Environmental accounting as workplace activism

Abstract

Drawing on a case study of a Canadian City Council, the paper argues for the utility of a ‘social movements in organizations’ perspective [Zald MN, Berger MA. Social movements in organizations: coup d’etat, insurgency, and mass movements. American Journal of Sociology 1978;83(4):823–61; Zald MN, Morrill C, Roa H. The impact of social movements on organizations: environment and responses. In: Davis GF, McAdam D, Scott WR, Zald MN, editors. Social movements and organization theory. Cambridge University Press; 2005. p. 253–79] in environmental accounting research. It demonstrates how environmental accounting is used by employees to build an organizational response to environmental issues, and argues that beyond conventional legitimacy or organizational change perspectives, there is a further analytical possibility: environmental accounting as ‘workplace activism’ [Creed D, Scully M. Songs of ourselves: employees’ deployment of social identity in workplace encounters. Journal of Management Inquiry 2000;9(4):391–412]. The findings raise questions about how we evaluate environmental accounting interventions, and about a role for research in helping environmental movement adherents on the inside of organizations to stay engaged and avoid premature capture.