The Advocate’s Own Challenges to Behave in a Sustainable Way: An Institutional Analysis of Advocacy NGOs

Mieneke Koster (), Ana Simaens () and Bart Vos ()
Additional contact information
Mieneke Koster: Tilburg University
Ana Simaens: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL)
Bart Vos: Tilburg University

Journal of Business Ethics, 2019, vol. 157, issue 2, No 11, 483-501

Abstract: Abstract Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly important drivers for businesses’ self-regulation to operate in a sustainable way. We shift the perspective on NGOs from focusing on their advocacy role to focusing on their accountability for having sustainable internal operations. In a multiple case analysis, we explore the question ‘What are the drivers and barriers to sustainable conduct of NGOs that are sustainability advocates?’ Drawing on institutional theory, we obtain novel insights into the legitimacy-seeking motivations for sustainable conduct in the specific context of advocacy NGOs. We found that, affected by its mission, (1) the cultural-cognitive drive is particularly high, with sustainable conduct as an internally ‘taken-for-granted’ behavior, followed by (2) the normative drivers, with the balance between perceived vulnerability of needing to ‘walk the talk’ and the sense of immunity due to lack of external scrutiny, and (3) there are hardly any regulative drivers. Furthermore, these organizations face idiosyncratic trade-offs when balancing investments in their advocacy missions with investments in sustainable operations, reflecting ethical dilemmas. In a broader sense, this research elucidates the way advocates cope in situations of institutional complexity, with conflicting institutional demands between their mission and role-model function.

Keywords: Institutional complexity; Legitimacy; Multiple cases; Non-governmental organizations (NGOs); Sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-017-3674-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:157:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-017-3674-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3674-4

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().