Bothello, 2018

693272
research-article2017
OSS0010.1177/0170840617693272Organization StudiesBothello and Djelic
Article
Organization Studies
1–27
Evolving Conceptualizations of © The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions:
Organizational Environmentalism: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0170840617693272
https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617693272
A Path Generation Account www.egosnet.org/os
Joel Bothello
Concordia University, Canada
Marie-Laure Salles-Djelic
Sciences Po, CSO, CNRS, France
Abstract
Over the past 30 years, organizations of many different kinds have introduced environmental preoccupations
into decision-making, engaging with – and in many cases co-constructing – a striking array of rankings,
best practices, standards and other governance tools. However, there has thus far been surprisingly
little exploration of the evolving normative implications of environmentalism: existing organizational
research treats environmentalism as a static, uniform and quasi-naturalistic phenomenon. In this article,
we argue instead that environmentalism is fluid and multifaceted, evolving over time to produce differing
conceptualizations that become affiliated with – and mobilized by – particular groups of actors. Using the
theoretical framing of path generation, we identify how environmentalism follows a path characterized
by episodes of re-conceptualization and re-labelling, a discursive evolution reflecting incremental yet
consequential interactions with other institutional paths. We engage in a conceptual history to identify
junctures where environmentalism meets with other institutional trajectories, facilitating shifts in meaning.
We identify moments of crookedness in the transnational environmental path that are symbolically reflected
in label changes – from the emergence of “sustainable development” in the 1980s, to “sustainability” in the
1990s, and more recently, an offshoot towards “resilience”. Those label changes are not only, we propose,
symbolic markers but are also performative and entrench consequential regime transformations with regard
to environmentalism. Through our exploration, we contribute to theory development while also generating
empirical implications: theory-wise, we identify mechanisms of path generation that inform broader debates
around path dependence. Empirically, we illustrate how different variants of environmentalism are connected
to specific meaning systems, exhibiting affinity with different organizational fields.
Keywords
conceptual history, environmentalism, path generation, resilience, sustainability
Corresponding author:
Joel Bothello, Concordia University, 1450 Rue Guy, Montréal, QC H3H 0A1, Canada.
Email: [email protected]
2 Organization Studies
Introduction
Over the past two decades, organizations of many different kinds – private firms, universities,
public or semi-public agencies, scientific laboratories and even churches – have adopted best prac-
tices, frameworks and standards aimed at ascribing value to, preserving and improving the natural
environment (Graham, Amos, & Plumptre, 2003; Waddock, 2000; Young, 1994). Whether target-
ing energy conservation, wildlife preservation, climate change mitigation, disaster prevention or
social integration, a diverse array of governance tools are now standard fare in decision-making –
e.g., ISO 14001, Fair Trade certification, the Kyoto Protocol, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
or Local Agenda 21. Adoption of these tools is now, for many different kinds of organizations, an
accepted means of attaining competitive advantage and ensuring legitimacy (Bansal & Clelland,
2004; Bansal & Roth, 2000).
Strikingly, while these tools and associated practices are becoming increasingly well-estab-
lished, there is still little consensus on the basic meaning and normative implications of environ-
mentalism (Johnston, Everard, Santillo, & Robèrt, 2007). This is apparent in the multiplicity of
labels that are currently used to denote environmentalism – “sustainability” is used interchange-
ably with other terms such as “sustainable development”, “resilience”, “greening” or “ecologism”
(Banerjee, 2003; Johnston et al., 2007; Lélé, 1991, 1998). This profusion of terminology not only
generates significant conceptual confusion but also prevents a more rigorous assessment of the
normative implications associated with environmentalism as a major contemporary institution
(Meyer, Frank, Hironaka, Schofer, & Tuma, 1997). Such conceptual confusion, we propose,
stems from the misconception that environmentalism is a spontaneous collective reaction to
impending ecological challenges (Banerjee, 2003; Wittneben, Okereke, Banerjee, & Levy, 2012).
Perceived in this way, environmentalism becomes misrepresented as a homogenous and a-tempo-
ral phenomenon.
In this article, we expose environmentalism as a historically constructed and evolving institu-
tion. At different stages of this evolution, environmentalism becomes associated with different
conceptualizations. We identify phases of framing and reframing, institutionalization and gradual
transformation – the result being a “crooked institutional trajectory” (Djelic & Quack, 2005, 2007).
In the process, organizational implications become apparent: we demonstrate how different kinds
of organizations mobilize, champion and appropriate different conceptualizations and labels. These
labels are associated with different ideological assumptions and values; hence they evoke contrast-
ing normative implications in, for example, public agencies or for-profit firms. Rather than merely
reflecting the evolving nature of ecological challenges, we show that conceptual and practice het-
erogeneity around environmentalism is a by-product of struggles within and between organiza-
tional domains. The dominance of particular regimes of conceptualizations has normative and
practice implications that may steer managerial decision-making and orient resource allocation in
quite distinct directions.
We identify three major regimes of conceptualization as reflected in the use of three different
labels – “sustainable development”, “sustainability” and “resilience”. Through an exploration, on
the timeline of environmentalism, of defining texts and key events associated with the emergence
and structuration of each regime, we outline how those terms – while sometimes used interchange-
ably – are in reality each linked with particular institutional conditions and contextualized meaning
systems. As such, they have distinct normative but also practical implications for organizations.
We show how those regimes vary in prevalence – both through time and across categories of actors
involved. While there is no neat temporal succession from one regime to another, we do show that
“sustainability” gains ground through time – without ever fully displacing “sustainable develop-
ment” – with a more recent upward trend supporting “resilience”. We follow the shifts and turning
Bothello and Djelic 3
points that account for and trigger the changing prevalence of each regime and associated meaning
systems.
Our tracing of the evolution of environmentalism allows us to specify four mechanisms that
produce gradual yet transformative institutional change in the absence of radical rupture, with a
particular focus on developments at the transnational level. We thus contribute to theory develop-
ment and inform more current debates on institutional “path dependence” (Schreyogg & Sydow,
2011; Sine & David, 2003) and “path generation” (Djelic & Quack, 2007). The mechanisms we
identify – assimilation, coalescence, co-optation and recombination – point to ongoing work and
negotiations among individual actors and organizations to either reinforce or redirect a trajectory.
They evoke non-linear, distributed and aggregated agency (e.g., Munir & Phillips, 2005). Although
we do not purport to be exhaustive with these four mechanisms, our perspective provides a com-
plementary view to traditional accounts of transformative change based on external shock or
to agentic forms of institutional entrepreneurship (Garud, Hardy, & Maguire, 2007; Garud,
Kumaraswamy, & Karnøe, 2010; Sydow, Schreyogg, & Koch, 2009), accounts that, in any case,
rarely embrace transnational dynamics.
The rest of the article is structured as follows: we begin with an examination of recent discus-
sions in the path dependence and path generation literatures, followed by an overview of our con-
ceptual history methodology. We proceed to explore how the environmental debate developed into
a transnational phenomenon starting from the launch of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962.
From there, we point to consequential inflection points during the 1970s and 1980s along the tra-
jectory of environmentalism, where episodes of partial re-conceptualization result in the emer-
gence of new normative and operational regimes. Such deviations are proposed to be the result of
incremental yet consequential interactions with other transnational trajectories, namely those of
scientization, managerialization and risk management.
Institutional Trajectories and Mechanisms of Transformation

Path dependence and institutional change
Path dependence proposes that, by virtue of first mover advantage or other favorable starting con-
ditions, certain technological innovations, organizational or institutional practices stabilize over
time, eventually “locking in” to an entrenched state (Arthur, 1994; Reinstaller & Holzl, 2009;
Vergne & Durand, 2011). The theory provides a particularly strong contribution to understanding
the dynamics of stabilization and institutionalization: practices emerge and diffuse, ultimately
becoming organizationally and institutionally inscribed (Ebbinghaus, 2009; Hall & Soskice, 2001;
Schneiberg, 2006). Taken cumulatively, these phases comprise an “institutional trajectory” (David
& Strang, 2006; Djelic & Quack, 2007).
While path dependence scholars offer generally consistent explanations for path stability, the
subject of path modification and transformation is more of an open question (Sydow et al.,
2009). Early accounts suggest the necessity of external jolts to derail deeply entrenched
paths from one “punctuated” equilibrium to another (Gersick, 1991; Haveman & Rao, 1997;
Schneiberg, 2005). However, given that exogenous pressures and challenges generally occur on
a continuous basis, only a fraction of total trajectory changes can be characterized as “spas-
modic, infrequent events” (Martin, 2010). Hence, research has shifted towards evolutionary
alternatives that explain how fundamental transformation can occur in a more incremental fash-
ion (Garud et al., 2010; Mahoney & Thelen, 2010; Pierson, 2000). Greater attention is paid to
the role of agency, with change being connected to both specific purposes and politics: actors
strategically facilitate change through experimentation, conversion and recombination of
institutional resources, or leverage embeddedness in multiple fields to transpose practices and

logics across boundaries (Bassanini & Dosi, 2001; Crouch & Farrell, 2004; Morrill, 2002). This
agentic turn materializes in accounts focusing on dynamics of institutional entrepreneurship or
institutional work by individuals or organizations (Garud et al., 2007; Lawrence, Suddaby, &
Leca, 2010; Munir & Phillips, 2005).
As useful as these agentic perspectives are to explain specific instances of institutional change,
they fall short in two ways. Firstly, their resolute focus on individual agency means they are neither
equipped to examine the aggregations of episodes that constitute institutional trajectories nor the
relationships between such episodes. Secondly, they preclude examination of institutional dynam-
ics produced by distributed agency; many institutional phenomena are the product of individual
agentic action that is only cumulatively impactful (Garud & Karnøe, 2003; Munir & Phillips,
2005). Although some progress has been made in this area (e.g., Garud et al., 2007; Garud &
Karnøe, 2003; Quack, 2007), much exploration remains to be done on the specific mechanisms of
distributed agency that produce and alter institutional trajectories (Lawrence et al., 2010). In
response, we consider the notion of path generation as better fitted to the task of theory develop-
ment with regard to the emergence and structuration of institutional trajectories.
Path Generation and the Crookedness of Institutional Trajectories

