BANERJEE. Who Sustains Whose Development Sustainable Development and the Reinvention

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http://oss.sagepub.com/content/24/1/143The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0170840603024001341

2003 24: 143Organization StudiesSubhabrata Bobby Banerjee

of Natureho Sustains Whose Development? Sustainable Development and the Reinvention

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Who Sustains Whose Development?Sustainable Development and the Reinventionof Nature

Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee

Abstract

This paper explores the contradictions inherent in one of the more popular buzzwordsof today: sustainable development. I argue that, despite claims of a paradigm shift,

the sustainable development paradigm is based on an economic, not ecological,rationality. Discourses of sustainable development embody a view of nature specifiedby modern economic thought. One consequence of this discourse involves thetransformation of nature into environment, a transformation that has importantimplications for notions of how development should proceed. The rationalmanagement of resources is integral to the Western economy and its imposition ondeveloping countries is problematic. I discuss the implications of this regime of truthfor the Third World with particular reference to biotechnology, biodiversity andintellectual property rights. I argue that these aspects of sustainable developmentthreaten to colonize spaces and sites in the Third World, spaces that now need to bemade efficient because of the capitalization of nature.

Keywords: sustainable development, neo-colonialism, NorthSouth relations,environmentalism, critical management studies

In the early phases of colonization, the white mans burden consisted of the need tocivilize the non-white peoples of the world this meant above all depriving themof their resources and rights. In the latter phase of colonization, the white mansburden consisted of the need to develop the Third World, and this again involveddepriving local communities of their resources and rights. We are now on thethreshold of the third phase of colonization, in which the white mans burden is toprotect the environment and this too, involves taking control of rights andresources. . . . The salvation of the environment cannot be achieved through the oldcolonial order based on the white mans burden. The two are ethically, economicallyand epistemologically incongruent. Mies and Shiva (1993: 264265)

Introduction

After more than 200 years of industrialization in the Western world and more

than 50 years of development in the Third World, the benefits delivered by

the grand design of progress and modernity are, at best, equivocal. Despite

phenomenal advances in science, technology, medicine and agriculturalproduction, the promise that development would eradicate world poverty

remains unfulfilled in several parts of the globe, especially in the Third World.

OrganizationStudies24(1): 143180Copyright 2003SAGE Publications(London,Thousand Oaks,CA & New Delhi)

143 Authors name

0170-8406[200301]24:1;143180;031341

Subhabrata BobbyBanerjee

InternationalGraduate Schoolof Management,University ofSouth Australia,Australia

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Progress has come at a price: global warming, ozone depletion, loss of

biodiversity, soil erosion, air and water pollution are all global problems with

wide-ranging impacts on human populations, impacts that are significantly

more harmful for the rural poor in Third World countries, and for people who

derive their sustenance from the land.Let me begin with a cautionary note on terminology so as not to offend

postmodern sensibilities. I use the terms first world, Third World, devel-oped, underdeveloped, traditional, modern, colonizer, and colonized

with an understanding of the essentialist and binary nature of these categories.

For instance, I realize there are first worlds within third worlds and third

worlds within first worlds, but I deploy these and other categories strategically

and politically here, in the spirit of what Spivak calls strategic essentialism.

In some ways, my critique examines the foundations of knowledge

construction about the Third World and the ways in which it becomes

constituted and represented by a particular set of discursive power relationsthat underlie the development discourse. As Escobar (1992: 25) argues, Third

World reality is inscribed with precision and persistence by the discourses

and practices of economists, planners, nutritionists, demographers and

the like, making it difficult for people to define their own interests in their

own terms in many cases actually disabling them to do so. Perhaps

we can now add the discourses and practices of environmentalists and

conservationists to the list, as the earlier quote by Mies and Shiva implies.

Although such categorizations might preclude a sense of agency for Third

World resistance movements, I discuss in the conclusion of the paper how

transgressions of these categories could create new spaces of resistance.The concept of sustainable development has emerged in recent years in an

effort to address environmental problems caused by economic growth. There

are several different interpretations of sustainable development, but its broad

aim is to describe a process of economic growth without environmental

destruction. Exactly what is being sustained (economic growth or the global

ecosystem, or both) is currently at the root of several debates, although many

scholars argue that the apparent reconciliation of economic growth and the

environment is simply a green sleight-of-hand that fails to address genuine

environmental problems (Escobar 1995; Redclift 1987).

In this paper I look critically at the concept of sustainable development.I examine the political, economic, and developmental assumptions that inform

the notion of sustainable development and discuss the consequences of these

assumptions. I argue that sustainable development, rather than representing

a major theoretical breakthrough, is very much subsumed under the dominant

economic paradigm. As with development, the meanings, practices, and

policies of sustainable development continue to be informed by colonial

thought, resulting in disempowerment of a majority of the worlds

populations, especially rural populations in the Third World. Discourses of

sustainable development are also based on a unitary system of knowledge

and, despite its claims of accepting plurality, there is a danger of margin-alizing or co-opting traditional knowledges to the detriment of communities

who depend on the land for their survival.

144 Organization Studies 24(2)

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The papers main argument is at the broader level of political economy rather

than an individual organization. However, I would argue that the critique is

also relevant for organization studies because of the role played by

supranational organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO),

the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. Although theseare not corporate organizations in the traditional sense of the term, they

are powerful agents in advancing discourses of sustainable development.Moreover, there is a nexus between the policies of these organizations and

business organizations, especially large transnational corporations which are

at the forefront of the debate on biotechnology and sustainable development.

Transnational corporations are major agents that influence the environmental

and trade policies of the World Trade Organization as well as other global

agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In a broader sense, the various

agents that determine global environmental policies form a loose networkof powerful bodies that construct a particular form of reality about the

natural environment. Thus, examining the political discourse of sustainable

development will reveal its role in shaping organizational discourses on the

environment. Sustainability means different things to different people: what I

attempt to demonstrate in the paper is how colonial thought informs this

meaning creation and its resultant disempowering effects on sections of society

such as rural populations. I conclude by discussing alternate formulations of

sustainable development and implications for the study of organizations.

Theoretical Genealogy

Four theoretical streams inform my critique of sustainable development. I

draw upon insights from postcolonial theory to understand the construction

and representation of the Third World. The work of Edward Said, Homi

Bhabha, Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri Spivak, Radhakrishnan, Ngugi wa

Thiongo, and Vincent Mudimbe are particularly relevant in developing

a postcolonial critique of colonialism and imperialism. I also present

contemporary critiques of development as a prelude to developing a critique

of sustainable development. This critique draws from the work of ArturoEscobar, Wolfgang Sachs, Vandana Shiva, Ramachandra Guha, and Gustavo

Esteva, among others. I use the Foucauldian notion of power, in particular

his formulation of disciplinary power, as an analytic that examines the

production of truths about nature and sustainability through disciplinary

power and the subsequent control of knowledge.

And last, but definitely not the least, when theory fails me, when I have

difficulty in formulating notions of agency, I draw upon insights from many

grass-roots activist movements all over the world: Aboriginal land rights

movements, the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the Chipko movement, and the

Zapatista uprising, to name a few.A comprehensive review of postcolonial theory is beyond the scope of this

paper (see Mani 1989; McClintock 1992; Prakash 1992; Pugliese 1995;

Banerjee: Who Sustains Whose Development? 145



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Radhakrishnan 1993; and Said 1986 for a variety of insights into the field).

In a broad sense this school of thought attempts to problematize issues arising

from colonial relations (Shohat 1992) through a retrospective reflection

on colonialism, the better to understand the difficulties of the present in

newly independent states (Said 1986: 45). However, using the term postin postcolonialism is problematic because it assumes that colonialism as a

historical reality has somehow ended (Mani 1989) without acknowledgingthe complicity of colonial relations in contemporary discourses of develop-

ment and progress in NorthSouth relations. As a result, thepostabsolves

itself of any claims for present consequences of the damages caused by

colonization (Said 1986).

Examining discourses of sustainable development using theoretical

perspectives from colonialism and imperialism might allow us to see how

contemporary global environmental discourses serve as markers for the third

phase of colonization that Mies and Shiva (1993) allude to. In this postmodernage of liberal democracy, the concept of imperialism seems almost quaint,

which probably explains the silences in theorizing imperialism in contem-

porary social sciences (Patnaik 1990). Imperialism has been conceptualized

in a variety of ways, primarily using a political framework. For instance,

imperialism described theories and practices developed by a dominant

metropolitan center to rule distant territories, by force, by political means or

by economic, social, and cultural dependence. Doyle (1986: 45) defines

empire as a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the

effective political sovereignty of another political society. It can be achieved

by force, by political collaboration, by economic, social or cultural depen-dence. Colonialism, which is almost always a consequence of imperialism,

involves the establishment of settlements on outlying territories. The end of

empires and direct colonial rule did not mean the end of imperialism, and its

traces can be observed in the general cultural sphere . . . in specific political,

ideological, economic and social practice (Said 1993: 8). The traditional

politics of power, i.e. military strength, diplomacy, and weapons develop-

ment, have evolved into an age of geo-economics in which winners and

losers in the global economy are created by state-assisted private entities

(Luttwak 1999). However, as Said (1993) argues, accumulation and

acquisition are not the only actions of imperialism or colonialism. Theirideological formations assume that certain territories and people actually

require and beseech domination, as well as forms of knowledge affiliated

with domination.

In the context of management and organizations, it might be more

appropriate to understand imperialism as an economic system of external

investment and the penetration and control of markets and sources of

raw materials (Williams 1976: 159). Political and military imperialism

shows itself clearly; the problem lies in articulating the different guises of

imperialism in liberal free market economies. Thus, if imperialism is to be

viewed as a fundamental set of economic relations, then examining the rangeof relations (such as the relationship between nation states, international

institutions, and transnational corporations) becomes an important task in




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order to uncover the presence of imperialism in current institutional structures

and processes. Placed in the context of imperialism, the operation of interna-

tional finance capital becomes significant in its hegemonic institutionalization

through the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. Therefore, conflicts between

countries of the North and South in various international trade forums, as wellas protests by peasants and workers in the poorer countries of the world over

property and resource rights, are often aptly framed as anti-imperialiststruggles.

Thus, imperialism today is inextricably linked with culture, society, economy

and polity. Its operation is often masked and, because imperialism has learned

to manage things better, it is difficult to identify its disciplinary power in

all its nuances a power that normalizes experiences, rather than provides

avenues for resistance and change. Imperialism is operationalized through

different kinds of power: institutional power (agencies such as the IMF, the

WTO, and the World Bank), economic power (of corporations and nationstates), and discursive power, which constructs and describes uncontested

notions of development, backwardness, subsistence economies, while

preventing other narratives from emerging. As Said (1993: 8) points out, the

rhetoric of power all too easily produces an illusion of benevolence when

deployed in an imperial setting.

Foucaults (1980) analysis of power reveals how disciplinary practices

constitute the boundaries of discourse, determining what is and what is not,

what can be done and what cannot, what should be and what should not

(Clegg 1989). These practices are discursive in the sense that they constitute

and are constituted by knowledge appearing as specific institutional andorganizational practices. They become discursive because they reproduce

knowledge through practices that are made possible by the structural

assumptions of that knowledge (Clegg 1989). The rules generated by

discourse are not derived from some sovereign source but instead become

natural rules or norms. The power of science and the scientific method in

everyday discourse is an example of how science normalizes social and

cultural realms, not because of the superior rationality of science but because

of its procedures of normalization arising from its disciplinary power. This

power is not necessarily between sovereign and subject or state-controlled

economic or political power; in fact Foucault (1980: 102) argues that theseare limited sites of power and calls instead to shift our focus of inquiry to the

study of the techniques and tactics of domination. This disciplinary power

is not located at a legitimate site of sovereign or state but transmits itself

through a complex system of institutions, regulations, texts, policies, and

practices signifying not relations of sovereignty but relations of domination

what Foucault describes as subjugation through a constitution of subjects.

Thus,

. . . [disciplinary power] is a mechanism of power that permits time and labor, ratherthan wealth and commodities, to be extracted from bodies. It is a type of power which

is constantly exercised by means of surveillance rather than in a discontinuous mannerthrough levies and obligations over time. It presupposes a tight knit grid of materialcoercions rather than the physical existence of a sovereign. This new type of power,




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which can no longer be formulated in terms of sovereignty is one of the greatinventions of bourgeois society, a fundamental instrument in the constitution ofindustrial capitalism and the type of society that is its accompaniment. (Foucault1980: 105)

Sovereignty still exists; in the modern era it has become democratized andfunctions along with the mechanisms of discipline, concealing the fact that

the democratization of sovereignty was fundamentally determined by and

grounded in mechanisms of disciplinary coercion coercion that was more

apparent and visible during colonial times but operates in increasingly

sophisticated ways in the postcolonial era.

Mudimbe (1988) highlights three characteristics of colonialism: the

domination of physical space, reformation of the natives minds (particularly

in terms of knowledge systems and culture), and incorporation of local

economic histories into a Western perspective. As we shall see, all these

practices are very much evident in contemporary discourses of sustainabledevelopment, which are informed by either Enlightenment notions of taming

a savage wilderness through Western scientific rationality or Romantic

notions of a pristine, unspoiled wilderness that needs to be conserved at all

costs (Macnaghten and Urry 1998). In either case, the implications for non-

Western cultures, especially indigenous communities, are particularly severe.

The domination of physical space can include both domination of nature

and the appropriation of nature. The former involves the destruction of

nature; the latter involves its consumption, predominantly through a visual

sense incorporating the spectacularization of life (Lefebvre 1991: 286), as

evidenced by the rise of ecotourism in affluent countries where consumerspay premium prices for the authentic nature experience. Here meanings of

nature and the environment arise in a network of signs, messages, and

images, which seems to suggest that design rather than nature is the

organizing principle of todays society (Chaloupka and Cawley 1993). Or, as

Baudrillard (1981: 201) declares, nothing escapes design. Everything

belongs to design and there is no nature out there. . . . This designed

universe is what properly constitutes the environment. The past decade has

seen a rise in this kind of designer environmentalism, whose basic message

is that the worlds environmental ills can be solved by buying green and

natural products, The Body Shop and Ben & Jerrys being two prominentexamples that come to mind.

