run behind and react, but to be able to act ourselves. (#P2I6)
However, often guilds exhibit status quo inertia and a reactive and refusing stance on change and innovation.
At this level, there are often more conservative structures [...] There tends to be a defensive attitude in such groups, a questioning of the reasonableness of the energy transition.[...] Because everything that has been established has worked before. (#P2I7)
[If] the speed of change then encounters a less open mentality, it becomes difficult. In the end, […] perhaps we in the skilled crafts don't have a selection of the best, but rather a selection towards a contradiction to this necessary speed of change due to our constitution. [...] One of the huge challenges facing the skilled crafts will be how we can get more people into charge who recognise that we must face up to this change, that we have to embrace this change. (#P2I6)
Participants give several reasons for this reactive stance on transformation, which are partly internal and partly external to guilds.
First, as elaborated above, power in guilds often lies with established actors who benefit from the status quo. These structures are perpetuated through informal networks, biases toward senior entrepreneurs in honorary offices, and long tenures. Whether these are causes or results of recruitment problems cannot be answered based on our material. However, although some interviewees stressed the openness of their guild for newcomers and praised it as a platform for pioneers to make a change, others referred to the perceived closedness and deterring culture for outsiders.
It's often the most innovative companies that say "No, I don't see myself there. Have you ever seen who the Guild Master is? I'm not going to sit there.” (#P1I9)
If [you] belong to this group that is interested in this topic [sustainability] and is committed […] you're the underdog and the others call the shots. (#P1I6)
I was a frustrated guild denier for many years. I didn't like the old-fashionedness […]. It started with sexist letters, no gender equality, no vegetarian/vegan alternatives for traditional meals […], so many little things that affect me. Where I see myself as a marginalised group that wants to change the world. [...]. But I drove them crazy at the very beginning just by being defiant. (#P1I16)
Second, guilds often exhibit an inward orientation of self-administration rather than self-governance and narrow interpretations of their commission. This obstructs them from engaging in ‘entrepreneurial’ activities beyond their obligatory tasks. Interviewees refer to this inward focus as “revolving around itself” (#P1I11) or “keeping your sheep together and keeping them dry […] and not looking now at what the future holds” (#P1I17). However, because guilds strife for output legitimation due to voluntary membership, interviewees regard guilds as tendentially more proactive and entrepreneurial than Chambers with mandatory membership.
Third, internal conflicts between change agents and veto players, for example between or within full-time and honorary offices, can paralyse guilds. Moreover, the high heterogeneity of members and respective interests complicates decision-making and developing proactive initiatives. Yet, while heterogeneity “keeps accumulating” (#P2I6) and exacerbates susceptibility to paralysis on higher governance levels, local guilds as small ‘nucleus institutions’ often develop their own proactive dynamics and avert paralysis.
External factors
Our results suggest that even proactive, facilitative guilds are cautious not to “overburden our companies by always being the ‘first mover’” (#P2I6). Instead, these guilds act as ‘first followers’ or ‘early adopters’. Thus, conducive external conditions are fundamental to activating guilds.
There were many reasons why we should at least wait and see because we don't want to unnecessarily burden the small units with any requirements. Because they are members and they can also leave. [...] That's why in a [preliminary] phase like this, in which a transformation has not yet really begun, where mindsets are still subject to very strong change requirements and where the dynamics are not yet sufficiently there, it is very difficult in this understanding of our role, which is characterised by supporting members, to actively take on this [proactive] role in this transformation. [...] You have to think carefully: When can we expect [the transformation] to really start? (#P2I11)
As the quote indicates, guilds require ambitious, reliable, and clear political priorities to develop strategies and convince members that changes are necessary and in their interest. For example, clear installation targets for PV and the political ambition of a new government sparked facilitative strategy development on all governance levels of craft institutions in Germany, including local guilds. The cooperation between Mülheim’s guilds, for instance, was “something we have organised for ourselves as a guild […], we didn't wait for the central association or anything like that” because the topic PV was “coming from so many sides” (#P2I4). Similarly, Berlin’s Masterplan Solarcity including its PV obligation prompted guilds to develop the Klimawerkstatt@Berlin as their own initiative.
Second, external pressure from new competitors increases guilds’ propensity to act. The entrance of novel non-craft venture-capital-financed corporations and start-ups into the installation market initiated internal discourse and strategy development in guilds based on their strengths, such as the modular upskilling programme ‘From Auxiliary to Journeyman’ in Berlin. Like referring to policy requirements, guilds can deliberately showcase practices by competitors to exert ‘mimetic’ influence on members and argue for the necessity of their own initiatives (see enabling downstream).