The notion of “path generation” suggests that transformative institutional change can develop
through incremental and partly disconnected, yet cumulatively significant pressures on an institu-
tional path (Djelic & Quack, 2007). This occurs when two (or more) paths come to coexist and
interact over a long period of time – e.g., with voluntary institutional appropriation (Westney,
1987), colonial or military occupation (Djelic, 1998) or periods of imperial and cultural hegemony
(Ikenberry & Kupchan, 2009). A multiplicity of pressure points through time generates unintended
“crookedness” and open-endedness, not a predetermined, linear trajectory. Thus, while actors have
agendas, resources and “purposes”, the processual nature of institutional change in this case implies
a highly dispersed and partly disconnected notion of agency. Consequential change occurs through
the cumulative impact through time of a multiplicity of agentic moves, though the result is impos-
sible to describe as “purposive action” – the influence of any particular actor on the overall trans-
formation process is generally weak. The result of this aggregation of multiple individual purposes
could only be identified and recognized post-hoc. Hence there is an inherent element of unpredict-
ability associated with path generation, as trajectories are susceptible to develop unanticipated
properties (Djelic & Quack, 2007).
Thus, path generation research contrasts with extant theories of path dependence, in that it can
be applied to investigate complex trajectories of institutionalization and change beyond individual,
agentic-based episodes. Nonetheless, we still lack an understanding of the particular mechanisms
undergirding these kinds of processes: what are the specific types of interactions that paths have
with each other? Such an exploration would not only advance research in the nascent but growing
area of path generation, but would also inform broader discussions on the nature of path depend-
ence and institutional change: studies within the latter perspective generally focus on singular tra-
jectories operating in the absence of other trajectories (e.g., David & Strang, 2006; Haveman &
Rao, 1997; Munir & Phillips, 2005). An examination of path interactions in domains populated by
multiple paths – and a specification of the nature of these interactions and hence of the mechanisms
of change and re-orientation – would represent valuable theoretical development for current
debates on path dependence, path generation and institutional change.
Using “global environmentalism” (McCormick, 1991) as an exemplar case study of a complex
institutional trajectory, we delineate the mechanisms that facilitate the transformation of this path
over the course of more than half a century. We begin our exploration in the 1960s, examining the
conditions leading to the transnationalization of environmentalism. We proceed to identify how the
emergence of related but distinct discourses around “sustainable development”, “sustainability”
and “resilience” is emblematic of collisions between environmentalism and other transnational
paths. Critically, the nature of discursive change indicates the type of path interaction that occurs,
allowing us to outline four specific mechanisms of path consolidation or re-orientation: Assimilation,
Coalescence, Co-optation, and Recombination.
Methodology – Conceptual History

To follow the trajectory of environmentalism and highlight changes over time, we use conceptual
history as a method (Koselleck, 2002). Conceptual history entails a “historical sociology of con-
cept formation” (Somers, 1995b, p. 115). It reflects an epistemological conviction that language,
concepts and their meanings are contextual, situated and socially constructed (Foucault, 1972;
Koselleck, 2002; Palonen, 2002). Words and concepts are not mere labels put on the “essence of
things”; rather they are historical and cultural objects that reveal and express “symbolic systems
with their own histories and logics” (Somers, 1995a, p. 232). These systems co-evolve with par-
ticular historical circumstances but are also strongly performative: changing meaning systems will
influence discourse but also instruments and practices associated with a particular concept or label;
these changes might even lead, in the end, to a transformation of the label. Crucially, new meaning
systems are likely to have an impact both on cognitive frames and on patterns of activities.
Conceptual history has been gaining ground in most social sciences over the last two decades
(Hampsher-Monk, Timans, & van Vree, 1998; Koselleck, 2002; Palonen, 2002; Skinner, 1969).
Scholars in different disciplines have used this methodological program to explore such fundamen-
tal categories and concepts as “agency” and “order” (Alexander, 1982), the “person” (Carrithers,
Collins, & Lukes, 1985), “civil society” (Somers, 1995a), “sovereignty” (Bartelson, 1995), “pov-
erty” (Dean, 1992), or “moral hazard” and “limited liability” (Djelic & Bothello, 2013). As a
methodological program, conceptual history belongs to the “reflexive” turn in social science
(Woolgar, 1988) – which calls for “turning social science back on itself to examine the often taken-
for-granted conceptual tools (and fundamental categories) of research” (Somers, 1995b, p. 114).
In concrete terms, our data collection and analysis consisted of three phases. First, we compiled
terms considered as synonymous with environmentalism, using the Princeton WordNet lexical
database. This database groups nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs into “synsets”, cognitive clus-
ters of terms that can be used interchangeably in discourse. We charted the frequency of usage of
the 15 terms constituting the environmentalism synset – including “environmentalism” itself –
over a 30 year period (1985–2014), using the Factíva database of environmental news article.
Figure 1 illustrates the usage of eight of the most salient labels, of which three emerge as particu-
larly noteworthy: Sustainable Development, Sustainability and Resilience. For this article, we
elected to focus on this subset of three labels as the rapid uptake in usage of these terms over the
past two decades implies a level of diffusion and institutionalization absent for other labels –
including, surprisingly, “environmentalism” itself.
The second phase of collection and analysis involved creating a timeline of key events associ-
ated with environmentalism, which we present in Table 1. We begin with the 1962 publication of
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a treatise on the harmful ecological effects of DDT usage that is
widely regarded as triggering the emergence of contemporary environmentalism (Banerjee, 2003;
Faber, Jorna, & Engelen, 2005; Hardy & Maguire, 2010; Maguire & Hardy, 2009). We outline key
events, including natural disasters and community building marker moments (like major interna-
tional conferences and/or the launch of new initiatives) but also discursive products (like
Figure 1. Number of environmental news articles citing the top eight labels.
landmark books, reports and declarations). Our chronology is culled from six environmental
timelines produced by international organizations such as the United Nations Environmental
Program (UNEP), Asian Development Bank, International Institute for Sustainable Development
(IISD), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Worldwatch
Institute and The New York Times, and only includes those events appearing in three or more of
these sources. All key events inscribed in our timeline hence are broadly considered as important
markers or turning points.
The intent in creating this timeline was two-fold. First, we aimed to chronicle defining moments
in the institutionalization process of environmentalism, including not only exogenous shocks like
natural catastrophes but also specifying other key discursive and community building events where
meaning systems and concepts are shown to evolve (Hardy & Maguire, 2010; Skinner, 1969). We
were particularly interested in the categories of actors (e.g., intergovernmental organizations, busi-
ness groups, scientists) responsible for these initiatives. Secondly – and more crucially – we sought
to identify how the three major conceptualizations of environmentalism highlighted in Figure 1
were associated with certain historical events. Therefore, for each of the defining moments identi-
fied in Table 1, we examined whether news articles referring to that specific event would also refer
to Sustainable Development, Sustainability or Resilience. In doing so, we were able to demonstrate
patterns of affiliation between timeline events, actors and labels. As illustrated in Figure 2, the
majority of private initiatives on our timeline are associated with Sustainability. The majority of
intergovernmental initiatives, on the other hand, are affiliated with the label of Sustainable
Development while exogenous events are roughly split among all three labels – albeit with a greater
inclination towards Resilience than the other two labels.
In the third phase, in order to corroborate our claims that changes in labels are accompanied by
changes in meaning/association, we also used Factíva’s classification system to compare label
uptake in different news subject domains (e.g., “Corporate News” or “Risk News”). This system
uses a proprietary algorithm to identify author information, keywords, event references, etc. in
order to classify news articles, press releases and other texts.
Table 1. Key events in environmentalism.

Year Key event Discursive product Driving actor(s) Actor category
1962 Marine biologist Rachel Carson Silent Spring Rachel Carson Private (Science)
publishes Silent Spring, calling
attention to the threat of DDT on
people and the environment
1968 Biologist Paul Ehrlich describes The Population Bomb Paul Ehrlich Private (Science)
ecological threats of a rapidly
growing human population in “The
Population Bomb”
1968 Ecologist Garrett Hardin publishes Tragedy of the Commons Garrett Hardin Private (Science)
“The Tragedy of the Commons”
highlighting overexploitation of
shared and unregulated resources
1972 Scientists from The Club of Rome The Limits to Growth The Club of Rome Private (Science)
publish “The Limits to Growth” calling
for control of population growth
1972 First UN Conference on the Human Declaration of the United United Nations Intergovernmental
Environment held in Stockholm, Nations Conference on General Assembly
followed by establishment of United the Human Environment
Nations Environmental Program
(UNEP)
1973 OPEC embargo results in oil crisis Exogenous Event
1973 Widespread adoption of The The Convention for the UN International Intergovernmental
Convention for the Prevention of Prevention of Pollution Maritime
Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) from Ships (MARPOL) Association (IMO)
1974 Chemists Rowland and Molina Stratospheric sink for Sherwood Rowland Private (Science)
establish that chlorofluorocarbons chloro-ﬂuoromethanes: & Mario Molina
(CFCs) can erode the Earth’s chlorine atom-catalyzed
protective ozone layer destruction of ozone
1975 Agriculturalist Lester Brown founds Worldwatch Papers Lester Brown Private (Science)
Worldwatch, a research institute
issuing reports on environmental and
social problems
1975 Ratification of The Convention on The Convention on IUCN Private/
International Trade in Endangered International Trade in Intergovernmental
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora Endangered Species of
(CITES) Wild Fauna & Flora
1976 The first UN Conference on Human The Vancouver UN-HABITAT Intergovernmental
Settlements is held in Vancouver, Declaration on Human
linking the environment and human Settlements
settlement
1978 Amoco Cadiz oil spill off the coast of Exogenous Event
Brittany, France
1979 Nuclear accident occurs on Three Exogenous Event
Mile Island, Pennsylvania
1979 Ratification of The Convention on Convention on Long- UNECE (UN Intergovernmental
Long-Range Transboundary Air Range Transboundary Air Economic
Pollution Pollution Commission for
Europe)
1980 IUCN launches landmark “World World Conservation IUCN Private
Conservation Strategy” report Strategy
1982 Ratification of UN Convention on UN Convention on the UNCLOS Intergovernmental
the Law of the Sea, concerning Law of the Sea
environmental standards around
marine pollution
(Continued)
Table 1. (Continued)
1984 Toxic chemical leak leaves up to Exogenous Event

