Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Beyond Rupture, Interstice and Reform: Searching for Nuance in the Portrayal of Engagement for Social and Ecological Transition

  • Commentary
  • Published:
Journal of Business Ethics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This commentary responds to the following article previously published on the Journal and Business Ethics: ‘Baudoin, L., Arenas, D. “Everyone Has a Truth”: Forms of Ecological Embeddedness in an Interorganizational Context. J Bus Ethics 185, 263–280 (2023)’. Our commentary offers a rejoinder to Baudoin’s and Arenas’ conclusion that environmental engagement within organizations is a plural field within which many different sub-positions may be discerned. In rejoining their conclusion, our commentary searches for greater nuance in the portrayal of engagement for social and ecological transition in the workplace. This is done in two steps: first, by ‘softening’ categories that conceal as much as they reveal: like Olin Wright’s tripartition of rupture, interstice and reform as distinct forms such engagement might take. Second, by undertaking a close reading of the experience of an activist undertaking training on environmental issues, who has previously left a job with a French car manufacturer. In so doing, we discern the following strategies co-existing simultaneously in this person’s story: an existential quest to frame his choices, the decision to become a broker of scientific information concerning human-made climate change to other professionals, and a state of ‘suspension’ in moving from individual consciousness raising to the initiation of joint action with others.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. The Campus de la Transition is a centre undertaking training and research with the goal of promoting social and ecological transition in the worlds of higher education, public management and the world of enterprise in France (Renouard, 2019).

  2. For a discussion of coaching in its plural dimensions, as a practice, as a career step, and as a service to an enterprise, see the special issue on coaching in the Nouvelle Revue de Psychosociologie edited by Arnaud et al. (2022).

References

  • Arendt, H. (2013). Labor, work, action. In J. Kohn (Ed.), Thinking without a banister: Essays in understanding (pp. 1953–1975). Schocken.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arnaud, G., Duboloy, M., & Ohayon, A. (2022). Introduction. De quoi le coaching est-il donc le nom ? Nouvelle Revue De Psychosociologie, 34(2), 7–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bador, M., et al. (2017). Future summer mega-heatwave and record-breaking temperatures in a warmer France climate. Environmental Research Letters, 12, 1–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barnosky, A. D., et al. (2011). Has the earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived? Nature, 471, 51–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baudoin, L., & Arenas, D. (2022). “Everyone Has a Truth”: Forms of ecological embeddedness in an interorganizational context. Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05187-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boiral, O. (2008). Greening the corporation through environmental citizenship behaviors. Journal of Business Ethics, 87, 221–236.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brisepierre, G., et al. (2021). Transfert des pratiques environnementales : Entre maison et bureau. Institut Paris Région.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brisepierre, G., & Desrues, A. (2018). Le transfert de pratiques environnementales domicile/travail. ADEME.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cameron, J. (2020). Framing essay: The diversity of enterprise. In J. K. Gibson-Graham & G. Roelvink (Eds.), The handbook of diverse economies (pp. 26–39). Edward Elgar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ceballos, G., Ehrlich, P. R., & Dirzo, R. (2017). Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(30), 6089–6096.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chatterton, P., & Pickerill, J. (2010). Everyday activism and transitions towards post-capitalist worlds. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35, 475–490.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crutzen, J. P. (2002). Geology of mankind. Nature, 415, 23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, J., Moulton, A. A., & Williams, B. (2019). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, … Plantationocene?: A manifesto for ecological justice in an age of global crises. Geography Compass, 13(5), e12438.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dunne, J. (1993). Back to the rough ground: Practical judgment and the lure of technique. University of Notre Dame Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durand Folco, J. (2014). Des interstices à la rupture. Nouveaux cahiers du socialism (24 august). Retrieved April 7, 2014, from http://raisons-sociales.com/articles/des-interstices-a-la-rupture/

  • Fauré, C. (2015). Maintenant ou jamais! La transition du milieu de la vie. Albin Michel.

    Google Scholar 

  • FORTES Collective. (2020). Manuel de la Grande Transition. LLL.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gatti, L. V., et al. (2014). Drought sensitivity of Amazonian carbon balance revealed by atmospheric measurements. Nature, 506, 76–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1995). La décroissance : Entropie, écologie, économie. Les Éditions Sang de la Terre.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gergen, K. J. (2015). From mirroring to world-making: Research as future forming. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 45(3), 287–310.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gibson-Graham, J. K., & Roelvink, G. (2010). An economic ethics for the Anthropocene. Antipode, 41(s1), 320–346.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Girschik, V. (2018). Shared responsibility for societal problems: The role of internal activists in reframing corporate social responsibility. Business & Society, 59(1), 34–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guggenheim, D. (2006). An inconvenient truth. Paramount Classics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hopkins, R. (2008). The transition handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience. Green Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leinfelder, R. (2020). The Anthropocene: The earth in our hands. Refubium. https://doi.org/10.17169/refubium-26459

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McLuhan, M., & McLuhan, E. (1988). Laws of media: The new science. University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyerson, E. D., & Scully, A. M. (1995). Tempered radicalism and the politics of ambivalence and change. Organization Science, 6, 585–600.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mission rev3. (2019). Mobilisation et Implication des citoyens dans les politiques locales de transition en Hauts-de-France. Regional Council for Hauts-de-France.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olin Wright, E. (2010). Envisioning real utopias. Verso Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Persson, L., et al. (2022). Outside the safe operating space of the planetary boundary for novel entities. Environmental Science and Technology, 56(3), 1510–1521.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rancière, J. (2016). The method of equality. Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Renouard, C. (2019). Une éducation supérieure à l’écologie, radicale et non marginale? L’expérience naissante du Campus de la Transition (Documents de Travail du Campus de la Transition). In J.-P. Pierron & N. Wallenhorst (Eds.), Eduquer en Anthropocène (pp. 175–190). Le bord de l’eau.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rockström, J., et al. (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461, 472–475.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roelvink, G. (2020). Framing essay: Diverse economies methodology. In J. K. Gibson-Graham & G. Roelvink (Eds.), The handbook of diverse economies (pp. 453–465). Edward Elgar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Russi, L. (2015b). Socio-materiality as phenomenon: Growing transition culture. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Exeter.

  • Russi, L. (2015a). Everything gardens and other stories: Growing transition culture. Univesity of Plymouth Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Russi, L. (2021). When social change happens: Observation of experience and the paradoxes of pivot making. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 29(2), 156–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2022.2093376

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schoeneborn, D., Vásquez, C., & Cornelissen, J. P. (2022). Theorizing the role of metaphors in co-orienting collective action toward grand challenges: The example of the Covid-19 pandemic. In A. A. Gümsay, E. Marti, H. Trittin-Ulbrih, & C. Wickert (Eds.), Organizing for societal grand challenges (pp. 69–91). Bingley.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Skoglund, A., & Böhm, S. (2020). Prefigurative partaking: Employees’ environmental activism in an energy utility. Organization Studies, 41, 1257–1283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spinosa, C., Flores, F., & Dreyfus, H. L. (1997). Disclosing new worlds: Entrepreneurship, democratic action and the cultivation of solidarity. MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steffen, W., et al. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 347, 736–747.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steffen, W., et al. (2018). Trajectories of the earth system in the Anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(33), 8252–8259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stiegler, B. (2021). Bifurquer: Il n’y a pas d’alternative. Les Liens Qui Libèrent.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor Aiken, G. (2014). The production, practice and potential of ‘Community’ in Edinburgh’s transition town network. PhD Dissertation, Durham University.

  • Taylor Aiken, G. (2017). The politics of community: Togetherness, transition and post-politics. Environment and Planning A, 49(10), 2383–2401.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Testot, L., & Wallenhorst, N. (2023). Vortex: Faire face à l’Anthropocène. Payot.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallenhorst, N., & Wulf, C. (Eds.). (2023). Handbook of the Anthropocene. Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang-Erlandsson, W., et al. (2022). A planetary boundary for green water. Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, 3, 380–392.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weber, K., & Waeger, D. (2017). Organizations as polities: An open systems perspective. Academy of Management Annals, 11, 886–918.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wright, C., Nyberg, D., & Grant, D. (2012). “Hippies on the third floor”: Climate change, narrative identity and the micro-politics of corporate environmentalism. Organization Studies, 33(11), 1451–1475.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

Funding was provided by Michelin Foundation (Grant No. FOR3).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Campus de La Transition, Forges, France

    Luigi Russi & Cécile Renouard

  2. ADEF Research Centre, Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France

    Luigi Russi & Nathanaël Wallenhorst

  3. ESSEC Business School, Paris, France

    Cécile Renouard

  4. Catholic University of the West, Angers, France

    Nathanaël Wallenhorst

Authors
  1. Luigi Russi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Cécile Renouard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Nathanaël Wallenhorst
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luigi Russi.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

The article uses verbatim quotes taken from an interview. The interview has been undertaken in conformity with an ethical protocol for research involving human participants overseen by the Campus de la Transition. Use of verbatim quotes in published material is allowed under such protocol, on condition of prior anonymization of research participants.

Informed Consent

Informed consent to the interview, and to subsequent treatment of the interview as research material, has been obtained in writing by the corresponding author.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Russi, L., Renouard, C. & Wallenhorst, N. Beyond Rupture, Interstice and Reform: Searching for Nuance in the Portrayal of Engagement for Social and Ecological Transition. J Bus Ethics (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05568-w

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05568-w

Keywords

Search

Navigation