Linda C. Forbes

The New Corporate Environmentalism and The Ecology of Commerce

This article identifies Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce (TEoC) as a foundational work for scholars interested in the greening of business, sustainable enterprise, and environmental policy. TEoC was published in the early 1990s and was instrumental in launching and amplifying a social movement we refer to as the New Corporate Environmentalism (NCE). It also influenced research on organizations and the natural environment, which today is a vibrant field addressing major themes in business strategy, organizational change and development, organizational sociology, and other timely areas of study. In addition, TEoC provokes thinking about one of the most debated environmental questions of our time: How far can we go with green capitalism? Hawken sets his sights on ending industrialism as we know it and on developing a restorative economy based on technological innovation, sweeping structural reform, and radical process redesign. Although TEoC is replete with reverence for nature, in concert with other sympathetic critics of green capitalism, we raise a question about the balance it strikes between environmental ethics and ecological economics.

Metaphor as the Foundation of Organizational Studies Images of Organization and Beyond

This article is the first part of a Citation Classics and Foundational Works feature focused on metaphor and organizational studies. The second part of the feature is a personal reflection by Gareth Morgan on the genesis and impact of his pathbreaking book, Images of Organization (IO). In this article, we summarize the nature of the contributions made by IO, sketch ways in which the book has prompted and served as a touchstone for new research on metaphor and organization, and discuss the application of contemporary metaphorical analysis to the problems of theory development, research methods, and puzzle solving facing scholars interested in sustainability studies and research on organizations and the natural environment (ONE). We illustrate how early research that fostered ONE scholarship is marked by the use of particularly powerful metaphorical language and attention to poetic technique as well as rigorous science. We suggest how ONE research (and organizational studies in general) can benefit from studying IO and related literature on metaphorical analysis.

Metaphors, organizations and water: Generating new images for environmental sustainability

Research across the social sciences and related fields has made it clear that metaphors underwrite both scientific and everyday thinking. Gareth Morgan’s work in this area, most vividly developed in his classic book Images of Organization, illustrates how metaphors underwrite thinking about organizations and the important role they can play in generating new thinking. In this study, we use and extend Morgan’s (2006) thesis of ‘organizations as instruments of domination’ (IoD) to reflect on critical issues in organizational studies related to water and the broader natural environment. We find extending the IoD image to be helpful: (i) in deriving and elaborating a metaphor that reflects a risky trend (‘organizations as water exploiters’); and (ii) in generating and developing a new metaphor that is explicitly normative and nature-centered (‘organizations as water keepers’). The water keeper image brings needed attention to water problems and invites further research on activist organizations (businesses and others) seeking to change thinking and practice related to environmental sustainability. We illustrate the water keeper metaphor (and the significant move away from the paradigmatic assumptions of hard anthropocentrism) with examples from environmental champion Patagonia, Inc. We then take up Morgan’s challenge to move beyond the IoD metaphor to envision non-dominating forms of organization. We revisit classic nature-inclusive metaphors and the under-explored paradigm of ecocentrism to evoke and reflect on broader notions of agency, interdependence, connectedness and social relations in transformed organizations.

The Institutionalization of Bird Protection Mabel Osgood Wright and the Early Audubon Movement

The purpose of this feature is to introduce activists and organizational and environmental scholars to a relatively unknown segment of the early American conservation movement. The authors focus on the period around 1900, a time in which birds were being slaughtered at an alarming rate, in part to supply milliners who used plumes and other bird parts to decorate women’s hats. These practices led to a groundswell of opposition that eventually turned the tide in favor of bird protection and appreciation. They also formed a foundation for today’s activism on behalf of beleaguered birds. One of the key figures leading this movement was Mabel Osgood Wright. Wright is only now beginning to receive the recognition she deserves, as is the case for many women of this era who made major contributions to the conservation movement. The authors highlight three major projects to which Wright devoted her energy (the early Audubon Society, children’s nature writing and education, and the Birdcraft Sanctuary) and discuss them as institutional manifestations of the early conservationists’ bird-loving philosophy. The authors also reprint three of her important publications. The authors believe that the reprints provide relevant insights for contemporary environmental protection and organizing.

Book Reviews : Industrial Democracy in Europe (IDE) International Research Group: Industrial Democracy in Europe Revisited 1993, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 200 pages

There is little exploration in the book of the impact that new pedagogical technologies such as distance learning or teleconferencing might have on the internationalization of management education. What role, for example, might IT, telecommunications, and interinstitutional networking play in the internationalization of business schools’? Finally, the globalization concepts currently in vogue often prepare managers to operate across different cultural environments rather than within them. Should the internationalization of management education, therefore, not be considered part of a wider endeavour to internationalize education at all levels? Is there not a limit to what a business school

A Vision for Cultivating a Nation Gifford Pinchot’s the Fight for Conservation

Early American conservationist Gifford Pinchot (1865 to 1946) and his book The Fight for Conservation (1910) are featured in this section. Written for a popular audience, The Fight for Conservation presents Pinchot’s timely critique of the degradation of natural resources in the United States and an appeal for a comprehensive and sustainable environmental policy. With evangelical zeal, Pinchot articulated a vision for cultivating a nation, linking its resources and their use to democracy, patriotism, and morality. An advocate of progressive reform and close adviser to Theodore Roosevelt, Pinchot was America’s first chief of the Forest Service. He firmly established conservation as part of the environmental vocabulary.