Environmental Engineering Reference
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ceived by e.g. Jänicke (2008) and Mol (2006), helps to conceptualise this rational-
ity. To investigate this normative form of acting, a perspective which focuses on
how actors know
seems apt
1
. Therefore, this article draws on approaches devel-
oped within
Science and Technology Studies
(STS) to illustrate how we can focus
on knowledge practices of corporate energy management.
If knowledge practices are enacted in the 'social' then we need to expect politi-
cal implications as well. That is why this article studies the knowledge politics
implications of techno-economic decision-making by an actor within the energy
management at a site of a multinational corporation. The case which I use to illus-
trate this discussion is based on ethnographic research. This case provides an in-
stance of a specific kind of management tools, so-called corporate suggestion
schemes. In the instance discussed below, this tool was applied to mobilise work-
ers' ideas of improving the corporations' environmental performance. To question
the practical implications of this tool I draw on sociologies of human-nature rela-
tionships as well as their mediation by science and technology
2.
Fundamental to
this approach is the understanding that knowledge is shaped culturally and, thus, a
variety of knowledges
on environments and their relation to societies exist
3
. Rely-
ing on this theoretical and conceptual base the paper addresses the question of
how to problematise the societal and, following from there, ecological implica-
tions of the knowledge of corporate energy managers. While much research exists
on organisations' approaches to 'green' themselves rarely can we find studies fo-
cussing on the environmental manager herself
4
. This paper aims to contribute to
critical, rather than merely affirmative, research on the practices of these manag-
ers. This requires breaking with the fundamental norm of research within envi-
ronmental management, i.e. that principally science is on the right track and envi-
ronmental problems can be solved with (social) technology, as suggested by
Ecological Modernisation Theory (Christoff 1996)
5
. Thus, as a contribution in the
critical tradition I aim to point towards structural contradictions in reality. The
empirical background of this discussion is an ethnography taking place at five
multinationals, including Daimler and Deutsche Telekom inspired by the field of
anthropology
6
between 2007 and 2011. My qualitative interpretation is based on
field notes and is analysed with TAMS
7
.
1
I reasoned elsewhere why the investigation of the actual, rather than the presumed, reali-
ties of environmental management needs to be postulated and carried out (Lippert 2010).
2
Especially Actor-network theory and Bourdieu's thought influenced this analysis. Cf. e.g.
Callon (1981, 1999) Bourdieu (1981, 1992) as well as Shackley and Wynne (1995).
3
Haraway (1991) spread the notion of the plural of knowledge, i.e. knowledges, into a
number of disciplines.
4
Cf. Howard-Grenville (2007). She seems to be one of the first who carried out an ethnog-
raphy of corporate environmental management. See also my other chapter in this topic.
5
For recent discussion cf. e.g. Mol and Sonnenfeld (2000), Buttel (2000), Jänicke (2008).
6
See e.g. Malinowski (1922), Thomas (1993), Marcus (1995), Graeber (2004).
7
Cf. Emerson (1995) and Weinstein (2006).
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