Three Essays on the Ethical Organisation as Agent of Social Change

Abstract

This thesis is comprised of three empirical papers investigating the ethical organisation and its role as an agent of social change. The first paper, entitled ‘“The Only Way is Ethics”– discursive construction of the ‘ethical organisation’’, draws on the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe (1985/2014) to investigate how a case study organisation, Lush Cosmetics Ltd., discursively constructs its identity as an ‘ethical organisation’ in its corporate communications and consider how this construction serves to challenge hegemonic conceptualisations of the social and environmental responsibilities of business and contribute to a shift in society’s understanding of these responsibilities. The second paper, entitled ‘Corporate Activism as Counter-Accounting: the Lush Cosmetics #SpyCops Campaign’ analyses mainstream media and wider reporting of a corporate activism campaign conducted by the same case study organisation and theorises the campaign as a form of counter-accounting which was successful in raising awareness of a social issue and enabling the voices of marginalised stakeholders to be heard, with a resulting potential to promote social change. The final paper, entitled ‘“Operating on the Edges of Capitalism” – the ethics-focussed organisation as liminal agent of social change’  mobilises the anthropological concept of ‘liminality’ (van Gennep, 1909/1960) to analyse interviews with employees of the case study organisation, and members of campaign groups with which the organisation has partnered, to investigate how ethics-focussed for-profit organisations that occupy a ‘betwixt and between’ (Turner, 1967) cultural space may yield power and potential to enact beneficial social change.