This paper argues that industrial responses to 'green' pressures may fruitfully be explored using a stakeholder framework. However, the common view of an objective configuration of stakeholders is replaced with one that favours an interpretive perspective. Managers are viewed as crucial mediators of stakeholder influence; how they identifjl, define and construct stakeholders is an important feature of the meaning of greening and an industry's subsequent response. A qualitative study of managers in four UK industries -supermarkets, automotives, power and chemicals -is reported. The effect of a small number of stakeholders -campaigners and regulators -is examined in some detail, distinguished differentially according to their perceived legitimacy and the threat they pose to industry. Also examined is the large group of traditionally powerful stakeholders -customers, creditors and employees -who fail markedly to impact on industry's greening. The implications of the findings for pro-environmental change and stakeholder theory are discussed.
This paper explores the view that pro-environmental organizational changes depend on the emotional meanings that managers attribute to greening. It is theoretically rooted in recent literatures on the strategic role of emotions and green organizational transformation. A comparative, qualitative study of senior managers in six U.K. supermarkets, of differing degrees of greenness, is reported. Four emotionally significant subtexts are identified: enacting green commitment, contesting green boundaries, defending autonomy and avoiding embarrassment. These are related to the way different green pressures are received, developed and culturally incorporated — or rejected. The study finds little evidence to support the emotional basis of 'true' ethically green organiza tional cultures, although managerially engineered commitment of 'belonging' to a socially responsible culture can serve some aspects of greening in a rela tively stable manner. The less-green companies are instrumental in their responses, have few corporate symbols of community or care and their man agers will deprecate or demonize those who believe otherwise. The implica tions for green organizational change suggest a key expressive role for leaders in shaping an appropriate climate. However, this is far from fool-proof, and is not suited to all organizations. Pressure from external green activists and regulators offer more coercive routes, based on creating fear, shame or embarrassment.
This article examines critically the recent growth of emotion measurement in organizational behaviour. The epistemological and phenomenological consequences of psychometrically ‘boxing’ emotion are, it is argued, problematic and restrictive. This may be seen in the power and professional prestige it affords to the measurers and in the consequences to those classified by measurement. This is particularly so when an emotion is presented as key to personal or organizational success. Emotional intelligence is a strong illustration of these issues, where ‘experts’ ascribe positive value to people with high emotional intelligence quotients (EQ), and low EQs are regarded as suitable cases for training. How can emotion be ‘known’, other than through measurement and numbers? The article suggests some different approaches towards researching an important, but enigmatic, concept.
Processes of control remain central to managerial and critical theories of organization, but their inherently emotional form has been largely neglected. The experience and expression of emotions are more than simply objects and outcomes of control, they also shape its context, processes, and consequences. Drawing upon observations of interpersonal encounters between environmental regulatory inspectors and industrial managers in the U.K., an emotional framing of the dynamics of control is developed. This presents emotion as a condition and consequence of interacting socioeconomic roles and power structures such as those associated with occupations, gender, and capitalism. It also provides a way of analyzing control that is sensitive to its emotional characteristics and may be applied to other, more conventional control contexts.
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