10,000 dead and 300,000 injured in
Bhopal, India
1985 British and American scientists Large losses of total J. C. Farman, B. G. Private (Science)
publish findings that CFCs are ozone in Antarctica Gardiner and J. D.
potentially causing a hole in the reveal seasonal ClOx/ Shanklin
ozone layer NOx interaction
1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident Exogenous Event
generates massive radioactive
pollution in Ukraine
1987 UNEP adoption of Montréal Protocol Montréal Protocol on UNEP Intergovernmental
on Substances that Deplete the Substances that Deplete
Ozone Layer the Ozone Layer
1988 World Commission on Environment Our Common Future The Brundtland Intergovernmental
and Development (WCED) publishes Commission
“Our Common Future” (a.k.a. the
Brundtland Report), popularizing the
term “Sustainable Development”
1989 Exxon Valdez tanker runs aground, Exogenous Event
dumping 11 million gallons of oil into
Alaska’s Prince William Sound
1989 Ratification of Basel Convention Basel Convention UNEP Intergovernmental
on the Control of Transboundary on Control of
Movements of Hazardous Wastes Transboundary
and Their Disposal Movements of Hazardous
Wastes & Their Disposal
1992 Sustainable Development Agenda Agenda 21 (A/ United Nations Intergovernmental
21 is adopted at the Earth Summit CONF.151/26) General Assembly
in Rio. Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) also
signed by 165 UN members
1992 The Business Council for Sustainable Changing Course: Stephan Private (Corporate)
Development (BCSD) publishes A Global Business Schmidheiny &
“Changing Course” establishing Perspective on BCSD
business interests in promoting Development and the
sustainable development practices Environment
1994 Ratification of United Nations Elaboration of United Nations Intergovernmental
Convention to Combat Desertification an International General Assembly
(UNCCD) in those Countries Convention to Combat
Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification (A/
Desertification, particularly in Africa AC.241/27)
1996 ISO 14001 formally adopted as ISO 14001: Environmental Global Private (Corporate)
voluntary international standard Management System Self- Environmental
for corporate environmental Assessment Checklist Management
management Initiative (GEMI)
1997 Kyoto Protocol signed as an Kyoto Protocol to United Nations Intergovernmental
amendment to the UNFCCC the United Nations General Assembly
Framework Convention
on Climate Change
1999 Thousands of demonstrators protest Exogenous Event
against globalization at WTO
meeting in Seattle
1999 DJSI guide launched for investors Dow Jones Sustainability Dow Jones Indexes, Private (Corporate)
looking to invest in sustainable Indexes 1999 Stoxx Ltd and SAM
companies Group
Table 1. (Continued)
2000 The largest-ever gathering of United Nations United Nations Intergovernmental

world leaders sets UN Millennium Millennium Declaration General Assembly
Development Goals, time-bound (A/RES/55/2)
and measurable goals regarding
poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy,
environmental degradation and
gender discrimination
2001 Trade ministers from 142 countries Ministerial Declaration World Trade Mixed (Private/
recognize environmental and (WT/MIN(01)/DEC/1) Organization Intergovernmental)
development concerns in final
declaration of the 4th WTO
Ministerial Conference in Doha
2002 104 world leaders and thousands of Johannesburg Declaration United Nations Intergovernmental
delegates meet at the World Summit on Sustainable General Assembly/
on Sustainable Development in Development (A/ UNEP
Johannesburg (Rio+10) CONF.199/20)
2002 Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Global Reporting Private (Corporate)
releases guidelines for reporting Guidelines 2002 Initiative
on the economic, environmental
and social dimensions of business
activities
2004 Wangari Muta Maathai, founder Exogenous Event
of the Green Belt Movement in
Kenya, is first environmentalist to be
awarded a Nobel Prize
2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Ecosystems and Human World Resources Mixed (Private/
System launched Well-Being – Synthesis Initiative (WRI), Intergovernmental)
with UN agencies
2006 Stern Review makes the economic The Stern Review on the Nicholas Stern Mixed (Private/
case on costs of inaction on climate Economics of Climate National)
change Change
2007 Climate change documentary “An “An Inconvenient Truth” Al Gore Private (Science)
Inconvenient Truth”, shares Nobel
prize with IPCC
2009 COP15: Conference fails to agree Report of the COP on UNFCCC Intergovernmental
upon reductions of GHG beyond its 15th session (FCCC/
Kyoto CP/2009/11)
2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig Exogenous Event
explosion leaks 5 million barrels of
crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico
2011 Japan earthquake, tsunami and Exogenous Event
Fukushima disaster
2012 The UN Conference on Sustainable Report on the UN United Nations Intergovernmental
Development (Rio+ 20) takes place Conference on General Assembly/
in Brazil Sustainable Development UNEP
(A/CONF.216/16)
In the next section, we begin by investigating the beginning phase of “transnationalization” of

environmentalism from previously disparate national concerns (Djelic & Quack, 2007). We then
proceed to investigate the subsequent phases of emergence for the three major conceptualizations
of sustainable development, sustainability and resilience, explaning how the particular characteris-
tics of each label reflect contextual embeddedness and historical developments. As we analyze the
Figure 2. Label affiliation according to event type (# of articles).
constellation of events, actors, discourses and meaning systems at each of the four junctures – the
emergence of transnational environmentalism, sustainable development and re-orientations
towards sustainability and resilience – we are able to reveal one dominant mechanism each time.
Assimilation is the key mechanism of transnational path emergence; coalescence appears as the
main mechanism of path development leading to a sustainable development regime; co-optation is
a mechanism of stabilization that entails a re-conceptualization towards sustainability; while
recombination is a mechanism of path re-orientation promoting resilience. These four mechanisms
are key to the long-run structuration and transformation of the transnational environmentalist
trajectory.
Transnational Environmentalism and its Conceptual Evolution

Environmentalism, as a movement, predates our selected starting point of the mid-twentieth cen-
tury: the origins of environmental concerns are rooted in the industrialization of Europe during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The intense mining, land drainage, deforestation and highly
polluting factory production accompanying the first industrial revolution generated polarizing
reactions in England, France and Germany, later spreading to the United States (Fiege, 2011;
McCormick, 1991). However, such developments resulted in piecemeal national responses, up to
and including the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. From the latter half of the twentieth
century though, environmental protection became a truly transnational phenomenon (Holmberg,
1992, p. 20; Mebratu, 1998), with two parallel developments: first, a concern with overpopulation
and its impact on the planet and global resources as a whole; and second, an increasing reliance on
scientific modelling and technical solutions.
Projecting environmentalism at the transnational level

The concern with overpopulation followed the baby boom of the post-war period: in the 1960s a
number of neo-Malthusian scientists raised concerns about the potentially adverse impacts of
population growth. In 1968, biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, highlighting
the ecological impact of overpopulation (Ehrlich, 1968). Later that year, ecologist Garrett Hardin
published “The Tragedy of the Commons” in the journal Science, advocating constraints on man’s
“freedom to breed” in order to protect the environment (Hardin, 1968). In parallel, a group of inter-
national scientists, policymakers and business leaders gathered to form The Club of Rome, an
environmental think tank oriented towards addressing international political issues, foremost
among these being population growth. Notable members of the Club included Italian industrialist
and scholar Aurelio Peccei, Scotsman Alexander King (at the time, the scientific director of the
OECD), a married couple of American environmental scientists named Donella and Dennis
Meadows, and an Indian experimental physicist named Ashok Khosla.
In 1972, The Club of Rome released a landmark report entitled The Limits to Growth, which
would go on to become the best-selling book in contemporary environmentalism (Stoczkowski,
2009). Donella and Dennis Meadows, who were working at MIT at the time, used a nascent model-
ling instrument named “System Dynamics” to predict the human impact on the environment. Their
report outlined, in Malthusian terms, how existing economic and population growth could not be
sustained with finite resources and that mankind should be ready for a “controlled, orderly transi-
tion from growth to global equilibrium” (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens, 1972, p. 184).
In the same year as the publication of Limits to Growth, the UN held their first Conference on
the Human Environment in Stockholm attended by representatives from 113 states. The Secretary
General of this conference – and of the resulting United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP)
– was Maurice Strong, a Canadian industrialist and Club of Rome member. An initial focus on
population control was opposed by developing countries (particularly India), although scientific
solutions featured prominently as one of 26 principles of the official Declaration: “Science and
technology … must be applied to the identification, avoidance and control of environmental risks
and the solution of environmental problems” (UNEP, 1972). The Stockholm Conference proved
effective enough to spur subsequent UN conventions on marine pollution (1973 and 1982), wildlife
protection (1975), air pollution (1979), and ozone depletion (1987) all of which referred to the
1972 conference as a triggering event.
Mechanism of transnational path emergence – Assimilation. Based on this sequence of events, we