Besides these external ‘pushes’ or “precipitating jolts” (Greenwood et al., 2002, p. 60), ‘pulling’ participatory climate co-governance is conducive to activating guilds and fundamental to successful local climate action. Co-governance includes local multi-actor networks and partnerships but also fostered subsidiarity where municipalities or higher craft institutions confer agency to guilds or DCAs and build capacity to enable them to capitalise on their predispositions to facilitate climate action. For instance, the City of Essen funds a ‘Climate Academy’ at the local DCA:
In 16 or 17 of the profiles [of the Essen Climate Action Plan], the DCA was named as a partner to be involved. And we thought that was good. But we asked ourselves why they didn't speak with us in advance […] that we were chosen as a participating partner. So, we approached them and said: ‘Listen, the Climate Action Plan is not going to work as you want it to. If only because we don't have the position you need.’ That's where we come back to the question of how much time I have as Managing Director to deal with climate action so that the enterprises say ‘yes, that's for our good’. We made it very clear to the City that if the skilled crafts are to participate, even increasingly, in all their meetings in the future […] and if this is to be stabilised, then we need a Climate Academy here at the DCA. [...] The Climate Academy should work on four building blocks identified as obstacles to achieving the climate targets. One is the shortage of skilled labour. [...] The second is further training and qualification of enterprises and employees. [...] Third point: Digitalisation. [...] The fourth and final is public relations and networking. The Climate Academy should work in the direction of political bodies, the city administration, and the public as a network and source of information. [...] So, the city of Essen recognised this and just said: ‘Great idea’.” (#P2I10).
Similarly, the state of Berlin funds guilds’ initiatives and projects such as the KlimaWerkstatt@Berlin because it has recognised “that the skilled trades have a central role to play. If you want to implement the plans, you have to look at how this issue [of renewable energies] is growing in the skilled trades” (#P2I9).
Lastly, upstream craft institutions can activate guilds. Environmental Centres in Hamburg and Düsseldorf, for instance, have prompted and supported guilds to take action on sustainability, for example, Essen’s ‘Climate Academy’.
However, unclear and unstable framework conditions impede guilds from developing initiatives and signalling transition pathways and requirements to their members. According to several interviewees, the instability in PV regulation has deteriorated trust and partly explains the reserved perspective on the energy transition in the trades. As one Head of an Environmental Centre described: “We have often experienced a lurch. That was pedagogically completely worthless from policymaking. […] And those who don't have a lot of resources naturally have to face up to this question even more.” (#P2I11).
Moreover, awareness and understanding of the craft sector among externals are low. Consequently, strategic engagement, subsidiarity, and capacity building, that enable and empower guilds to facilitate climate action, are mostly missing.
Many projects promote industrial innovations. There are practically no sensible funding projects that promote craft innovation projects for cross-trade cooperation. (#P2I13)
The drafts of these [ministerial papers] are done by Boston Consulting and they know about as much about the crafts [...] as a baker knows about butchery. That's cruel. [...] However, the impression is: there is more talk about the skilled crafts than with them. (#P2I13)
We [are] a very small organisation compared to an industry association. […] We can't work our way through the political mills. We need […] these 'think small first' aspects […], but there is a strong industrial policy approach in Germany. There is always a benevolent view of the skilled trades, but the decisions […] have been made differently for years. […] And now people are finally listening because they realise it has become important. (#P2I13)
Discussion
Our findings considerably advance the existing literature on the Middle-Out Perspective, the role of professions and associations in transitions, and the social nature of technology installation in the skilled trades. Thereby, our study highlights guilds’ potential to resolve the ‘installation bottleneck’ in the local implementation of low-carbon transitions and points to promising trajectories for governance interventions and future research.
Expanding the MOP
This paper bears three main contributions to the MOP (see Fig. 3): first, it expands the ‘space of the middle’ to guilds as associations of ‘low-carbon installers’ and pivotal ‘upper middle’ actors in the system of low-carbon installations. Second, it specifies the MOP qualities of agency and capacity for their application to guilds or associations more broadly. Third, it proposes propensity besides agency and capacity as the third quality of change agents in the MOP. Thereby it also adds to the reflection on “degrees of middle actors” and their contextual suitability as change agents.
