Growing Green: On the Moral Pluralism of Individual and Collective Ecological Embeddedness

Claire-Isabelle Roquebert () and Jean-Pascal Gond
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Claire-Isabelle Roquebert: CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Jean-Pascal Gond: City University London

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Abstract: Prior research on sustainability suggests that ambitious sustainability strategies are often turned into "business-as-usual" practices. Although ecological embeddedness-that is, actors' physical and cognitive anchoring in their ecological environment-can help maintain sustainability ambitions, its collective dynamics and pluralistic moral foundations remain understudied. We rely on the economies of worth framework and the revelatory case of a biodynamic farm business experiencing sustained commercial growth to explore these blind spots by analyzing how ecological embeddedness was maintained despite this growth. We found that moral threats moved the organization away from its initial sustainability commitment and demonstrated how the farm maintained its ecological embeddedness through three mechanisms that involved multiple moral foundations: nurturing ecological inspiration, networking green projects, and unifying a green ethos. By inducing such mechanisms of moral recombination, our analysis advances sustainability studies by clarifying and bridging individual and collective dynamics of ecological embeddedness while revealing their multiple moral foundations; we also extend economies of worth research by demonstrating the role of ecological materiality in the alignment of organizations with the green world.

Keywords: biodynamic farming; corporate sustainability; ecological embeddedness; economies of worth; small and medium-sized enterprise (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Published in Business and Society, 2024, ⟨10.1177/00076503241255344⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04615852

DOI: 10.1177/00076503241255344

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