propose that the transformation of environmentalism – from isolated national movements into a
transnational issue – resulted from the conjunction of two main developments. First was the linking
of environmentalism to neo-Malthusian concerns about population growth in the post-war period.
Overpopulation was conceptualized as a “commons” – and therefore an international – problem,
the UN holding a first conference on world population in Rome as early as 1954 (Dean, 1992).
Global population growth was connected with potentially major resource and environmental con-
sequences – and morphed into a critical environmental issue with a broad international impact and
appeal (Robertson, 2012). Environmentalism was hence incorporated with overpopulation issues
and a transnational community (Djelic & Quack, 2010) of individual and organizational actors
soon mobilized around the problem thus redefined.
A second (and connected) component of the transformation and transnationationalization of
environmentalism was the adoption of a science-based perspective and apparatus. In the post-war
period, the world science system dramatically expanded, “produc[ing] many organizations and
professions that could speak authoritatively and with putative objectivity on a wide range of
environmental issues” (Meyer et al., 1997, p. 636). In Table 1, the private events listed between
1962 and 1975 were all initiated by scientists: Carson, Ehrlich and Hardin were biologists by train-
ing, while the majority of the Club of Rome members held advanced degrees in physics, chemistry,
biology and engineering. This, combined with the new predictive models of population growth,
created a rationalized impetus to address environmental issues.
We use the term “assimilation” to describe this mechanism of path interaction. The piece-
meal issues related to the environment – DDT usage, marine and air pollution, ozone deple-
tion, etc. – were assimilated in the late 1960s and 1970s into global concerns around
overpopulation, catalyzed and reinforced by a concurrent wave of scientization. However, this
process of transnationalization did not coagulate the various concerns; by and large, they were
treated as disparate symptoms of overpopulation, with the actors involved remaining rela-
tively disconnected.
Sustainable development: Reconciling environmentalism and growth

Following the 1972 Stockholm conference, the newly created UNEP coordinated with the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to draft a strategy that could reconcile
development and environmentalism – one aimed at national governments, UN agencies and other
intergovernmental bodies (McCormick, 1986). In 1980, IUCN – along with the World Wildlife
Fund (WWF), UNESCO and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – issued a major report
called the “World Conservation Strategy” (WCS). The report systematically aggregated diffuse
environmental ideas under one coherent banner, namely the stewardship of resources for future
generations (IUCN, 1980, p. I), while also providing the first major mention of the term “sustain-
able development” as a means of stewardship. However, the impact of the report was ultimately
hampered by its focus on conservation of nature and wildlife without an adequate reconciliation of
socio-economic issues and, in particular, population growth (McCormick, 1986). By the authors’
own admission the report reflected a compromise, chiefly between “conservationists and the prac-
titioners of development, who differ[ed] in their emphasis on maintenance on the one hand and
production on the other” (IUCN, 1980, p. II).
In 1983, UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar approached Norwegian Prime Minister
Gro Harlem Brundtland to form a commission to concretely address issues of environmental deg-
radation, based on the WCS Report. Brundtland assembled a group of ministers from a variety of
countries – as well as a special advisory group that included Club of Rome members (WCED,
1987, p. 283) – the objective being to produce “greater co-operation [among] countries at different
stages of economic and social development” on environmental issues (United Nations General
Assembly, 1983). This group was named The World Commission on Environment and Development
(WCED), also known as the Brundtland Commission.
In October 1987, the Commission issued a report titled Our Common Future – also known as
the Brundtland Report – promoting the need to address global and interlocking issues such as eco-
logical protection, energy generation and food production. Of particular consequence was a more
accessible and clear definition of the term “sustainable development” than that provided in the
WCS report. The concept was redefined as the capacity to “meet the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987). This
notion of “intergenerational equity” would become the cornerstone of environmentalist discourse
in the following decades (Banerjee, 2003; Mebratu, 1998), being re-affirmed at subsequent UN
summits in 1992, 2002 and 2012 and initiating an explosion of work on issues of development and
the environment (Sneddon, Howarth, & Norgaard, 2006).
Mechanism of path development – Coalescence. As outlined earlier, the transformation of environ-

mentalism into a transnational issue was facilitated through assimilation into broader trends – i.e.,
scientization and concerns about overpopulation. These initiatives (and the actors behind them)
were initially only loosely affiliated with one another, resulting in a multitude of conventions in the
1970s around marine and air pollution, wildlife preservation, human settlement management and
ozone protection based upon the Stockholm Declaration. Arguably, this loose coupling and frag-
mentation within bonds was what made aggregation under a very broad umbrella possible.
On the other hand, the fragmentation in meaning and loose coupling also explains in part the
limited impact of the WCS report as well as the success of the Brundtland Report. IUCN had held
the name the International Union for Protection of Nature until 1956 and despite the name change,
continued advocating principles of wildlife protection. Thus, while UNEP was pushing for “con-
servation” i.e., reconciliation of development and environmentalism, IUCN was seemingly advo-
cating preservation at the expense of development (McCormick, 1986, p. 185). The admission of
compromise by the WCS authors contrasted sharply with The Brundtland Commission that took
development as a foundational principle and successfully aggregated previously distinct issues
(e.g., international security, resource scarcity, overpopulation, social exclusion) into one compre-
hensive construct of Sustainable Development.
We argue that these developments reflect a second mechanism of path generation that we label
as “Coalescence”. Coalescence refers to the formation of a distinct transnational path that aggre-
gates and connects disparate issues within a unified – albeit broad – construct. The Brundtland
Report was able to accomplish this by scaffolding environmental issues upon a foundation of
human development, a principle that succeeded in mobilizing multiple stakeholders. As evidenced
by the failure of the WCS report, the lack of a coherent ideological basis had previously prevented
such coalescence from occurring.
In the following section, we outline how the label “sustainability” evolved from an offshoot
of sustainable development into a standalone conceptualization of environmentalism. Although
the term sustainability had already been in use during the issuing of the Brundtland Report, it
was conceptually intertwined with the notion of sustainable development until the late 1990s.
Despite being used sparingly in those early years, by the first decade of the new millenium it
rapidly eclipsed sustainable development in discourse. We therefore investigate the events
leading to this digression, proceeding to highlight the specific associations with this label –
including how it differs from sustainable development – and indicate the underlying path gen-
eration mechanisms.
The digression of sustainability from sustainable development

Although the Brundtland Report generated political consensus with a broad roadmap for future
development, challenges to the agenda quickly emerged. Participants from developing nations,
echoing concerns from Stockholm in 1972, noted that “sustainable development” failed to suffi-
ciently address problems such as poverty and social inclusion (Lélé, 1991). From an operational
perspective, the overarching conceptualization was still politically contested with ill-defined
boundaries (Lélé, 1998; McManus, 1996); such ambiguity allowed various interest groups to oper-
ationalize sustainable development according to their own particular needs, and by 1990, over 140
operational – and conflicting – definitions had emerged (Johnston et al., 2007; Lélé, 1991). This
fragmentation of sustainable development was particularly consequential during the 1990s as one
interest group capitalized upon the ambiguity to institutionalize a divergent conceptualization of
environmentalism.
Six years after the 1972 Stockholm conference, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)
– the largest business advocacy organization in the world – established a Commission on the
Environment. The aim was to “promulgate sound environmental policies for industry and prepare
business input into intergovernmental and other international projects” (Tryzna, Margold, &
Osborn, 1996, p. 93). The Commission subsequently organized a high-profile World Industry
Conference on Environmental Management (WICEM I) in 1984 and by 1990 had succeeded in
becoming the sole representative of business interests at a preparatory ministerial meeting in
Bergen for the upcoming Rio Summit.
At that meeting, UNEP Director Maurice Strong met with a Swiss businessman named Stephan
Schmidheiny, soon after appointing him as chief adviser for business and industry at Rio (Johnson,
2012). Schmidheiny had advocated businesses making “creative contributions” to ecological leg-
islation and meeting the “emotion of ecologists” with “economic truth” (Schmidheiny & BCSD,
1992; Sklair, 2001, p. 205). He also coined the highly popular term “eco-efficiency” to improve the
business appeal of sustainability (Schmidheiny & BCSD, 1992). Schmidheiny would proceed to
establish the (World) Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), an organization
that would inherit the role of business representative from ICC at all subsequent UN environmental
events. Numerous other green networks emerged in the following years with similar modi operandi
to WBCSD, notably emphasizing “self-assessment and voluntary codes where possible, but a deci-
sive input into regulation where necessary” (Sklair, 2001, p. 205).
Inspired by the successful launch of the ISO 9000 quality control program in 1987, Schmidheiny
and Strong lobbied the director-general of the International Organization of Standards (ISO) to
develop an environmental management system (EMS) for sustainable development. ISO had already
been deliberating the construction of a standardized EMS since the late 1980s, as a means to mitigate
potential trade barriers arising from the different national environmental schemes emerging at the
time (Clapp, 1998). A Strategic Advisory Group on the Environment, primarily composed of repre-
sentatives from private-sector firms and international trade and standards associations, was formed to
provide recommendations on a new standard that would comply with the Agenda 21 declaration from
Rio. In 1996, ISO launched their 14000 certification series, an EMS template consisting of two com-
ponents: Environmental Auditing and Environmental Performance Evaluation (Cascio, Woodside, &
Mitchell, 1996; Tibor & Feldman, 1996). A number of other standards, indices and organizations
spun off from ISO 14000, particularly within the private sector where a coalition of WBCSD mem-
bers – who were also CEOs of major multinational firms – pushed for the development of the Dow
Jones Sustainability Group Index (DJSI) in 1999 (Clapp, 1998; Prestbo, 2000).
In the ensuing 15 years, sustainability became the dominant conceptual regime of environ-
mentalism. Performance indicators, benchmarks, certification programs and standards for sustain-
ability diffused widely, from the GRI to LEED building codes, Social Accountability (SA8000)
standards, Forestry Stewardship Council and Fair Trade certifications (Boström & Hallström,
2010; Clapp, 1998). Auditing processes, including Triple Bottom Line accounting and indices such
as the Environmental Sustainability/ Performance Index and Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
have similarly exploded, leading to a proliferation of indicators unprecedented in the environmen-
tal movement. Within organizations, Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives were reframed
into Corporate Sustainability programs (Dyllick & Hockerts, 2002), in combination with the crea-
tion of new professions and roles – sustainability consultants, managers, specialists, and even
Chief Sustainability Officers (Lubin & Esty, 2010; Wright, Nyberg, & Grant, 2006).
The distinguishing features of sustainability