In the postcolonial era, the colonizercolonized relationships are played

out in trade conflicts between developed and underdeveloped countries,

resulting in the so-called NorthSouth divide, a complex relationship

characterized by rhetoric, defensiveness, and ideology. Analyzing Third

World experiences of imperialism and colonialism in the context of

sustainable development discourses might transform our understanding of the

past while enabling us to construct a history of the present and our attitude

toward the future. As Said (1993: 47) points out, despite the great

contributions of Western theorists such as Foucault and Williams, the imperialexperience for these scholars is quite irrelevant, a theoretical oversight that

is the norm in Western cultural and scientific disciplines. The twin discourses




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of development and sustainable development share structural characteristics

of colonizing discourses. Like Orientalism, a Western style for dominating,

restructuring, and having authority over the Orient (Said 1979: 3),

development functioned as a discipline for the production and management

of the Third World in the postWorld War II period, as we shall see in thenext section.

The Invention of Development and the Creation of

Underdevelopment

A useful starting point might be to locate current discourses of sustainable

development within the larger discourse of development in order to highlight

its continuities and discontinuities. Although the term development has been

in common usage for over 200 years, most scholars agree that thecontemporary notion of development was endorsed by President Harry

Truman. In his inaugural address on January 20, 1949, Truman outlined a

global program for development:

We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientificadvances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth ofunderdeveloped areas. . . . The old imperialism exploitation for foreign profit has no place in our plans. (Cited in Escobar 1995)

This of course set the stage for the new imperialism the creation of

underdevelopment, resulting in a new perception of the West and the rest ofthe world. This was the first time that the term development was used in the

context of underdevelopment, giving it a new meaning. The Third World was

born at that moment: on that day, over 2 billion people became under-

developed because, as Esteva (1992: 7) argues, they were transmogrified into

an inverted mirror of others reality: a mirror that belittles them and sends

them off to the end of the queue, a mirror that defines their identity, which is

really that of a heterogeneous and diverse majority, simply in the terms of a

homogenizing and narrow minority.

Many Third World countries have paid and continue to pay a disastrous price

for this catching-up development and, as several scholars have pointed out,the consequences have been particularly severe for rural populations (Adams

1990; Escobar 1995; Esteva 1987, 1992; Mies and Shiva 1993; Shiva 1989).

Farmers and peasants in the Third World as well as indigenous peoples in

different parts of the world were classified as living in a subsistence

economy and needed to develop in order to reach acceptable standards of

living. This had enormous economic and sociocultural influences on

indigenous peoples and farmers throughout the world; for instance, all

resources were directed at producing cash crops rather than the traditional

crops people used to grow. The detrimental effects of this form of develop-

ment actually undermined subsistence and led to underdevelopment (Shiva1989; Hyndman 1987; Mies and Shiva 1993).

In an insightful analysis of the development discourse, Escobar (1995) has




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demonstrated how development first created the notion of poverty (based on

modern, capitalist indicators such as dollar income per capita, material

possessions, resource extraction, science and technology, market economies)

then modernized the poor, transforming them into the assisted. This set in

place new modes of relations and mechanisms of control under the clarioncall of development. Development proceeded by constructing problems,

applying solutions and creating abnormalities, such as the illiterate, theunderdeveloped, the landless peasants who would later be treated and

reformed (Escobar 1995: 56). This was a scientific and technological process

that subsumed differences in culture, constructing people as variables in the

grand model of progress and validating the assimilative imperatives of

development under the banner of national interest, which was frequently the

case for the new nations of the Third World.

Placed in this context, development simply became another name for

economic growth. The rationale was that economic growth should be madeparamount. Economic growth would alleviate poverty by creating wealth,

which could then be used to solve social problems. This separation of the

economic from the social is characteristic of modern Western economic

thought, whereas in many non-Western sites no clear separation existed.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s it was becoming obvious to develop-

ment planners that economic growth did not necessarily mean equity and that

unbridled economic growth had several adverse social consequences. The

gap between rich and poor continued to widen: on a per capita income basis,

the rich to poor ratio was 2:1 in 1800, 20:1 in 1945, and 40:1 by 1975. The

richest 20 percent of the world account for 82.7 percent of global income,while the poorest 20 percent earn 1.6 percent of global income (Waters 1995).

In the newly industrializing countries, economic growth was inevitably

accompanied by an increase in income disparity. The social aspects that

accompanied development, such as unemployment, underemployment,

environmental and habitat destruction, and increasing inequalities, were seen

as social obstacles that needed to be overcome for development to proceed

smoothly. There was no recognition that some development programs

actually led to poverty and social problems, resulting in a sort of global

apartheid that separates the world into people who participate in the global

economy and others whose basic conditions of life have been destroyed (Beck2000; Shiva 1993).

Increasingly the economic realm began to define social and cultural aspects

for Third World populations. This regime of development depended solely

on the modern Western knowledge system, and rejected and marginalized

non-Western forms of knowledge. Development became a metaphor [that

gave] global hegemony to a purely Western genealogy of history, robbing

people of different cultures of the opportunity to define forms of their social

life (Esteva 1992: 9). What had been produced in the particular politico-

sociocultural context of industrialized countries in the West was now

generalized to the rest. In Foucauldian terms, development derived its powerfrom subjugated knowledge . . . a whole set of knowledges that have been

disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated; nave




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knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level

of cognition or scientificity (Foucault 1980: 82). If the history of develop-

ment is to be seen as a history of imperialism and colonialism, it is the

powerknowledge nexus that can illustrate how development came to be seen

as a version of reality and entrenched as the only normative reality (Spivak1988). To quote Harvey (1996: 131):

[The genius of the 18th-century political economy] was that it mobilized the humanimaginary of emancipation, progress, and self-realization into forms of discourse thatcould alter the application of political power and the construction of institutions inways that were consistent with the growing prevalence of the material practices ofmarket exchange. It did so, furthermore, while masking social relations and thedomination of the laborer that was to follow while subsuming the cosmic question ofthe relation to nature into a technical discourse concerning the proper allocationof scarce resources (including those in nature) for the benefit of human welfare. . . .The practice and theory of capitalistic political economy with respect to the environ-

ment has [sic] consequently become hegemonic in recent history.

The real success of development, as Escobar (1995: 71) points out, was to

synthesize, arrange, manage, and direct entire populations and countries based

on a unitary system, resulting in the colonization and domination of natural

and human ecologies. In the postcolonial era, these mechanisms of control

are still very much in place whether through international institutions such as

the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade

Organization, or through government policies of industrialization and

modernization. The escalation of environmental problems also led to the

struggle for natural resources, which resulted in a number of battles betweenpoor farmers, peasants, and indigenous populations on one side and corporate

and government interests on the other. The notion of sustainable development

was conceived in the midst of these struggles as nongovernmental

organizations (NGOs), environmental organizations, and various peasant and

indigenous groups, as well as international institutions such as the United

Nations, called for a conceptual and political re-examination of development.