Fig. 3
Contributions to the MOP: associations as ‘upper middle’ actors, specifications of respective agency and capacity qualities, and propensity as third suitability criterion
Situated between policymaking and on-the-ground practices of dispersed craft SMEs, guilds are particularly well-positioned ‘upper middle’ actors to exert transformative influence downstream to installers, upstream to umbrella organisations and governments, and sideways to other guilds. Besides their pivotal position, guilds also exhibit inherent agency and capacity qualities rendering them predisposed craft influencers. As for agency, guilds are democratically organised and constitute the customary, legislated, and preferential means for social learning, self-help, and self-governance of craft SMEs. Their subsidiary sphere of self-governance includes essential tasks in the provision of low-carbon installations such as training, informing, and associating installers. Guilds’ capacity qualities derive from strong social ties to members and the local community as well as their practitioner knowledge. Yet, these potentials remain largely untapped primarily due to resource constraints arising from membership declines and the lack of deliberate activation. Thus, guilds may be authorised and capable but disinclined influencers.
Accordingly, we propose propensity as the third MOP quality besides agency and capacity to assess the suitability of actors and intervention strategies in transition governance. Although previous MOP research acknowledged middle actors’ potential disinclination to facilitate change and marked this a central distinction to the more widely used concept of intermediaries (Janda & Parag, 2013; Janda et al., 2019), these authors did not analyse propensity beyond acknowledging potential challenges. However, we find that decisive factors for guilds to act as facilitative middle actors lie precisely in their propensity. On the one hand, our results confirm prevalent scientific perspectives viewing professions and their associations as inherently conservative, reactive, and change-refusing. Yet on the other hand, they particularly substantiate propositions that associations can catalyse transitions by theorising and mainstreaming changes through institutionalised channels (Greenwood et al., 2002; Hamilton et al., 2014) and by developing facilitative initiatives as middle actors (Parag & Janda, 2014). Guilds’ propensity to adopt such a facilitative stance depends on internal and external factors. Internally, informal power structures and deficits of proactive change makers exacerbate guilds’ propensity for status quo inertia and refusal of transformation. Externally, discontinuities in political framework conditions and the dearth of strategic engagements result in guilds remaining in their reactive mode. Levering guilds’ potential as transformative change agents thus requires particular attention to propensity factors besides agency and capacity. Moreover, sparking initial engagement has the potential for a virtuous cycle increasing subsequent propensity since active engagement in climate action increases the inclination to do even more (Creutzig & Kapmeier, 2020).
Social potential lens on guilds and respective governance implications
By highlighting guilds as primary fora for self-help, social learning, and self-governance our results substantiate previous work emphasising installation in the trades as a highly social sphere. This opens the perspective to the wider debate about social potentials and socially optimised energy systems (Janda, 2014). A social potential lens looks beyond technical potentials of low-carbon measures and recognises the existing social structures, processes, and desires which shape the context of technology use and deployment. Thus, it takes a “more sympathetic view of people that better meets people where they are” (Moezzi & Janda, 2014, p. 31) and taps into the “creative abilities of people to participate in change in ways that fits their own contexts and concerns” (ibid., p. 31). To this end, our results emphasise guilds’ distinctive agency and capacity qualities, their activities, and their pivotal position in the system of low-carbon installations as social potential. Explicating the social sphere of guilds as potential enables policymakers and craft actors to “recognize and pursue it” (ibid., p. 38).
Implications for craft actors in Germany
Internally, guilds and craft institutions ‘need to deliver’ and facilitate low-carbon transformations to sustain their legitimacy and status as public corporations. This is because the legitimacy of craft self-governance derives from yielding more efficient and practically robust solutions to societal challenges than state governance. Accordingly, guild and DCA executives, boards, and members, first, need to recognise how their guild influences local climate action and what their respective options are to facilitate it. Second, guilds need to examine their existing structures and activities for their orientation towards climate action and reorient them for facilitation, for example, by adjusting their IET courses. Third, guilds can pursue novel and untapped potentials as highlighted by the activities presented in Guilds as middle actors facilitating low‑carbon installations by craft SMEs. This requires developing proactive transformation perspectives and institutional entrepreneurship, in other words, promoting initiatives based on own strengths to reap the chances of transformation. To nourish such proactive perspectives, guild executives and board members can strategically attract, engage, and promote change makers and pursue an organisational restructuring towards anticipative agile governance and management. Management literature and institutional theory may provide more details on promising restructuring pathways. Given higher institutions’ susceptibility to paralysis and inertia, a fundamental institutional reform should further be pursued to resolve double structures and jurisdiction conflicts and foster the necessary creative and adaptive capabilities of the entire craft self-governance in current and upcoming transformations.
