Endorsing the Triple Bottom Line: How the Environmental Movement Became Business-friendly

• In Event: 277 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Movement Consequences

Abstract

This paper considers a surprising outcome: the shift within the environmental movement to championing the goal of private profits. The purpose of the paper is to establish conceptual groundwork for empirical research on this shift. The analytic approach follows the call by Walder (2009) for attention to social movement actors’ political orientations, in the context of within movement variation, to explain the social structural foundations of collective action. It will foreground the role of symbolic politics in social change. The research covers three interrelated topics and cases: the creation and activities of benefit corporations; the new cultural ideal of the triple bottom line, commonly stated as “People, Planet, Profits;” and a comparison of the corporate adoption of principles of sustainability and diversity. The study also provides an opportunity to theorize how cultural ideals get adopted and become consequential and the power dynamics therein.

Author

• Ellen Berrey, State University of New York-Buffalo