Sustainable Development: The Concept and Its Implications

The concept of sustainable development emerged in the 1980s in an attempt

to explore the relationship between development and the environment.

Although there are over 100 current definitions of sustainable development

(Holmberg and Sandbrook 1992), the one most commonly used is that

of Brundtland (WCED 1987). According to the Brundtland Commission,

sustainable development is a process of change in which the exploitation of

resources, direction of investments, orientation of technological development,

and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present

needs (WCED 1987: 9). This broad definition is at the root of several

controversies and there is considerable disagreement among scholars indifferent disciplines over how this definition should be operationalized and

how sustainability should be measured. The Brundtland definition is not really




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a definition; it is a slogan, and slogans, however pretty, do not make theory.

As several authors have pointed out, the Brundtland definition does not

elaborate on the notion of human needs and wants (Kirkby et al. 1995;

Redclift 1987), and the concern for future generations is problematic in its

operationalization as well. Given the scenario of limited resources, thisassumption becomes a contradiction because most potential consumers

(future generations) are unable to access the present market or, as Martinez-Alier (1987: 17) elegantly puts it, individuals not yet born have ontological

difficulties in making their presence felt in todays market for exhaustible

resources.

Apart from attempting to reconcile economic growth with environmental

protection, the sustainable development agenda of Brundtland also focuses on

social justice and human development within the framework of social equity

and the equitable distribution and utilization of resources. Sustainability, as

Redclift (1987) points out, means different things to different people. Althoughtheories of sustainability sometimes stress the primacy of social justice, the

position is often reversed and justice is looked upon as subordinate to

sustainability, and since neither sustainability nor social justice has determinate

meanings, this opens the way to legitimizing one of them in terms of the other

(Dobson 1998: 242). The terms sustainability and sustainable development

are used interchangeably in both academic and popular discourses and the

concept is promoted by situating it against the background of sustaining a

particular set of social relations by way of a particular set of ecological

projects (Harvey 1996: 148). Thus, the debate about resource scarcity,

biodiversity, population, and ecological limits is ultimately a debate about thepreservation of a particular social order rather than a debate about the

preservation of natureper se (Harvey 1996: 148).

Discourses of development and sustainable development construct a

particular view of nature and the environment. A detailed exploration of

the various meanings of nature is beyond the scope of this paper given the

historical, geographical, and cultural complexities that inform its meanings,

including Western notions of democracy, theology, society, enlightenment,

romanticism, and modernity. However, I do not use the terms nature and

environment interchangeably. The transformation of nature (depicted

in European traditions as a wild, untamed, often hostile force) intoenvironment (more manageable and goal directed) is one of the hallmarks

of modernity, in which domination of nature becomes a key indicator of

human progress rather than a transformation of the relationship between

humans and nature (Macnaghten and Urry 1998). One consequence of

conceptualizing nature as environment is the abstraction of singularity from

the multiple meanings of nature, ranging from the essence or character of an

object; the physical world around us; living and nonliving things; the specific

ecology of places; notions of wilderness and ruralness; and the aesthetic or

spiritual values assigned to nature. As Macnaghten and Urry (1998) argue,

modernistic conceptualizations of nature do not reveal its contested meanings:nature as landscape, as an object of scientific scrutiny, as threatened and in

need of protection, as a resource-providing system, or as a source of spiritual




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renewal. Nature is thus made more real when it becomes the environment,

something that is separate from social and cultural practices and that can be

managed to produce discrete, observable and measurable outcomes. Although

the natureculture dichotomy underlying the Enlightenment tradition has been

criticized for being largely responsible for the environmental degradation ofthe planet in the name of development (Dunlap and Catton 1979; Escobar

1995), contemporary discourses of sustainable development are plagued bythe same modernistic assumptions of rationality in their reliance on scientific

inquiry and the separation of people from the biophysical environment

(Merchant 1980; Macnaghten and Urry 1998).

In a content analysis of different definitions of sustainable development,

Gladwin et al. (1995) identified several themes, including human develop-

ment, inclusiveness (of ecological, economic, political, technological, and

social systems), connectivity (of sociopolitical, economic, and environmental

goals), equity (fair distribution of resources and property rights), prudence(avoiding irreversibilities and recognizing carrying capacities), and security

(achieving a safe, healthy, and high quality of life). Despite its broad goals,

what is being sustained does not seem to be in question because, as Hart

(1997: 67) points out, the challenge is to develop a sustainable global

economy: an economy that the planet is capable of supporting indefinitely.

Thus, the challenge is to find new technologies and to expand the role of the

market in allocating environmental resources, on the assumption that putting

a price on the natural environment is the only way to protect it, unless

degrading it becomes more profitable (Beder 1994). Thus, even in the popular

Brundtland report, development is accorded a priority over the environment:environmental protection constitutes an integral part of the development

process (Chatterjee and Finger 1994). If the debate truly was about

environmental and social sustainability, surely one would expect the relation-

ship to be reversed, on the assumption that development proceeds within the

constraints and limits of the biophysical environment. Rather than reshaping

markets and production processes to fit the logic of nature, sustainable

development uses the logic of markets and capitalist accumulation to

determine the future of nature (Shiva 1991).

The language of capital is quite apparent in discourses of sustainable

development. For instance, Pearce et al. (1989) emphasize constancy ofnatural capital stock as a necessary condition for sustainability. According

to Pearce et al., changes in the stock of natural resources should be non-

negative, and man-made capital (products and services as measured by

traditional economics and accounting) should not be created at the expense

of natural capital (including both renewable and nonrenewable natural

resources). In other words, growth or wealth must be created without resource

depletion. Exactly how this is to be achieved remains a mystery. A majority

of the sustainable development literature is of this eco-modernist variety

(Bandy 1996) and addresses ways to operationalize the Brundtland concept.

Thus, concepts such as sustainable cost, natural capital or sustainablecapital are developed and touted as evidence of a paradigm shift (Bebbington

and Gray 1993). There is limited awareness of the fact that traditional notions




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of capital, income, and growth continue to inform this new paradigm. The

uncritical acceptance of the current system of markets is also problematic:

although markets are indeed efficient mechanisms to set prices they

are incapable of reflecting true costs, such as the replacement costs of an

old-growth tropical rainforest or the social costs of tobacco and liquorconsumption (Hawken 1995).

In an analysis of the sociology of nature, Macnaghten and Urry (1998: 2)argue that current discourses of nature and the environment all assume the

existence of a singular nature rather than emphasize that it is specific social

practices, especially of peoples dwellings, which produce, reproduce and

transform different natures and different values. They argue against three

doctrines of the received view of the environment, or what they call environ-

mental realism, environmental idealism, and environmental instrumentalism.

Environmentalism realism refers to the transformation of nature into a

scientifically researchable environment in which modern Westernscience can identify environmental problems and articulate appropriate

solutions. Social and cultural environmental practices are subsumed by

the realities of scientific inquiry. Macnaghten and Urry (1998) argue

against this singular view of nature by describing the cultural processes

involved in the naturalization of nature. They describe how the

environment entered social discourse through specific social and cultural

processes, such as student activism and the countercultural movements

of the 1960s.

Environmental idealism analyzes nature by examining the range of

values held by people about nature; these environmental values areassumed to be stable and consistent. Macnaghten and Urry (1998) refute

the notion of investigating environmental values without contextualizing

the temporal and spatial arrangements of peoples lives. Individual

valuation of nature, they argue, is ambiguous, contradictory, and context

specific.

Environmental instrumentalism refers to the responses of individuals and

groups to environmental problems that are determined by evaluating

individual or collective interests against environmental trade-offs through

costbenefit analysis or other market-based mechanisms. The assumption

here is that the individual subject will weigh the costs and benefits ofdifferent behaviors and, once presented with the facts, will understand

that it is in their interest to behave in an environmentally responsible

manner, believing that governments and public institutions will also act

to protect the environment. Macnaghten and Urrys (1998) research on

British consumers shows little support for this proposition: few

respondents appeared to possess such a strong sense of agency and high

levels of trust in public institutions.

Elements of these three doctrines can be observed in discourses of sustainable

development, whether at the level of international and national policy (asmanifested in the policies of the United Nations, the World Bank, national

governments, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and Agenda 21) or




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regional and local governments. For instance, Article 35.3 of Agenda 21

developed at the Rio Summit of 1992 declares that:

Scientific knowledge should be applied to articulate and support the goals ofsustainable development. . . . [T]here needs to be an increased output from the sciences

in order to enhance understanding and facilitate interaction between science andsociety . . . [aimed at] strengthening the scientific basis for sustainable management. . . enhancing scientific understanding . . . building up scientific capacity andcapability. (Emphasis added)

The report goes on to say, of crucial importance is the need for scientists in

developing countries to participate fully in international scientific research

programs dealing with the global problems of environment and development

so as to allow all countries to participate on equal footing in negotiations on

global environmental and developmental issues. How all countries can

participate on equal footing remains unclear, given the structural inequalitiesbetween the North and the South. There is also the implicit (and incorrect)

assumption that scientists from developing countries represent the interests

of the rural poor, who are dependent on the natural environment for their

survival and who value and manage nature differently. For instance, in

its social and environmental report, the mining giant Rio Tinto describes

the companys values of land use . . . in particular, that science should be the

basis of understanding and managing the environment (Rio Tinto 1999: 15).

This is precisely the point: whose science are we talking about here? Certainly

not indigenous ecology, a science used by communities for more than 70,000

years to manage their environment. This scientific and economic reinventionof nature does not recognize that the environmental and social objectives of

diverse populations are often different and sometimes incompatible (Redclift

2000). The new language of sustainable development scientific

understanding, citizenship, species rights, intergenerational equity

obscures the inequalities and cultural distinctions surrounding environmental

resources.

A similar sleight-of-hand is used in justifying opposition to environmental

protection policies. A recent report (paid for by the coal industry lobby in the

United States) found that millions of blacks, Hispanics and other minorities

could be pushed into poverty by tough new restrictions on energy use calledfor by the Kyoto Protocol (Mokhiber and Weissman 2000). The fact that

minority communities in the USA have been used as dumping grounds for

decades did not enter the debate and neither did the risks of global warming

to these communities.

The role of science in validating indigenous knowledge is also problematic,

with a double-edged irony. Scientific agriculture led to modern practices

of monocropping with high-input intensive farming techniques. The environ-

mental problems that were created as a result also needed scientific

solutions. A recent study found that planting different varieties of rice

produced larger harvests (Yoon 2000); this success of polyculture waspresented either as a discovery of modern science or as validating centuries-

old indigenous agricultural practices. This is another example of colonial




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discourse in which local economic histories are incorporated into Western

scientific and economic perspectives. Why modern scientific practices escape

this validation test is not a question that gets asked often in the promotion of

new and sustainable agricultural practices.

This is not to deny the many benefits delivered by Western science andtechnology; rather it is to understand which systems and peoples have been

marginalized in this process and how control of natural and biologicalresources has shifted from peasant populations to transnational corporations.

In recent years, a number of subdisciplines such as evolutionary biology,

conservation biology, and ecology have attempted to produce a greener

version of science (Barlow 1997) under the assumption this would lead to

deeper meanings about nature and ecology. However, these arguments do not

address the inequalities of resource use among the worlds populations. It is

possible for a science to be valid in its knowledge claims and still produce

domination effects. And, despite the advances in science and technology,considerable disagreement still exists among scientists about the causes and

consequences of, as well as solutions to, the worlds environmental problems.

The noted biologist Edward Wilson (1992: 325) advocates caution in

developing ways to regenerate existing ecosystems: ecology is still too

primitive a science to predict the outcome of predesigned biotas. However,

there is still the assumption that scientific knowledge will help solve these

problems in the future.

Environmental realism and idealism underlie many of the policy documents

of the World Bank, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the

Convention on Biodiversity, and multinational trade agreements such asNAFTA and ASEAN, as well as texts on biodiversity and the environment

and books on green business (Agenda 21; Barlow 1997; Hawken 1995;

Wilson 1992). Barlow (1997: 26), discussing Edward Wilsons thesis on

biodiversity, writes: Edward Wilson believes that science offers humankinds

not only an awareness of the biodiversity crisis and the tools for saving species

but also a story that can change our very souls to take on the task. There is

also a cozy relationship between economic ideology and Western science:

although admitting that traditional economic valuation methods almost

always undervalue biological diversity, Wilson (1992: 271) calls for new

ways to draw income from wildlands: the race is on to develop methods,to draw more income from the wildlands without killing them, and so to give

the invisible hand of free-market economics a green thumb. Hawken (1995:

81) pursues a similar line of reasoning: I believe customers and buyers are

getting incomplete information, because markets do not carry the true costs

of our purchases. When customers start receiving proper information the

whole story things will change. Again, the instrumentalist assumption is

clear: there is a collective will to change consumption behavior all that

is needed is proper information.

The Brundtland approach to sustainable development aims at achieving

economic growth, environmental protection, and equity simultaneously byreconciling the irreconcilable. Although such a goal is laudable, there are

serious concerns about whether it is achievable (Kirkby et al. 1995). The




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major proposals of the Brundtland agenda include changing the quality of

growth, ensuring a sustainable level of population, conserving and enhancing

the resource base, managing technology and environmental risks, and

incorporating the environment into decision-making. There is also an under-

lying assumption that market forces can be relied upon to achieve sustainabledevelopment, although political interventions, international agreements, and

national environmental regulation also have a role to play. However, thenotion of global sustainability is problematic in that it obscures structural

inequalities in resource access and use amongst different regions of the world.

As we shall see in the next section, discourses of sustainable development

serve to deepen the existing NorthSouth divide in terms of natural resource

conservation and utilization.

Who Sustains Whose Development?