Implications for policymaking and societal actors in Germany
Externally, guilds are activated by clear and reliable policies (push) and fostered subsidiarity (pull). In social potential thinking, the traditional subsidiary conferring of agency to the institutions of craft self-governance in Germany, thus, the delegation of power to the affected group, ranks among the highest ‘rungs’ of the ladder of citizen participation (Arnstein, 1969) and boosts the social potential of the German skilled crafts sector. Yet, although this subsidiarity is long-established in Germany, policymakers, guilds, and other craft institutions have been largely unable “to recognize and pursue it” as social potential for accelerating climate action. Policymakers in municipalities can foster subsidiarity in climate co-governance through delegation and partnerships that confer agency to guilds or their DCAs and augment their capacity through funding and support conditional to the facilitation of local climate action. The above-mentioned ‘Climate Academy’ or the KlimaWerkstatt@Berlin are prominent examples of such advanced subsidiarity. Similarly, other societal actors such as NGOs can pursue partnerships with guilds in strategic alliances, for example for easing job entrance for immigrants or energy cooperatives. Lastly, policymakers and societal actors including the media can increase guilds’ presence in public discourse to foster societal knowledge about craft practice which can prime later initiatives for guild activation.
Implications of the decline and fusion of guilds in Germany
The observed cases indicate that particularly guilds as local and socially intimate nucleus associations can escape the reactive paralysis of higher associations, develop proactive dynamics, and serve as decentral and manifold niches for (social) innovation in the skilled trades. As argued by Hamilton et al. (2014), innovations such as solutions for cross-trade installation can spread to other guilds through established institutional arenas and challenge the inertia of higher associations. Yet, while the growing demands of transformations induce an urge to form larger units and pool resources, the retreat and fusion of guilds weakens their social ties, undermines their social potential, and reduces spaces for innovation. This paper thus substantiates previous work suggesting guild size as an optimisation problem (Glasl, 2010). The question of how to preserve the social ties of locally embedded guilds whilst augmenting their capacity and resources leads back to their activation and the two-sided recommendation to build strategic synergetic partnerships. Particularly given the fact that the absence of decentralised expertise and the difficult access to craft enterprises are internationally regarded as severe barriers to climate action (Innovate UK 2022; Martiskainen et al., 2023), the decline of guilds (Sack et al., 2023) should be an urgent warning to policymakers and craft actors in Germany to activate and support the remaining guilds and nurture their social potential. Once these bottom-up evolved “substructure[s] of volunteers” get lost, it will be hard to reestablish them top-down by policymakers.
Implications for international policymaking
Our findings transcend the situated German case and bear important implications for international policymaking.
First, policymakers can use our extended agency, capacity, propensity MOP framework including its specification for professional associations and SMEs – that is legitimacy, social ties, knowledge, and resources – to identify, empower, and activate appropriate change agents, scope respective challenges, and develop effective governance approaches. By including propensity as the third MOP quality, we also draw attention to the difference between using existing structures for transition governance (middle actors) and establishing new institutions (intermediaries). Policymaking should cautiously consider trade-offs between those qualities to yield effective governance arrangements.
Second, since local guilds do not exist in other countries, policymakers targeting the ‘installation bottleneck’ may establish similar structures or reform existing structures to foster local peer exchange and self-help, grant subsidiarity in a sphere of self-governance, and infuse resources conditional to the facilitation of local climate action. In light of our findings, the decision of the UK government to cease public funding for Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) between businesses and their local authorities by April 2024 and to confer LEPs functions including business support and representation solely to local authorities (DLUHC and DBT 2023) appears counterintuitive and potentially counterproductive. On the other hand, our findings underscore recommendations to expand the responsibility of UK’s Local Net-zero Hubs and European one-stop shops to supporting installation enterprises and their workforce (European Commission 2024; Innovate UK 2022), first, because these recommendations acknowledge the largely under-recognised importance of the installation stage of local climate action; second, because they recognise that the decentral provision of low-carbon technologies also requires decentral presence of support structures for installers. However, top-down established institutions (such as intermediaries) without elements of subsidiarity, that is co-determination of the affected group, may face a lack of outreach to this group due to limited legitimacy and trust, social ties and pre-established procedures, and expert knowledge of practitioners which is a typical problem in SME governance (Hampton et al., 2024). Instead, granting scope for (conditional) bottom-up self-organisation within the ‘push/pull frame’ of conditional subsidiarity appears to be more promising to foster ownership for climate action among installers, develop practically robust solutions, and allow “people to participate in change in ways that fits their own contexts and concerns”.
