The Political Ecology of Organizations

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Abstract
The authors propose a framework to analyze the terrain of political relationships and actions in which environmental strategies and practices are embedded. The framework constitutes the political ecology of organizations. The concept of an organizational field is proposed as the optimal level for the analysis of business-environment relationships. Central to the framework is an anatomy of power (a mapping of the structuring of power relations). The framework is applied to the automobile industry. Initially, the influential approach of double dividends is analyzed from the perspective of political ecology. The main theoretical elements of the framework are subsequently introduced by using empirical examples of experiments with alternative cars (lightweight electric vehicles) and modes of transportation (car sharing) drawn from the Western European context. Through the use of the framework, one can identify the pressure points that are capable of fundamentally transforming the automobile system and, more generally, other macro systems of production and consumption.

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