Definitions employing global perspectives are usually subsumed under a

monocultural definition of global, defined according to a perception of the

world shared by its rulers (Escobar 1995). The reframing of the relationship

between economic growth and the environment and the ecocentric philosophy

of spaceship earth is simply an attempt to socialize environmental costs

globally (McAfee 1999), which assumes equal responsibility for environ-

mental degradation while obscuring significant differences and inequities in

resource utilization between countries. The sustainability of local cultures,

especially peasant cultures, is not addressed; instead, global survival isproblematized as sustainable development, an articulation that privileges

Western notions of environmentalism and conservation. The problem does

not recognize that Western environmentalism has effects similar to those of

development: rather than empower peasant populations throughout the world,

environmental and conservation policies transfer control of rights and

resources to national and international institutions that have failed these

populations for over 50 years (Mies and Shiva 1993).

Global environmentalism, espoused as a solution to the environmental ills

facing the planet, remains firmly rooted in the tradition of Western economic

thought and dehistoricizes and marginalizes the environmental traditions ofnon-Western cultures. Environmental problems such as pollution do not

recognize national or regional boundaries, yet the global solutions advocated

by the industrialized countries perpetuate the dependency relations of

colonialism. Images of polluted Third World cities abound in the media with

no acknowledgment of the corresponding responsibility of industrialized

countries, which consume 80 percent of the worlds aluminum, paper, iron

and steel; 75 percent of the worlds energy; 75 percent of its fish resources;

70 percent of its ozone-destroying CFCs; and 61 percent of its meat (Renner

1997). The poorer regions of the world destroy or export their natural

resources to meet the demands of the richer nations or to meet debt-servicingneeds arising from the austerity measures dictated by the World Bank. It is

ironic to the point of absurdity that the poorer countries of the world have to




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be austere in their development while the richer nations continue to enjoy

standards of living that are dependent on the austerity measures of the poorer

nations. Neither the dangers of environmental destruction nor the benefits

of environmental protection are equally distributed: protection measures

continue to be dictated by the industrialized countries, often at the expenseof local rural communities. This perverse logic pervades notions of sustain-

able growth. Consumer spending and confidence are primary criteria forsustaining the socioeconomic system whereas welfare policies for the poor

are dismantled because they are a pernicious drain on growth (Harvey 1996).

Thus, the teeming millions in the Third World are responsible for damage

to the biosphere whereas conspicuous consumption in the first world is a

necessary condition for sustainable growth (Harvey 1996).

Exploitation of these communities in the name of environmental protection

and conservation continues despite 50 years of decolonization in the Third

World. Colonial modes of conservation are still deployed by the new nationstates. In India, for instance, vast tracts of land used by peasant communities

are designated as tiger reserves for the enjoyment of foreign tourists and

local elites, while the communities who depend on the land for sustenance

are displaced. This has happened with the Chenchu community in southern

India. The community pays for the protection of tigers but no one pays for

the conservation of their communities, something they have been doing for

thousands of years (Guha and Martinez-Alier 1997). An alternative solution

proposed by the Chenchu tribe did not merit serious consideration by state

government officials: the proposal was to transfer all the tigers to the capital

city of Hyderabad, after evacuating all its residents, and to designate the citya tiger reserve.

Sustainable development attempts to reconcile these opposing interests and

aims to maximize economic and environmental benefits simultaneously. This

is a contradiction in terms, because sustainability and development are based

on very different and often incompatible assumptions. To sustain means to

support from below, to supply with nourishment; it is about care and concern,

a concept that is far removed from development, which is an act of control,

often a program of violence, organized and managed by nation states,

international institutions, and business corporations operating under the tenets

of modern Western science (Visvanathan 1991). Environmental concernsarticulated in the discourse of sustainable development are concerns because

they threaten the sustainability of the economic system. The assumption

is that the only way these concerns can be addressed is by putting a price

on environmental assets. Current environmental policies are based on this

logic and do not address the damaging consequences these policies can

have for millions of people who depend on the land for survival and for

whom environmentalism is not a quality of life issue but a matter of survival

(Guha 1989).

These differing environmental objectives in industrialized and Third

World countries pose another contradiction for sustainable development.Environmental concerns in the industrialized countries revolve around

conserving rural spaces, valuing the aesthetics of nature, keeping beaches




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clean, and providing the opportunity to acquire a suntan without the risk of

cancer. Environmentalism in the Third World, especially in rural areas, is

about keeping control over natural resources, about having control over the

technology that transforms the environment (Redclift 1987). As the rate of

international transactions continues to increase in todays global marketeconomy, environmental degradation in the developing countries also

continues steadily to worsen. As several researchers have pointed out, the so-called greening of industry in developed countries has, in many cases, been

achieved at the expense of Third World environments through the relocation

of polluting industries to developing countries (Escobar 1995; Goldsmith

1997; Redclift 1987).

Critics of sustainable development also argue that it can colonize areas of

Third World social life that are not yet ruled by the logic of the market or the

consumer, areas such as forests, water rights, and sacred sites (Escobar 1995;

Visvanathan 1991). The rural poor directly depend on the biophysicalenvironment for survival, and notions of conservation and protection that are

common in developed countries are contestable in developing countries.

Although poverty and environmental degradation are often linked in the

literature, the role of development in diminishing the rural populations

access to natural resources is not frequently discussed. Rather, the tendency

is to blame the victim: farmers and peasants who engage in industrialized

farming using fertilizers and pesticides are blamed without examining the

role of the chemical industry or the market-based institutions that are

responsible for promoting their use. Global discourses of sustainable

development, as evidenced by the policies of the World Bank, the UnitedNations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization,

all assume that poverty rather than affluence is the real problem of

environmental destruction. Slash-and-burn peasants are blamed for the

destruction of the forests, whereas logging and timber companies, which have

a far greater impact, are given tax incentives for following sustainable

practices (Banerjee 1998). Green incentives are provided for corporations

and policy measures are put in place to evaluate and minimize the ecological

impacts of logging. There are no indicators that can measure the devastating

impact on local communities. Even the construction of a single road has

multiplier effects: it reduces the transaction costs of the logging company (atpublic expense) while increasing land alienation of local communities,

converting a hitherto knowledgeable and resourceful community into a pool

of unskilled labor (Gupta 1997). This sustainable process is praised by

corporations and governments for creating employment opportunities for

local communities, but they fail to recognize the disempowerment and

poverty created as a result of the dispossession of land and natural resources.

In the sustainable development discourse, poverty is identified as the agent

of environmental destruction, thus legitimating prior notions of growth and

development.

