IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ebg/heccah/1056.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Projecting Different Identities: A Longitudinal Study of the 'Whipsaw' Effects of Changing Leadership Discourse About the Triple Bottom Line

Author

Listed:
  • Moingeon , Bertrand
  • Bayle-Cordier , Julie

Abstract

This paper focuses on changes in leadership’s discourse about the "triple bottom line" in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream from its founding days through to its acquisition by and integration into Unilever. For this study, the authors analyzed CEO claims about "who we are" from their letters in annual reports (what they label projected identity). A sample of employees (both long-service and relative newcomers) were interviewed about their perceptions of B&J’s over the thirty years covered. Findings reveal that successive CEO’s stressed different "logics" about the business and what would make it successful over the years with the founders emphasizing a strong linkage between the economic, product, and social components of the company’s triple bottom line and their next three successors decoupling these components and pushing, each in different ways, for stronger financial returns. As a result, organization members were "whipsawed" between their CEOs’ different logics and identity claims. The CEO letters exhibit a progression over time from a more normative to utilitarian tone familiar in the organizational identity literature. The messaging shifts, however, when a fifth CEO takes charge and re-integrates the firm’s triple bottom line. Thus the firm’s projected identity evolved in a U pattern starting with an integrated triple bottom line logic, shifting to a more linear logic where the economic mission dominates, and then reintegration where multiple bottom lines are embraced once again. Here the authors explore both the strategic (external) and personal (internal) challenges informing the different CEOs’ messages over years, the whipsaw effect on staff, and the longer term evolution of projected identity in the company and reemergence of its integrated triple bottom line. This study contributes to the CSR and organization identity literatures by documenting how CEO’s (and their company) must struggle with maintaining an integrated triple bottom line in the context of commercial challenges and major changes involved in M&A. It also speaks to the practical matters of keeping normative traditions alive amidst competing pressures for change.

Suggested Citation

  • Moingeon , Bertrand & Bayle-Cordier , Julie, 2014. "Projecting Different Identities: A Longitudinal Study of the 'Whipsaw' Effects of Changing Leadership Discourse About the Triple Bottom Line," HEC Research Papers Series 1056, HEC Paris.
  • Handle: RePEc:ebg:heccah:1056
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2496804
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lorea Narvaiza & Cristina Aragon & Cristina Iturrioz & Julie Bayle-Cordier & Sandrine Stervinou, 2017. "Cooperative Dynamics During the Financial Crisis: Evidence From Basque and Breton Case Studies," Post-Print hal-01414168, HAL.
    2. Aaron T. McDonald & Catalin Ratiu & Beverlee B. Anderson, 2023. "Reputational Considerations in Firm Response to Social Issues," Corporate Reputation Review, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 26(3), pages 192-202, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebg:heccah:1056. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Antoine Haldemann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hecpafr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.