What have been the conceptual consequences of this digression of sustainability from its pre-
cedessor concept? In 2001, UNESCO outlined a conceptual distinction between the two: sustainable
Figure 3. Percentage of environmental news articles classified as “Corporate/Industrial News” or

“Political/International Relations”, by label.
development was designated as a process and pathway of growth, while sustainability was the
desired end-state or outcome (UNESCO, 2012, p. 5). However, the preceding historical account of
the development of sustainability indicates more fundamental differences between the two con-
cepts. A content analysis of how the two terms are used proves to be particularly informative.
The first difference is reflected in Figure 3, which illustrates the percentage of environmen-
tal news articles classified by Factíva as also being “Corporate/Industrial News” and “Political/
International Relations News” for each of the two labels (excluding those articles using both
labels interchangeably). Despite the presumed synonymity between the two terms, when exam-
ined in isolation, sustainability is demonstrated here as having a stronger corporate and indus-
trial orientation than sustainable development, a distinction remaining consistent since the
mid-1990s. The difference is even more prominent when observing environmental discourse
within the political/international relations sphere. Less than 10% of environmental articles per
year exclusively use the term Sustainability, compared with 30-50% for sustainable develop-
ment between 2006 and 2013. Within this domain, the latter concept remains the dominant
conceptualization.
Another distinguishing feature of sustainability is a reliance on metrics and reporting systems to
produce transparency and efficiency. Figure 4 examines the same corpus of articles as in Figure 3
to determine the percentage of articles referring to “transparency” or “efficiency” with respect to
both sustainability and sustainable development. Over the 15 year period, these terms appear in
only 15% of sustainable development articles, compared with 28% for sustainability news.
Mechanism of path stabilization – Co-optation. Although the Brundtland Report successfully aggre-
gated environmental issues under the umbrella of sustainable development, the ambiguity of the
concept also opened up space for contestation and appropriation of meaning. We demonstrate
above that this allowed a third mechanism of path generation to occur: sustainability is an offshoot
that has been appropriated and re-conceptualized as a corporate and performance-oriented form of
environmentalism. Since the turn of millennium, this term has gradually overshadowed its prede-
cessor, with the locus of environmental responsibility shifting from intergovernmental and state-
led environmental programs to transnational private-sector initiatives (Dyllick & Hockerts, 2002;
Sklair, 2001).
Figure 4. Percentage of environmental news articles mentioning “transparency” or “efficiency” for each
label (excluding articles using both labels).
In examining the specificity of co-optation, we observe that sustainability results from the
“managerialization” of environmentalism. Managerialization can be defined as the institutional
pressure for “greater transparency … efficiency and ‘customer’ orientation [and] the generalization
of competition and market mechanisms” (Djelic, 2006, p. 72). It is, in itself, an institutional trajec-
tory, stemming from the broader introduction of neoliberal reforms in the 1980s and occurring in
concert with the “audit explosion” of the 1990s, when the practice of auditing flourished as a
means of verification and a signal of quality assurance (Power, 1997). A basic yet notable feature
of auditing – and managerialization – is a normative orientation towards technical and output
related ideals, e.g., “cost effectiveness”, “efficiency” and “quality” (Power, 1997, p. 91). Such ide-
als necessitate the construction of myriad performance measurement systems and indicators
designed to making things “auditable”, even if the link to output is tenuous (Power, 1997, p. 115).
As a result of managerialization, environmentalism has become rationalized, characterized by
audits, strategic plans, quantitative evaluations, and consultants (Hwang & Powell, 2009). The
identification of sustainability as an “outcome” by UNESCO in 2001 marks a major discursive
demarcation between process and result-oriented approaches to environmentalism, the latter being
characterized by environmental ratings systems, consultancies and management roles.
We use the term “Co-optation” to describe this mechanism of path generation. Here, a specific
label of environmentalism was appropriated by business interests and imbued with new meaning,
diverging from the umbrella concept of sustainable development. Co-optation is a distinct path
generation mechanism in that it is one-directional: ICC and BCSD pushed for discretionary corpo-
rate initiatives combined with an institutionalized involvement in regulation. Hence, the mecha-
nism is in this case skewed to favor the interests of business stakeholders with little reciprocal
influence from the environmental community (Sklair, 2001).
In examining the history of this co-optation, we can identify interaction points between the
trajectories of environmentalism and managerialization. Maurice Strong and the ICC were early
advocates of business involvement in drafting environmental policy-making; fora such as WICEM
were minor yet consequential events where a unified corporate/industrial position on environmen-
talism coagulated. As documented by numerous scholars though, one of the primary catalyzers is
Stephen Schmidheiny himself (McManus, 1996; Mebratu, 1998; Redclift, 2005). Beginning with
his appointment at the Rio Summit, Schmidheiny’s desire to imitate the ISO 9000 system, and his
activities with the WBCSD demonstrate the mechanism by which the practice of audit entered the
sustainable development movement. The diffusion of the ISO 14000 standards and the consequent
emergence of myriad sustainability indicators and certification systems (e.g., DJSI, Fairtrade,
Principles for Responsible Investment, etc.) similarly demonstrate the strong ongoing influence of
managerialization on environmentalism.
From sustainability to resilience

Although sustainability is still the dominant conceptualization in current ecological discourse, we
propose that a distinct conceptual offshoot has already started to take shape in the form of “resil-
ience”. In early conceptualizations of sustainability during the 1990s, risk was only a marginal
inclusion in prevailing discourse. However, the indicators and standards developed during the
sustainability episode have, since the turn of the 21st century, been increasingly perceived as inad-
equate for predicting and handling the impacts of crises, whether environmental or structural (Gray
& Wiedemann, 1999). As such, environmentalism is increasingly shifting towards a conceptualiza-
tion of “resilience”, or the capacity for systems to handle risk and to prevent, endure and recover
from crises and shocks.
Conceptualizing resilience – Environmentalism as risk management. Resilience is a term grounded in

systems ecology, first appearing in an academic article by Canadian ecologist C.S. Holling in 1973.
Modelling the relationship between populations of predator and prey, Holling provided an alterna-
tive to classical equilibrium-based theories of ecological systems – including those contained
within the Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972, p. 184) – proposing instead that such systems
remain cohesive even when fluctuating within certain parameters he called “domains of attraction”
(Holling, 1973). He labelled this cohesion as “resilience”, or the “measure of the persistence of
systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance” (Holling, 1973, p. 14). In the early
years following his publication, Holling’s conceptualization gained little traction in the ecology
community, mainly because it deviated from prevailing single equilibrium theories of system
behavior. The domains of attraction theory was thus largely received as a modelling exercise, lack-
ing sufficient empirical evidence to apply to real world phenomena (Folke, 2006).
For two decades, resilience was sparingly used outside the field of ecology, until Holling and
members of the Swedish Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics founded in 1999 the Resilience
Alliance, comprised of a consortium of scientists promoting “social-ecological resilience” (Folke,
2006; Walker & Cooper, 2011). This was an expanded definition allowing urban settlement and
coastal community vulnerability to be incorporated into the resilience fold. In 2007, Holling’s co-
author (and co-founder of the Alliance) Carl Folke established the Stockholm Resilience Centre, a
major think tank promoting social-ecological resilience policy-making to state and intergovern-
mental organizations (Walker & Cooper, 2011).
During the 1990s, Holling also set a distinction between his conceptualization and the environ-
mental science usage of “engineering resilience”, defined as the rate of system return to stability
after perturbation (Folke, 2006; Holling, 1996; Martin & Sunley, 2014). Ironically, in distinguish-
ing the two, he popularized the latter: the revised notion of engineering resilience proliferated in a
number of domains following the events of September 11th 2011, being deployed most prominently
in national security and disaster/accident management discourse (Figure 5). Terror attacks and
tsunamis, both occurring in 2005 and 2011, only served to catalyze diffusion during those two
years (Walker & Cooper, 2011).
Figure 5. The three news classifications that most often mention resilience (# of articles).
Resilience in the environmental domain, however, lagged until actors within the insurance
industry introduced the term within the area of climate change. Having absorbed excess claims
stemming from major disasters in the 1990s, large reinsurers like Munich Re and Swiss Re became
progressively more vocal regarding changing weather patterns (Tucker, 1997). Within Munich Re,
two scientists named Gerhard Berz and Thomas Loster were particularly proactive. Berz headed
the Geoscience Research Group, and apart from publishing an annual review on natural catastro-
phes, he was the sole private-sector representative on the taskforce leading to the 2001 creation of
UN-ISDR (Berz, Loster, & Wirtz, 2001; ECOSOC, 2001). Loster, also within the Geoscience
Research Group, participated in the first World Conference for Disaster Reduction (WCDR) in
2005, leading to the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), a 10 year, multi-stakeholder agenda
aimed at reducing global vulnerability to disasters. During this time, Loster was also chair of the
Climate Change Working Group at the UNEP Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI) as well as of the
Munich Climate Insurance Initiative, an organization seeking to influence policy processes (such
as the UNFCCC Climate Negotiations) using best practices derived from Munich Re (MCII, 2012).
In 2013, UNEP-FI launched a Global Resilience program targeted at the insurance industry, part-
nering with major insurers such as AXA, The Co-operators, Swiss Re and Tokio Marine and
Nichido (UNEP-FI, 2013). UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon commented on the impact of the
insurance industry in environmentalism, noting:
For years, insurers have been at the forefront of the corporate world in alerting society to the risks of
climate change and, more recently, threats such as the loss of biological diversity and the growing pressures
on … essential ecosystems. (UNEP-FI, 2012)
Resilience has had a notable effect on organizations of all kinds. At the transnational level, the
UN, IMF, World Bank and World Economic Forum have incorporated a significant number of
resilience strategies into their agendas (Hausler, 2005; UN-ISDR, 2004; World Bank, 2006; World
Economic Forum, World Bank, & UN-ISDR, 2008). For example, UNDP, in conjunction with
UNEP, World Bank and World Resources Institute issued a report in 2008 titled “Roots of
Resilience” advancing the idea of socio-ecological resilience for local communities. The concept
Figure 6. Percentage of environmental news articles mentioning “risk”, “security, “crisis”, “disaster” and/
or “disruption” for each label.
has most notably diffused in urban governance, with alliances forming around municipal protec-
tion against disaster (ISDR, 2008; Martin & Sunley, 2014). Within the corporate sector,
SustainAbility, one of the most prominent environmental consultancies, proposes that “securing
our future has become less about accountability and conservation and more about disruptive,
transformational change and creating value by delivering on societal needs such as access to
energy, food and healthcare”.1
The distinguishing features of resilience. Shifting somewhat from the definition outlined by Holling,
resilience is now conceptualized as the capacity of a social-ecological system to not only absorb
shock but also to progressively learn and adapt (Folke et al., 2002). This label exhibits notably dif-
ferent characteristics from its previous configurations, with resilience discourse promoting engage-
ment with environmental, social and economic issues as a risk reduction strategy. Audits, indicators
and measurement systems previously used to advance environmental, social and economic goals
have now branched off towards promotion of preparedness and stability. The aim now is to create
conditions that will allow human systems to persist in the event of unforeseeable disruptions.
Figure 6 outlines the difference among the three labels by how often they refer to five terms of
“risk”, “security, “crisis”, “disaster” and/or “disruption”. Figure 6 also serves to illustrate how the
labels of sustainability and sustainable development have noticeably shifted towards including
resilience-style discourse.
Mechanism of path re-orientation: Recombination. We propose that the evolution of resilience, as an

environmental label, stems from the pervasive impact of a trajectory of risk management. The past
30 years have been characterized by the emergence and institutionalization of the “risk society”
(Beck, 1992), where an increasing “preoccup[ation] with the future (and also with safety) … gen-
erates notion[s] of risk” (Giddens & Pierson, 1998, p. 209). Ideas about risk have become an insti-
tutionalized feature of modern organizations in a variety of domains (Beck, 2006; Denney, 2005):
aside from private-sector companies, “hospitals, schools, universities, and many other public
organizations, including the very highest levels of central governments, have all been invaded to
varying degrees by ideas about risk and its management” (Power, 2004, p. 9). As with other facets
of organizational life, risk in these organizations is made to be auditable and governable (Power,
2004, 2007).
The risk society is the product of environmental disasters in the 1980s, specifically the Chernobyl
nuclear accident (Beck, 1987, 1992; Giddens & Pierson, 1998). While previous disasters were
largely perceived as unpredictable and immeasurable, Chernobyl was one of the first to be consid-
ered as stemming from “manufactured risk”, an event that could have been both anticipated and
avoided (Beck, 1992). Compounding this development was a string of catastrophes that adversely
affected the insurance industry: Between 1987 and 1992, 15 catastrophic events each resulted in
insurance claims of over $1 billion, while no single catastrophe for the previous 20 years had ever
topped $1 billion (Tucker, 1997). This dramatic shift provoked a pronounced effort by underwriters
– in concert with property management firms and emergency service associations – to spread risk
management practices as a means to mitigate claims. Capitalizing upon heightened public concern
about risk, these organizations spurred the construction of transnational bodies specializing in risk
governance such as the IRGC (International Risk Governance Council) in 2003, a state-created and
privately financed Swiss foundation oriented towards the creation of a global risk management
framework (Renn & Walker, 2008).
The development of resilience, as an environmental label, illuminates a mechanism of path
generation that is distinct from those previously observed. Resilience is a term defined by ecology
scholars, but it did not diffuse into the environmental movement until it was (inadvertently) repack-
aged by Holling into a more acceptable equilibrium-based conceptualization. Even then, it only
became institutionalized outside the environmental sphere, and did not spread within environmen-
talism until it was reframed as being compatible with the risk society – a trajectory that is itself the
discursive product of external ecological shocks. This linkage through recombination was facili-
tated by actors from the insurance industry, specifically through the bridge of climate change. As
such, the paths of resilience and risk society are both rooted in environmentalism. The attribution
of past disasters, accidents and catastrophes to resilience (as illustrated in Figure 2) speaks to the
idea that such exogenous events are treated as anomalous to the equilibrium of intergenerational
equity (UN-ISDR, 2004).
Discussion
Our analysis indicates how the concept of environmentalism, treated as homogenous and static, is
in reality fluid, temporal and multifaceted. The major conceptualizations of this institution do not
transition sequentially from one to another; rather, they coexist, with each label persisting in closer
association with a specific organizational sphere. Sustainable development, for example, was
negotiated in intergovernmental fora and thus has strong political/international relations connota-
tions. Meanwhile, sustainability was crafted by business actors into a rationalized, outcome driven
and measurement-oriented label, demonstrating a clear affinity with for-profit organizations. More
recently, resilience has emerged as a keyword for organizations concerned with risk management,
whether operating within the fields of national security, disaster management or insurance. While
these three labels fall under the same broad canopy – and while their respective domains certainly
overlap – their stark conceptual differences indicate the difficulty in creating a single, unified con-
ceptualization for environmentalism.
With respect to theory, in tracing the creation of these three labels – and the more fundamental
emergence of transnational environmentalism – we are able to delineate an institutional trajectory
(David & Strang, 2006; Djelic & Quack, 2007). There are characteristics of path dependence
involved in the entrenchment of environmentalism into an institution, facilitated by – and resulting
in – considerable regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive pressures (Scott, 2014). However,

following institutionalization, we note incremental yet consequential shifts in discourse, spear-
headed within different organizational domains. Conventional path dependence accounts are ill-
suited for explaining this transformation: the evolutionary path we outline is largely devoid of any
exogenous shocks required within traditional punctuated equilibrium accounts (Gersick, 1991;
Haveman & Rao, 1997). Similarly, we do not witness outcomes consistent with “purposive” action
on the part of key individuals (Lawrence et al., 2010; Munir & Phillips, 2005). Although some
individuals and organizations do act as boundary-spanners (e.g., Schmidheiny or the Club of
Rome) – and therefore are the conduits for path interactions –such actors generally found them-
selves in the right position to transpose practices through happenstance. Even then, these self-
interested efforts were only cumulatively consequential, with effects that would have been largely
unanticipated by any single actor (Clemente, Durand, & Roulet, 2016). Relatedly, we do not wit-
ness a unified narrative holding together a path and turning it into a taken-for-granted frame, as is
supposed by path creation (Czarniawska, 1998; Garud et al., 2010). We see instead a multiplicity
of narratives, with greater presence and impact in different domains, waxing and waning over time
based on distinct institutional conditions.
In examining the evolution of environmentalism, we reveal a process of path generation: we
explain the direction(s) of the trajectory as the result of consequential interactions with other insti-
tutional paths. We began by tracing the emergence of transnational environmentalism as a product
of linkages with existing movements such as scientization and overpopulation. Path development
and institutionalization then continued by aggregating diffuse transnational issues under one
umbrella of “sustainable development”. The subsequent events that alter the trajectory – i.e., the
developments of sustainability and resilience – result from the effects of managerialization and
audit society on the one hand and of the risk society on the other; those being all trajectories in their
own right.
In following this process, we are able to identify four mechanisms of interaction: Assimilation,
Coalescence, Co-optation, and Recombination. These mechanisms reflect aggregated episodes of
agentic work and sense-making that are only cumulatively consequential. We document a long-run
process of creolization that brings together in a constantly dynamic and re-invented manner – and
through a multiplicity of agentic moves – a plurality of institutional trajectories that are bound to
each other and define, in their intersection, something that is both new and derived.
In tracing the emergence and transformation processes of environmentalism, we can also theo-
rize more broadly about the path dependent nature of institutional trajectories. We demonstrate
through the emergence of sustainable development and the “branching off” of sustainability and
resilience that consequential shifts can occur in transnational space. We highlight how organiza-
tions that provided the main impetus for this changing discourse were diverse in character yet
unmistakably transnational: these not only included supranational organizations like the UN, but
also associational groups like the Club of Rome, WBCSD and corporations like Munich Re. In this
respect, environmentalism illustrates how trajectories can evolve in a space that is largely discon-
nected from national contexts.
Conclusion
In this article, we outlined how environmentalism was aggregated from piecemeal movements into
an entrenched path in transnational space; we subsequently followed, through time, the conceptual
evolution of this institutional trajectory, and the process of label development and affiliation with
different organizational spheres. We proposed that these episodes of emergence and conceptual
change were the result of incremental yet consequential interactions with other transnational paths,
where the actions of individuals and organizations were only impactful in the aggregate. In this
manner, we propose, through the exploration of environmentalism an illustrative case of how path
generation operates at the transnational level – which remains rare so far in the path generation
literature (Djelic & Quack, 2007; Siggelkow, 2007).
Through our case study, we contribute to theory development by elucidating specific mecha-
nisms of trajectory interactions that allow us to understand transformative change. Although mech-
anisms different from the ones we identify may operate in other cases, our exploration does open
an area of research into incremental yet transformative change. As such, we not only complement
a growing body of work on path generation (Antikainen, 2010; Djelic & Quack, 2005, 2007), but
also contribute to recent discussions on path dependence, providing one plausible structural expla-
nation of transformation in the absence of radical rupture or acts of institutional entrepreneurship
(Clemente et al., 2016; Crouch & Farrell, 2004; Munir & Phillips, 2005; Schreyogg & Sydow,
2011; Vergne & Durand, 2011). We instead situate action as impactful within a constellation of
actors, where agency is embedded in historical and institutional strutures (Garud et al., 2007),
Our exploration contains two different kinds of implications for organizations. First we reveal
that, far from being a static and homogenous concept, environmentalism across organizations is
multifaceted and fluid, with certain labels manifesting themselves more prominently in some organ-
izational spheres compared to others. Each label is shaped to produce specific normative as well as
practical and managerial implications for organizational actors; thus far, this semantic diversity has
been misconstrued as a signal of ambiguity and incoherence. As a conceptualization, “sustainable
development” is a broad canopy. It has little operational and managerial teeth, as it were, but its
broad and flexible nature allowed relatively unencumbered socialization and appropriation.
Sustainability on the other hand has come with much more stringent operational and managerial
implications, with a multiplication of standards and performance indicators steering decision-mak-
ing in significant ways. Resilience, finally, has entailed similar strategic re-orientations towards risk
assessment and management. Second, as a way of broadening the scope and fostering future
research, we suggest that the patterns we find might apply to other institutional trajectories that
affect organizations (e.g., quality control, transparency, risk management). We would infer that such
paths also feature a multiplicity of meanings resulting from interactions with other paths. Future
research could explore how different conceptualizations of these trajectories evolve and become
embedded within specific organizational domains, specifying in the process alternate mechanisms
of path interactions from those we have observed in the case of environmentalism.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit
sectors.
Note
1. http://www.sustainability.com/history
References
Alexander, J. (1982). Positivism, presuppositions, and current controversies. Theoretical logic in sociology,
vol. 1. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Antikainen, A. (2010). The capitalist state and education: The case of restructuring the nordic model. Current
Sociology, 58, 530–550.
Arthur, B. W. (1994). Increasing returns and path dependence in the economy. Ann Arbor, MI: University
of Michigan Press.
Banerjee, S. B. (2003). Who sustains whose development? Sustainable development and the reinvention of
nature. Organization Studies, 24, 143–180.
Bansal, P., & Clelland, I. (2004). Talking trash: Legitimacy, impression management, and unsystematic risk
in the context of the natural environment. Academy of Management Journal, 47, 93–103.
Bansal, P., & Roth, K. (2000). Why companies go green: A model of ecological responsiveness. Academy of
Management Journal, 43, 717–736.
Bartelson, J. (1995). A genealogy of sovereignty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Bassanini, A., & Dosi, G. (2001). When and how chance and human will can twist the arms of Clio. In
R. Garud & P. Karnøe (Eds.), Path dependence and creation (pp. 43–68). London, UK: Psychology
Press.
Beck, U. (1987). The anthropological shock: Chernobyl and the contours of the risk society. Berkeley Journal
of Sociology, 32, 153–165.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London, UK: SAGE Publications.
Beck, U. (2006). Living in the world risk society. Economy and Society, 35, 329–345.
Berz, G., Loster, T., & Wirtz, A. (2001). Natural catastrophes: Annual review 2001. Collingdale, PA: Diane
Publishing Company.
Boström, M., & Hallström, K. T. (2010). NGO power in global social and environmental standard-setting.
Global Environmental Politics, 10, 36–59.
Carrithers, B. G., Collins, S., & Lukes, S. (1985). The category of the person: Anthropology, philosophy, his-
tory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Cascio, J., Woodside, G., & Mitchell, P. (1996). ISO 14000 guide: The new international environmental
management standards. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Clapp, J. (1998). The privatization of global environmental governance: ISO 14000 and the developing world.
Global Governance, 4, 295–316.
Clemente, M., Durand, R., & Roulet, T. (2016). The recursive nature of institutional change: An Annales
School perspective. Journal of Management Inquiry, 26, 17–31.
Crouch, C., & Farrell, H. (2004). Breaking the path of institutional development? Alternatives to the new
determinism. Rationality and Society, 16, 5–43.
Czarniawska, B. (1998). A narrative approach to organization studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
Publications.
David, R. J., & Strang, D. (2006). When fashion is fleeting: Transitory collective beliefs and the dynamics of
TQM consulting. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 215–233.
Dean, M. (1992). A genealogy of the government of poverty. Economy and Society, 21, 215–251.
Denney, D. (2005). Risk and society. London, UK: SAGE Publications.
Djelic, M.-L. (1998). Exporting the American model: The post-war transformation of European business.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Djelic, M.-L., & Bothello, J. (2013). Limited liability and its moral hazard implications: The systemic inscrip-
tion of instability in contemporary capitalism. Theory and Society, 42, 589–615.
Djelic, M.-L., & Quack, S. (2005). Rethinking path dependency: The crooked path of institutional
change in post-war Germany. In G. Morgan, R. Whitley, & E. Moen (Eds.), Changing capitalism?
Internationalization, institutional change, and systems of economic organization (pp. 135–166). Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press.
Djelic, M.-L., & Quack, S. (2007). Overcoming path dependency: Path generation in open systems. Theory
and Society, 36, 161–186.
Djelic, M.-L., & Quack, S. (2010). Transnational communities: Shaping global economic governance.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Djelic, M.-L. (2006). Marketization: From intellectual agenda to global policy making. In M.-L. Djelic
& K. Sahlin-Andersson (Eds.), Transnational Governance (pp. 53–73). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Dyllick, T., & Hockerts, K. (2002). Beyond the business case for corporate sustainability. Business Strategy
and the Environment, 11, 130–141.
Ebbinghaus, B. (2009). Can path dependence explain institutional change? Two approaches applied to welfare
state reform. In L. Magnusson & J. Ottosson (Eds.), The evolution of path dependence (pp. 191–212).
Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
ECOSOC. (2001). Implementation of the international strategy for disaster reduction (A/56/68-E/2001/63)
(Vol. 36800). Geneva, Switzerland.
Ehrlich, P. R. (1968). The population bomb. New York, NY: Ballantine.
Faber, N., Jorna, R., & Engelen, J. (2005). The sustainability of “sustainability”: A study into the concep-
tual foundations of the notion of “sustainability”. Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and
Management, 7, 1–33.
Fiege, M. (2011). Toward a history of environmental history in the national parks. The George Wright Forum,
28, 128–147.
Folke, C. (2006). Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social-ecological systems analyses. Global
Environmental Change, 16, 253–267.
Folke, C., Carpenter, S., Elmqvist, T., Gunderson, L., Holling, C. S., & Walker, B. (2002). Resilience and
sustainable development: Building adaptive capacity in a world of transformation. AMBIO: A Journal of
the Human Environment, 31, 437–440.
Foucault, M. (1972). An archaeology of knowledge. (S. M. Smith, Ed.). New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
Garud, R., Hardy, C., & Maguire, S. (2007). Institutional entrepreneurship as embedded agency: An introduc-
tion to the special Issue. Organization Studies, 28, 957–969.
Garud, R., & Karnøe, P. (2003). Bricolage versus breakthrough: Distributed and embedded agency in technol-
ogy entrepreneurship. Research Policy, 32, 277–300.
Garud, R., Kumaraswamy, A., & Karnøe, P. (2010). Path dependence or path creation? Journal of Management
Studies, 47, 760–774.
Gersick, C. J. G. (1991). Revolutionary change theories: A multilevel exploration of the punctuated equilib-
rium paradigm. Academy of Management Review, 16, 10–36.
Giddens, A., & Pierson, C. (1998). Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making sense of modernity.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Graham, J., Amos, B., & Plumptre, T. (2003). Principles for good governance in the 21st century. Ottawa,
Canada.
Gray, P. C. R., & Wiedemann, P. M. (1999). Risk management and sustainable development: Mutual lessons
from approaches to the use of indicators. Journal of Risk Research, 2, 201–218.
Hall, P. A., & Soskice, D. (2001). Varieties of capitalism: The institutional foundations of comparative
advantage. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Hampsher-Monk, L., Timans, K., & van Vree, F. (1998). History of concepts: Comparative perspectives.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press.
Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243–1248.
Hardy, C., & Maguire, S. (2010). Discourse, field-configuring events, and change in organizations and insti-
tutional fields: Narratives of DDT and the Stockholm Convention. Academy of Management Journal,
53, 1365–1392.
Hausler, G. (2005). Why the global financial system is more resilient. New York, NY. Retrieved from http://
www.imf.org/external/np/vc/2005/100705e
Haveman, H. A., & Rao, H. (1997). Institutional evolution and change: Environmentalism and the US chemi-
cal industry. American Journal of Sociology, 102, 1606–1651.
Holling, C. S. (1973). Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Review of Ecology and
Systematics, 4, 1–23.
Holling, C. S. (1996). Engineering resilience versus ecological resilience. In P. Schulze (Ed.), Engineering
within ecological constraints (pp. 31–44). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Holmberg, J. (1992). Making development sustainable: Redefining institutions policy and economics. New
York, NY: Island Press.
Hwang, H., & Powell, W. W. (2009). The rationalization of charity: The influences of professionalism in the
nonprofit sector. Administrative Science Quarterly, 268, 268–298.
Ikenberry, G. J., & Kupchan, C. A. (2009). Socialization and hegemonic power. International Organization,
44, 283–315.
ISDR. (2008). Building a “local government alliance for disaster risk reduction". Geneva, Switzerland.
IUCN. (1980). World conservation strategy. Gland, Switzerland.
Johnson, S. (2012). UNEP - The first 40 years. Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Environment Programme.
Johnston, P., Everard, M., Santillo, D., & Robèrt, K. (2007). Reclaiming the definition of sustainability.
Environmental Science and Pollution Research International, 14, 60–66.
Koselleck, R. (2002). The practice of conceptual history: Timing history, spacing concepts. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Lawrence, T. B., Suddaby, R., & Leca, B. (2010). Institutional work: Refocusing institutional studies of
organization. Journal of Management Inquiry, 20, 52–58.
Lélé, S. (1991). Sustainable development: A critical review. World Development, 19, 607–621.
Lélé, S. (1998). Resilience, sustainability, and environmentalism. Environment and Development Economics,
3, 251–255.
Lubin, D. A., & Esty, D. C. (2010). The sustainability imperative. Harvard Business Review, 88, 42–50.
Maguire, S., & Hardy, C. (2009). Discourse and deinstitutionalization: The decline of DDT. Academy of
Management Journal, 52, 148–178.
Mahoney, J., & Thelen, K. (2010). A theory of gradual institutional change. In J. Mahoney & K. Thelen
(Eds.), Explaining institutional change (pp. 1–37). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Martin, R. (2010). Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography — Rethinking regional path dependence: Beyond
lock-in to evolution. Economic Geography, 86, 1–27.
Martin, R., & Sunley, P. (2014). On the notion of regional economic resilience: Conceptualization and expla-
nation. Journal of Economic Geography, 15, 1–42.
McCormick, J. (1986). The origins of the world conservation strategy. Environmental Review, 10, 177–187.
McCormick, J. (1991). Reclaiming paradise: The global environmental movement. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
MCII. (2012). Insurance solutions in the context of climate change-related loss and damage. Bonn, Germany.
McManus, P. (1996). Contested terrains: Politics, stories and discourses of sustainability. Environmental
Politics, 5, 48–73.
Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W. (1972). The limits to growth. New York,
NY: Universe Books.
Mebratu, D. (1998). Sustainability and sustainable development: Historical and conceptual review.
Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 18, 493–520.
Meyer, J. W., Frank, D. J., Hironaka, A., Schofer, E., & Tuma, N. B. (1997). The structuring of a world envi-
ronmental regime, 1870–1990. International Organization, 51, 623–651.
Morrill, C. (2002). Institutional change through interstitial emergence: The growth of alternative dispute
resolution in American law, 1965-1995. In W. W. Powell & D. Jones (Eds.), How institutions change
(pp. 251–267). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Munir, K. A., & Phillips, N. (2005). The birth of the “Kodak moment”: Institutional entrepreneurship and the
adoption of new technologies. Organization Studies, 26, 1665–1687.
Palonen, K. (2002). The history of concepts as a style of political theorizing: Quentin Skinner’s and
Reinhart Koselleck’s subversion of normative political theory. European Journal of Political Theory,
1, 91–106.
Pierson, P. (2000). Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics. The American Political
Science Review, 94, 251–267.
Power, M. (1997). The audit society: Rituals of verification. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Power, M. (2004). The risk management of everything: Rethinking the politics of uncertainty. London, UK:
Demos.
Power, M. (2007). Organized uncertainty: Designing a world of risk management. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Prestbo, J. (2000). Explaining the Dow Jones sustainability group index. Montreux, Switzerland. Retrieved
from http://oldwww.wbcsd.org/DocRoot/pSZY2gna7WgQSTnXC2X4/EBCDowJones.pdf
Quack, S. (2007). Legal professionals and transnational law-making: A case of distributed agency.
Organization, 14, 643–666.
Redclift, M. (2005). An oxymoron comes of age. Sustainable Development, 227, 212–227.
Reinstaller, A., & Holzl, W. (2009). Big causes and small events: QWERTY and the mechanization of office
work. Industrial and Corporate Change, 18, 999–1031.
Renn, O., & Walker, K. D. (2008). Global risk governance. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Robertson, T. (2012). Malthusian moment global population growth and the birth of American environmen-
talism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Schmidheiny, S., & BCSD. (1992). Changing course: A global business perspective on development and the
environment. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Schneiberg, M. (2005). Combining new institutitionalisms: Explaining institutional change in American
property insurance. Sociological Forum, 1, 93–137.
Schneiberg, M. (2006). What’s on the path? Path dependence, organizational diversity and the problem of
institutional change in the US economy, 1900-1950. Socio-Economic Review, 5, 47–80.
Schreyogg, G., & Sydow, J. (2011). Organizational path dependence: A process view. Organization Studies,
32, 321–335.
Scott, W. R. (2014). Institutions and organizations: Ideas, interests, and identities, 4th ed. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications.
Siggelkow, N. (2007). Persuasion with case studies. Academy of Management Journal, 50, 20–24.
Sine, W. D., & David, R. J. (2003). Environmental jolts, institutional change, and the creation of entrepre-
neurial opportunity in the US electric power industry. Research Policy, 32, 185–207.
Skinner, Q. (1969). Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas. History and Theory, 8, 3–53.
Sklair, L. (2001). The transnational capitalist class. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Sneddon, C., Howarth, R. B., & Norgaard, R. B. (2006). Sustainable development in a post-Brundtland world.
Ecological Economics, 57, 253–268.
Somers, M. (1995a). Narrating and naturalizing civil society and citizenship theory: The place of political
culture and the public sphere. Sociological Theory, 13, 229–274.
Somers, M. (1995b). What’s political or cultural about political culture and the public sphere? Toward an
historical sociology of concept formation. Sociological Theory, 13, 113–144.
Stoczkowski, W. (2009). UNESCO’s doctrine of human diversity: A secular soteriology? Anthropology
Today, 25, 7–11.
Sydow, J., Schreyogg, G., & Koch, J. (2009). Organizational path dependence: Opening the black box.
Academy of Management Review, 34, 689–709.
Tibor, T., & Feldman, I. (1996). ISO 14000: A guide to the new environmental management standards. New
York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Tryzna, T. C., Margold, E., & Osborn, J. K. (1996). World directory of environmental organizations. London,
UK: Earthscan.
Tucker, M. (1997). Climate change and the insurance industry: The cost of increased risk and the impetus for
action. Ecological Economics, 22, 85–96.
UNEP. (1972). Report of the United Nations conference on the environment. Stockholm, Sweden.
UNEP-FI. (2012). Principles for sustainable insurance. Geneva, Switzerland.
UNEP-FI. (2013). The PSI global resilience project. Geneva, Switzerland.
UNESCO. (2012). Education for Sustainable development sourcebook. Paris, France.
UN-ISDR. (2004). Living with risk: A global review of disaster reduction initiatives, vol. 1. Geneva,
Switzerland.
United Nations General Assembly. (1983). Process of preparation of the environmental perspective to the
year 2000 and beyond (A/RES/38/161). New York, NY.
Vergne, J.-P., & Durand, R. (2011). The path of most persistence: An evolutionary perspective on path
dependence and dynamic capabilities. Organization Studies, 32, 365–382.
Waddock, S. (2000). The multiple bottom lines of corporate citizenship: Social investing, reputation, and
responsibility audits. Business and Society Review, 105, 323–345.
Walker, J., & Cooper, M. (2011). Genealogies of resilience: From systems ecology to the political economy
of crisis adaptation. Security Dialogue, 42, 143–160.
WCED. (1987). Our common future. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Westney, E. D. (1987). Imitation and innovation: The transfer of western organizational patterns to Meiji
Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wittneben, B. B. F., Okereke, C., Banerjee, S. B., & Levy, D. L. (2012). Climate change and the emergence
of new organizational landscapes. Organization Studies, 33, 1431–1450.
Woolgar, S. (1988). Knowledge ad reflexivity. London, UK: SAGE Publications.
World Bank. (2006). Social resilience and state fragility in Haiti: A country social analysis. Report No.
36069–HT. Washington, DC.
World Economic Forum, World Bank, & UN-ISDR. (2008). Building resilience to natural disasters: A frame-
work for private sector engagement. Geneva, Switzerland.
Wright, C., Nyberg, D., & Grant, D. (2006). “Hippies on the third floor”: Climate change, narrative identity
and the micro-politics of corporate environmentalism. Organization Studies, 33, 1451–1475.
Young, O. R. (1994). International governance: Protecting the environment in a stateless society. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Author biographies
Joel Bothello is an Assistant Professor in Management at the John Molson School of Business of Concordia
University, Montréal. His research interests are two-fold: first, he investigates how alternative models of
organization (e.g., foundation owned businesses, project-based firms and business groups) function vis-a-vis
traditional corporations. Secondly, he investigates how organizational governance can be shaped by the use
of transnational “soft-law” tools such as standards, rankings, certification schemes and awards. Joel com-
pleted his Ph.D. in Management Strategy at ESSEC Business School in France.
Marie-Laure Salles-Djelic is Professor at Sciences Po (CSO). In her research she has explored the contempo-
rary transformations of capitalism, the international dissemination of ideas and practices, the role of transna-
tional communities in that context, the dynamics of governance in a globalized economic environment, the
social responsibility of firms and the varied forms in which companies have become significant political
actors. Her work is published in top international journals and academic presses.