The global definition of environmental problems by the North results in localproblems for the South because the handful of industrialized countries that

set the global agenda are guided by narrow, local and parochial interests




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(Shiva 1993: 150). Conflicting objectives over resource use further exacerbate

the equity problem because the industrialized countries sustain inequalities by

imposing a monopoly knowledge that constitutes the parameters of global

environmental problems (Beck 1996; Macnaghten and Urry 1998). Global

environmental policy regimes, despite the rhetoric of inclusiveness, do littleto address the concerns of indigenous peoples. The Second International

Indigenous Forum on Climate Change at The Hague in November 2000 issueda declaration listing their concerns. Of primary concern was the exclusion

of indigenous peoples from participating in the development and the

implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. The Forum also professed concern that

. . . the measures to mitigate climate change currently being negotiated are based ona worldview of territory that reduces forests, lands, seas and sacred sites to only theircarbon absorption capacity. This worldview and its practices adversely affect the livesof Indigenous Peoples and violate our fundamental rights and liberties, particularly,our right to recuperate, maintain, control and administer our territories which areconsecrated and established in instruments of the United Nations. (IIFC 2000)

The notion of carbon sinks leads to a system of tradable emissions: countries

are allowed not to reduce their emissions if they plant trees instead. This

system can have perverse outcomes: a country can get environmental credit

for (a) not reducing its emissions, (b) leveling old-growth forests, and (c)

replanting trees to grow new forests, i.e. creating carbon sinks. This is

typical of the reductionism inherent in modern science whereby forests are

valued only for their carbon sequestration capacity. This monocultural

mindset of scientific forestry does not recognize that forests are not

just carbon sinks or timber mines for local communities: they are theirsource of food, agriculture, and medicine, in short, their entire liveli-

hood. Despite highlighting issues of poverty and equity, contemporary

discourses of sustainable development do not criticize the structural

conditions that characterize the increasing intrusion of capital into the domain

of nature, which results in the capitalization, expropriation, commodifi-

cation, and homogenization of nature. The economic relations that underpin

contemporary sustainable development strategies have evolved from the

violent histories of colonial capitalist relations, which informed development

for much of the 20th century. If discourses of sustainable development

articulate notions of equity, democracy inclusion, then a critical perspectivewill allow us also to see it as a product of a racialized justification for

modernization, in which marginalized peoples are subject to a new

dependency and a new colonialism (Bandy 1996: 542).

Sustainable Development in Organizations: Implications for

Organization Theory and Practice

How and why did the discourse on the environment arise in the first place?

Many historians trace the modern Western environmental movement to thepublication of Rachel Carsons Silent Spring in 1962. Whereas earlier

environmental concerns focused mainly on suburban aesthetics or localized




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pollution problems, Carsons representation of environmental problems

highlighted the threats to nature (and the human body) posed by widespread

use of pesticides. The ensuing scientific debates on the limits to growth,

population pressures, and the carrying capacity of the planet were part of

a larger cultural critique of industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s. Publicperceptions of environmental problems and increased environmental

legislation were two key reasons the environment became an important issuefor corporations, resulting in the need for companies to sell environ-

mentalism in order to be perceived as green (Banerjee 2001b; Newton

and Harte 1997). Newton and Harte (1997: 91) argue that organizations also

paint themselves green to avoid regulatory control: one of the aims of the

Vision of Sustainable Development promoted by the Business Council for

Sustainable Development is to maintain entrepreneurial freedom through

voluntary initiatives rather than regulatory coercion.

In recent years there has been a minor explosion of articles dealing withcorporate greening in the management literature. Much of this literature

attempts to incorporate current notions of sustainable development into

corporate strategy (see, for example, the 2000 special issue on the

management of organizations in the natural environment in theAcademy of

Management Journal, the 1995 special issue on ecologically sustainable

organizations in theAcademy of Management Review, or the 1992 special

issue on strategic management of the environment inLong Range Planning)

and discusses the emergence of corporate environmentalism and organi-

zational processes of environmental management (Banerjee 2001b; Crane

2000; Fineman 1996).That corporations play a significant role in achieving sustainability is not in

doubt. The question is, are current environmental practices compatible with

notions of sustainability? Some researchers caution that the greening of

industry should not be confused with the notion of sustainable development

(Pearce et al. 1989; Schot et al. 1997; Welford 1997; Westley and Vredenburg

1996). Although there have been significant advances in pollution control and

emissions reduction, this does not mean that current modes of development

are sustainable for the planet as a whole (Hart 1997). Most companies focus

on operational issues when it comes to greening and lack a vision of

sustainability (Hart 1997). In a recent Greening of Industry conference, theproposed corporate strategy for sustainable development had no surprises:

the focus was on scientific innovation, public service and turning the world

populations into active consumers of its new products, and expanding global

business into the less affluent segments of the worlds population (Rossi

et al. 2000: 275).

Echoing Wilsons (1992) call for a biology of restoration, Hawken (1995:

11) suggests an economy of restoration as a solution to the environmental

crisis. Corporations would compete to conserve and increase resources rather

than deplete them. Hawken proposes three ways by which this can be

achieved: eliminate waste from all industrial production; change our energyuse from carbon based to solar and hydrogen based; and create feedback and

accountability systems that reward restorative behavior. Although these




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solutions are also informed by environmental realism and idealism and

assume there is both a scientific solution and a collective will of consumers

in the affluent countries to serve and nurture the aspirations of the poor and

educated (Hawken 1995: 214), developing technologies, processes, and

regulatory mechanisms to reduce the environmental impact of business isdefinitely one area in which there is agreement among all constituents of

society. In addition, Hawken suggests that the small- and medium-scale sectoris better able to carry out the task of restoration effectively than are large

transnational corporations.

Efforts to broaden the scope of greening to include social sustainability are

also under way. This triple bottom line approach assesses the social and

environmental impacts of business, as distinct from its economic impact

(Elkington, 1999). Elkington (1999: 73) describes interactions between the

environment, society, and the economy as three shear zones that produce

a variety of opportunities and challenges for organizations. Many of theadvances in cleaner technologies and emissions reductions have arisen from

the economicenvironment shear zone, which is an area that business

corporations are most comfortable with since it delivers measurable benefits

to them. Outcomes of the socialenvironment and socialeconomy shear

zones are more ambiguous (for corporations at least), although the assumption

here is that organizations need to integrate these as well in order to survive

in the long term.

Theoretical perspectives of the triple bottom line approach focus on

maximizing sustainability opportunities (corporate social responsibility,

stakeholder relations, and corporate governance) while minimizingsustainability-related risks (corporate risk management, environmental, health

and safety audits, and reporting). Proponents of the triple bottom line

claim that, by using these and other parameters, it is possible to map the

environmental and social domains of sustainability and ultimately to assess

the performance of corporations. However, research on the environmental

and social dimensions of corporate sustainability is very much in its infancy.

Although this approach is proving to be popular among large transnational

corporations, the impact on local communities is unclear. The same

companies that are being targeted by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)

and indigenous communities because of their negative environmental andsocial impacts are the leaders in espousing triple bottom line principles;

it remains to be seen whether this approach can deliver real benefits to

communities or whether it becomes a more sophisticated form of green-

washing. There is a real danger that the glossy social performance reports

of transnational corporations may deflect attention from the grim realities of

their environmental performance.

