Enacting aspirational modes of being: Oil and gas employees' subject formation and Telos under corporate environmentalism

Abstract

Identified as the world’s biggest carbon polluter, the oil and gas industry has increasingly engaged in corporate environmentalism to bolster its legitimisation and mitigate negative public perceptions. Discourses surrounding corporate environmentalism frequently position the sector and its workforce as integral to advancing the greater good. However, employees within the oil and gas industry find themselves at the centre of a paradox: society increasingly expects their organisations to transition away from the fossil fuels that have, historically, sustained their profitability. This paper explores how oil and gas employees form themselves as subjects under their industry’s discourse and practices of corporate environmentalism, and examines what implications these processes may have for the future of corporate environmentalism. Based on an analysis of annual reports and CEO speeches from major oil companies and 30 interviews with employees working in the industry, we apply a Foucauldian lens to identify corporate discourses crafted by the industry, and deploy Foucault’s model of ethical self-formation—particularly, the notion of Telos—to explore the processes of subject formation that employees engage in, their influences, and implications for corporate environmentalism. We develop a conceptual model showing the societal and relational influences feeding into employees’ construction as subject, and the central role of their aspirational modes of being, their Telos. The diversity of these aspirational modes of being, and their dynamic and performative nature bring to life a picture of environmental aspirations within the oil and gas industry much wider ranging than corporate discourses suggest, and create possibilities for alternative approaches to corporate environmentalism.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Fabien Littel: orcid.org/0000-0003-0419-0916

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics