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Cited by 122Management and Organizational StudiesEnvironmental Sustainability in BusinessCorporate Social Responsibility Reporting

Environmental Managers and Institutional Work: Reconciling Tensions of Competing Institutional Logics

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Dahlmann, Frederik, Grosvold, Johanne·2017·Business Ethics Quarterly
DOI 10.1017/beq.2016.65
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Abstract

Firms face a variety of institutional logics and one important question is how individuals within firms manage these logics. Environmental managers in particular face tensions in reconciling their firms’ commercial fortunes with demands for greater environmental responsiveness. We explore how institutional work enables environmental managers to respond to competing institutional logics. Drawing on repeated interviews with 55 firms, we find that environmental managers face competition between a market-based logic and an emerging environmental logic. We show that some environmental managers embed the environmental logic alongside the market logic through variations of creation and disruption, thus over time creating institutional change, which can result in blended logics. Others, however, pursue a strategy of status quo or disengagement through maintenance or other forms of disruption, where the two logics coexist in principle but not in practice; instead the market logic retains its dominance. We discuss the implications of our findings for research.

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  • Both market profitability and environmental protection are typical competing logics that set dichotomous directions of organizations' attention and objectives when explaining engagement with environmental issues.

    “More concisely, both market profitability and environmental protection are the typical competing logics that set the dichotomous directions of organizations' attention and objectives when explaining organizations' engagement with environmental issues (Dahlmann & Grosvold, 2017;Ren, Fan, & Tang, 2022).”

    From Advancing the sustainability agenda through strategic human resource management: Insights and suggestions for future research (2023) · cites this paper as Dahlmann & Grosvold, 2017

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Authors
Dahlmann, F., & Grosvold, J.
Affiliations
  • University of Warwick (GB)
  • University of Bath (GB)
ORCID
Venue
Business Ethics Quarterly
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2017-02-27
Volume
27
Issue
2
Pages
263-291
ISSN
  • 1052-150X (ISSN-L)
  • 2153-3326
DOI
10.1017/beq.2016.65
OpenAlex
W2591623221
Cited by
122
References
4
Citations by year
2026: 15 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 2
FWCI
15.79
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified)
Locations
  • Business Ethics Quarterly (publishedVersion)
  • Pure (University of Bath) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • Warwick Research Archive Portal (University of Warwick) (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management and Organizational Studies
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Environmental Sustainability in Business
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting
Keywords
environmental managers, institutional work, competing institutional logics, market logic, institutional change, disengagement, environmental responsiveness, corporate environmental management

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