Discourses of sustainable development are becoming increasingly

corporatized. For instance, the Dow Jones recently launched a Sustainability

Group Index after a survey of Fortune 500 companies. A sustainable

corporation was defined as one that aims at increasing long-term shareholdervalue by integrating economic, environmental and social growth opportunities

into its corporate and business strategies (Dow Jones Sustainability Group




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Index 2000). It is interesting to observe how notions of sustainability are

constructed, manipulated, and represented in both the popular business press

and academic literature. As evidence of the deleterious effects of development

mounts, the discourse shifts from sustainable development to the more

positive sounding sustainability and then shifts the focus to corporatesustainability. Corporate discourses on sustainability produce an elision that

displaces the focus from global planetary sustainability to sustaining thecorporation through growth opportunities. What happens if environmental

and social issues do not result in growth opportunities remains unclear, the

assumption being that global sustainability can be achieved only through

market exchanges. This (post)modern form of corporate social responsi-

bility produces a truth effect that is not dissimilar to Milton Friedmans

(1962) concept of corporate social responsibility involving the maxi-

mization of shareholder value, despite the rhetoric of stakeholders and

corporate citizenship (Banerjee 2000; 2001a). Despite framing sustain-able development as a strategic discontinuity that will change todays

fundamental economics, corporate discourses on sustainable development,

not surprisingly, promote the business-as-usual (except greener) line and do

not describe any radical change in world-views. As Monsantos ex-CEO

Robert Shapiro puts it, Far from being a soft issue grounded in emotion

or ethics, sustainable development involves cold, rational business logic

(Magretta 1997: 81).

So what implications does this critique of sustainable development have for

the study of organizations? Given how this discourse is constructed at higher

levels of the political economy, it is unlikely that any radical revision ofsustainable development will emerge from organizations. For any such

rethinking to occur, a more critical approach to organization theory is required

and new questions need to be raised not only about the ecological and social

sustainability of business corporations but about the political economy itself.

Corporate environmental management practices are informed by the larger

debate on sustainable development and, consequently, radical revisions can

occur only if there is a shift in thinking at a macro level. I will discuss three

implications of a critique of sustainable development for the study of

organizations.

First, we need to broaden our definition of organizations and open up newspaces for critique. An overwhelming proportion of research in management

focuses on traditional profit-oriented corporations. The bulk of research on

not-for-profit organizations is framed by similar corporate goals: how can we

raise more money for charity, how can we get more people into museums or

libraries or zoos? Very little research takes place on strategies for activist

groups and organizations, and the theories and practices required to oppose

corporate actions (Frooman 1999). There are very few studies in the

management literature about the operations of international bodies such as

the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and the World Bank.

Although these are not corporate organizations in the traditional sense of theterm, they are powerful agents in advancing the discourse on sustainability

and should come under the purview of organization studies. We also need to




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acknowledge that modern organizations often reflect colonial formations.

Employing a postcolonial perspective for the study of organizations might

provide new spaces for critique and resistance. Although critical organization

theorists portray organizations as structures of domination, legitimacy, and

reflexive social systems (Courpasson 2000; Leflaive 1996), recent debatesin organization theory between modernist and postmodernist forms of

organization are curiously silent on the colonial dimensions that frameorganizationenvironment relationships.

Second, we need to open up new spaces and provide new frameworks for

organizationstakeholder dialogues as well as critically to examine the

dynamics of the relationships between corporations, NGOs, governments,

community groups, and funding agencies. Contemporary discourses of

organizations and their stakeholders are inevitably constrained by practical

reasons such as the profit-seeking behavior of corporations (Trevio and

Weaver 1999). Although the vast literature on corporate social responsibility,stakeholder integration, and business ethics is based on the assumption that

business is influenced by societal concerns, the dominance of societal interests

in radically reshaping business practices is in some question (Mueller 1994).

The domain of corporate social responsibility cannot be assessed by primarily

economic criteria and neither can an environmental ethic be developed

through an ethically pragmatic managerial morality that primarily serves

organizational interests (Snell 2000; ten Bos 1997). Although NGOs do

serve as important counterpoints, their relationships with corporations and

governments are often ambiguous and framed by categories furnished by

international institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank,categories that are inimical to many groups that are negatively affected by

corporations (Spivak 1999). Increasing accountability of both corporations

and NGOs to local communities and translating participation in more

meaningful local contexts without reducing social movements to some other

form of domination (the prerogatives of donor agencies, for example) are

challenges for the future (Escobar 1992; Derman 1995).

Third, we need to question espoused corporate practices of sustainability.

Discourses of corporate greening, whether based on deep ecology,

ecocentric or sustaincentric management, need to be interrogated and their

constructs and concepts examined with a critical lens. Despite calls fora fundamental revision of organization studies concepts and theories

(Shrivastava 1994), there are no explanations as to how this will occur. It is

unclear how alternate conceptualizations of an organizations environment

(Shrivastava 1994) or a complete moral transformation within the

corporation (Crane 2000: 673) will naturally lead to social justice or a more

equitable distribution of resources. Fundamental changes in organizations

cannot occur unless there are corresponding shifts in the larger political

economy and crucial questions regarding the role of a corporation and its

license to operate in society are addressed. All the exhortations of green

organization theorists do not begin to address the tremendous impedimentsto restructuring the political economy and abandoning conventional notions

of competition and consumption (Newton and Harte 1997). If organizational




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analysis involves understanding the processes of how organizations are

produced in particular societal contexts (Leflaive 1996) and how external

constraints of the environment are translated into organizational imperatives

(Knights and Morgan 1993: 212), then a critique of contemporary notions

of sustainable development should allow us to examine the emergence ofgrassroots organizations involved in resistance movements as well as

highlight corporate strategies of co-optation and management of theenvironment. It should examine the structures and processes that discursively

produce external environmental constraints and how social and cultural

relations are changed by organizations. It should broaden the debate to include

the political economy and alternative approaches to addressing environmental

problems, something that the current environmental management discourse

fails to do (Levy 1997). It should also allow us to see how nation states,

international organizations, and transnational corporations support the needs

of international capital. A critique of capital and capitalisms should be placedfirmly at the center of the debate rather than in the uneasy invisible position

it currently occupies in most organizational theories (Pitelis 1993).

Arguments that question the sustainability of current economic systems are

rarely found in the literature and much of the theorizing on green business is

what Newton and Harte (1997) call technicist kitsch, laced with liberal doses

of evangelical rhetoric. As long as conceptions of sustainable development

continue to be driven solely by rationalizations of competitive advantage, no

paradigmatic shift in world views of nature and sustainability can take place.

Green consumption will not save the world because, rather than attempting

politically to reconstitute the mode of modern production to meet ecologicalconstraints, it advocates nonpolitical, nonsocial, noninstitutional solutions

to environmental problems (Luke 1994: 158). Corporate green marketing

strategies continue to focus on the economic bottom line at the organizational

level (Banerjee 1999) without addressing the macro marketing implications

of the relationships between technological, political, and economic

institutions and their role in environmental decline (Kilbourne et al. 1997).

A critical examination of the relationship between the dominant socio-

economic paradigm and the environment will highlight how colonial capitalist

development increases social inequalities and, despite its knowledge claims,

results in a loss of ecological knowledge. Any effort at envisioning alternateecologies must involve visions of alternate societies and politics as well (Guha

1989).

The debate over biotechnology is a pertinent example of how broader

scientific, political, and economic discourses, structured by colonial formations

that frame NorthSouth relations, can produce discursive effects at the

organizational level. The los

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