The political ecology of automobile recycling in Europe

Abstract

This paper addresses the relationship between organizations and the natural environment from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. In doing so, it contributes in three ways. First, it satisfies the need for more political perspectives in environment-related research. Second, by analyzing the end-of-life vehicle issue that the European automobile industry addressed in the 1990s, the paper satisfies the need of developing research that integrates organizational and field-level analysis. Finally, the use of the political ecology framework for the analysis of the end-oflife vehicle issue contributes to the development of a more politically charged institutional theory in which, as the study shows, both inertia and change in organizational fields depend on circuits of political ecology.

Descriptors: political ecology, end-of-life vehicles, organization and environment, institutional theory

Introduction

In Western Europe, around 12 million cars become end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) every year, generating approximately 2.2 million tonnes of permanent waste (Wright et al. 1998; Kurylko 1997). Remarkably, in the context of Western European countries, this only became an issue in terms of its environmental impact in the last decade of the 20th century. In particular, Germany became known worldwide for its tough approach, requiring the implementation of 'extended producer responsibility' regulation as a solution to post-consumption waste problems. It was in August 1990 that the Federal Ministry of the Environment drafted a proposed regulation suggesting that it was the manufacturer's responsibility to take back end-of-life vehicles, at no cost to the consumer. That was in 1990; by 1999, however, representatives of the German government were lobbying European Union diplomats to delay full producer responsibility regulations. After long negotiations, the Union agreed to push the back date when producer responsibility would apply to car manufacturers from 2003 to 2006.

It was this change in the position of the German government that served as a trigger for us to enquire into an area of both empirical and theoretical importance for the emerging field of organization and environment. We were intrigued by the political contestation surrounding ELV issues. It was this contestation that encouraged us to seek an explanation for both change and inertia within organizational fields. Surprisingly little help could be found in organization studies. Only a small body of knowledge has accumulated on environment-related research, mostly since the 1990s. One of the most important steams deals with the role of regulation in promoting organizational change -- a line of inquiry initiated by a short essay written by Michael Porter (Porter 1991) and published in Scientific American. The 'hypothesis' developed in this essay initiated intense debate as well as generating studies inquiring into the role of regulation in promoting environmentally sound innovation (Walley and Whitehead 1994; Porte r and van der Linde 1995; Palmer et al. 1995; Esty and Porter 1998). While these studies focus either on the societal or organizational level of analysis in questioning the influence of environmental regulation on organizational behaviour, they do not enquire into the political economics of regulatory frameworks. Such lack of consideration is not unusual. In a review of organizational and management articles published in the first half of the 1990s, Kivisaari and Lovio (1996) found that there was a substantial lack of political/power perspectives in environment-related research. They also found that a significant number of studies had a tendency to analyze organizations as singular entities, focusing on internal determinants of environmental strategy. In a more recent (and preliminary) review, Russo (1999) reiterated the view that most studies on organizations and the environment concentrate on the societal or organizational levels of analysis, while research at the industry level is scarce. Indeed, according to Den Hond (2000), when research has been developed at the industry level of analysis, it quite often assumes an 'industrial ecology' perspective, in which the organization and environment issue is reduced to the management of material flows by informational, technical, or economic means.

Environment-related research has evolved significantly in the second half of the 1990s. The influence of environmental issues on the definition of corporate strategies has grown as an important area of enquiry that focuses on the potential open to firms to profit from environmental investments (for instance, see Reinhardt 1998, 1999). Overall, a wide range of perspectives has been used to research why organizations pursue ecology-oriented strategies and practices (Stank and Marcus 2000). According to Winn and Angell (2000) such growth did not change the characteristics of the emerging research area: the organization remained the main level of analysis used in the majority of studies. Exceptions can be found in the work of Hoffman (1999), Howard et al. (1999), and King and Lenox (2000). Because the theoretical foundation of their work is mainly based on institutional theory -- a traditional area of organization studies -- the organizational field is the main level of analysis adopted. The significance of their work is that, taken together, it helps one to understand the institutional dynamics (mainly related to the Responsible Care programme) that influence behaviour in the organizational field surrounding the American chemical industry. The work of Hoffman (1999), in particular, stresses a view of organizational fields as 'arenas of power relations'. He later emphasized the need for some refinement of neo-institutional theory, calling for research that provides 'balanced attention to both the influence of the institutional environment and the role of organizational self-interest and active agency within that environment' (Hoffman 2001: 134). We take up this challenge in this paper, encompassing three main elements that require further development within a consideration of the organization and environment.