Third, policies and governance structures should be designed to both enhance the cross-trade cooperation and competence required for low-carbon installations and to facilitate intra-trade exchange and social learning in Communities of Practice.
Limitations and future research
Our results should be examined considering several limitations which are briefly discussed hereafter.
First, guilds are multi-faceted and ambiguous: guilds are associations and public corporations, formal social groups, and externally represented and internally shaped by individuals. Thus, although we write about ‘the guild’ as actor activities may be performed by individuals, units, or members. However, we trust that our results are attentive to these facets when differentiation matters.
Second and associated, we did not interview entire guilds but their representatives. These may be inclined to portray their guild particularly beneficially and may have different perspectives on guild activities than members or non-members (Glasl, 2010; Sack & Fuchs, 2022). To counteract this bias, we interviewed individuals in very different positions (see Table 5).
Third, we deliberately placed the sampling emphasis in the second phase on demonstrated facilitative guild actions to ground governance recommendations in empirical evidence of what guilds already do rather than on theoretical speculations about what guilds could potentially do. While this sampling corresponds to our aim, it may fall short of insights into challenges for less facilitative guilds. To address this, we included interviews from the first phase in our analysis and recruited participants with ‘helicopter views’ and aggregated knowledge across guilds. Moreover, we asked participants what differentiates their case from other cases in Germany. Hence, we hold our results to be somewhat characteristic of German guilds in the studied ‘climate trades’.
Future research could take a more structured comparative approach or evaluate a larger sample to gain better overviews of the guild landscape and conducive or obstructive conditions. These could also include assessments of quantitative indicators for guilds’ activities such as the numbers of installations (total and per skilled worker), skilled workers with completed further training, or new apprentices in a guild district. Additionally, future research could expand to guilds in other trades and other functions, for example by studying their role in facilitating climate action among SMEs as consumers of energy in energy-intensive trades. Furthermore, our proposed extended MOP framework including the identified challenges signpost relevant trajectories for future studies and may prove a useful lens for other researchers to study governance arrangements in the skilled trades in other countries. Lastly, comparative studies of such governance arrangements between countries promise valuable insights into the contextuality of effective implementation governance.
Conclusion
This research represents the inaugural exploration of craft guilds as pivotal ‘upper middle’ actors and key catalysts within Germany's energy transition and climate action, particularly in rooftop PV and heat pump installation. By analysing demonstrated facilitative activities of guilds, it is the first to expand the Middle-Out Perspective to the ‘upper middle’ of professional associations, to recognise guilds’ social potential to resolve the ‘installation bottleneck’ in the crafts and trades, and to draw empirically grounded conclusions on strategies to tap that potential.
Transcending the context of craft guilds in Germany, this study bears important implications for international actors striving to tackle the ‘installation bottleneck’ by highlighting the social nature of installation in the skilled trades: the contextual social sphere, including the relationships, routines, and agendas of its actors, is critical to successful implementation governance. By attending to actors’ respective agency, capacity, and propensity and recognising these qualities as potential, policymakers can design more effective strategies that can win people for change by ‘meeting them where they are’.
Acknowledgements
This research is part of Simon Wehden’s PhD project funded through a PhD scholarship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Simon Wehden thanks the Chamber of Crafts Düsseldorf, ZDH, and DHI for enabling his participation at the International Handwerksmesse and Zukunft Handwerk.
Declarations
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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We use low-carbon installations as an umbrella term for services to implement low-carbon measures such as heat pumps, rooftop PV, or energy-efficient building renovation. For this article, we focused on the first two measures.
In the UK, for comparison, 2,800 of the 47,000 electrician enterprises are members of the Electrical Contractors Organisation (ECA 2024; ONS 2023). The Federation of Master Builders as the largest trade association in UK’s construction sector has 8,000 members (TAF 2022).
All conferences were open to the public after registration. Apart from Zukunft Handwerk and Internationale Handwerksmesse, all conferences were free of charge. For these two events we obtained free access as researchers.
The flood in the Ahr valley in July 2021 was one of the most severe natural disasters in Germany in the last decades destroying many homes, businesses, and infrastructure. In the first research phase, we interviewed a representative of the local Chamber of Crafts on how the craft enterprises and institutions dealt with the crisis and engaged in disaster response and reconstruction.
IET is integral and unique to training in the skilled crafts and ensures that apprentices are practically trained in all essential activities of their trade, even if their enterprise does not engage in those activities. In the German dual training system, IET is in the responsibility of craft self-governance, not the state.
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