Bothello, 2018

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Bothello, 2018

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Bothello, 2018

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

693272

Institutional Trajectories and Mechanisms of Transformation

institutional resources, or leverage embeddedness in multiple fields to transpose practices and

Path Generation and the Crookedness of Institutional Trajectories

Methodology – Conceptual History

Table 1. Key events in environmentalism.

Year Key event Discursive product Driving actor(s) Actor category

1984 Toxic chemical leak leaves up to Exogenous Event

2000 The largest-ever gathering of United Nations United Nations Intergovernmental

In the next section, we begin by investigating the beginning phase of “transnationalization” of

Figure 2. Label affiliation according to event type (# of articles).

Transnational Environmentalism and its Conceptual Evolution

Projecting environmentalism at the transnational level

Mechanism of transnational path emergence – Assimilation. Based on this sequence of events, we

Sustainable development: Reconciling environmentalism and growth

Mechanism of path development – Coalescence. As outlined earlier, the transformation of environ-

The digression of sustainability from sustainable development

The distinguishing features of sustainability

Figure 3. Percentage of environmental news articles classified as “Corporate/Industrial News” or

From sustainability to resilience

Conceptualizing resilience – Environmentalism as risk management. Resilience is a term grounded in

Mechanism of path re-orientation: Recombination. We propose that the evolution of resilience, as an

in – considerable regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive pressures (Scott, 2014). However,

You might also like