Subverting sustainability: market maintenance work and the reproduction of corporate irresponsibility

ABSTRACT

While marketing’s potential to foster environmental sustainability has been acknowledged in sustainability marketing thinking, we still know little about the forms of organisational conduct through which sustainability recurrently fails to gain traction as a serious agenda in markets. Drawing on recent discussions on corporate irresponsibility and institutional work in markets, this article employs a discourse analysis to examine marketing managers’ strategies to legitimise food waste generation in the organisation of retail. The study highlights three interlinked strategies of institutional work for the subversion of sustainability and thus the reproduction of unsustainable excess production and consumption: the framing of environmental responsibility as risk, cost and consumer choice.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability marketing
• institutional work
• corporate irresponsibility
• resistance
• marketing discourse

Introduction

It has become commonplace to suggest that sustainability is something of a megatrend (e.g. Lubin & Esty, 2010). In marketing theory, the relationship between marketing thinking and the natural environment represents a recurrent theme in sustainability marketing studies (Burgh-Woodman & King, 2013; Geysmans, de Krom, & Hustinx, 2017; Gordon, Carrigan, & Hastings, 2011; Kemper & Ballantine, 2019; Kilbourne, 2010; McDonagh & Prothero, 2014). Marketing’s potential to promote sustainability in the marketplace has been substantially acknowledged (e.g. Gordon et al., 2011; Lim, 2016; Martin & Schouten, 2014). Accordingly, previous research has drawn attention to a number of emergent discourses of corporate responsibility in marketing management (Carlini, Grace, France, & Lo Iacono, 2019; Garcia-Rosell, Moisander, & Fahy, 2011), such as alternative or reduced consumption (Cherrier, Szuba, & Özçağlar-Toulouse, 2012; McDonald, Oates, Alevizou, Young, & Hwang, 2012; Rettie, Burchell, & Riley, 2012) or the ‘greening’ of products, services and organisations (Fuentes, 2015; Harris & Crane, 2002; Pane Haden, Oyler, & Humphreys, 2009).

However, considering sustainability from a system-level perspective in the marketplace, Prothero and Fitchett (2000), and more recently Scott, Martin, and Schouten (2014) argue that sustainability is everything but a megatrend, whereas ‘environmental degradation, freshwater depletion, and global warming are demonstrable megatrends’ (p. 282). They emphasise the constraining forces or ‘barriers’ to sustainability that exist in contemporary marketing discourse in which sustainability recurrently fails to gain traction as a serious agenda in the marketplace. In this line of critically oriented reasoning, Burgh-Woodman and King (2013) and others (e.g. Cherrier et al., 2012; Peattie & Crane, 2005) have drawn attention to a disconnect within the marketing discipline between sustainability discourse and practice. They suggest that contemporary sustainability marketing discourse tends to enable corporations to pursue political and economic imperatives while appearing sufficiently responsible and apolitical to a symbolically driven marketplace (Burgh-Woodman & King, 2013, p. 162). In this regard, previous research has emphasised various forms of corporate irresponsibility in contemporary management practice (Lin-Hi & Müller, 2013; Mena, Rintamäki, Fleming, & Spicer, 2016).

Notwithstanding the aforementioned important contributions, marketing theory has devoted surprisingly little attention to the reproduction of corporate irresponsibility in the marketplace, which refers to what Mena et al. (2016) describe as the ‘organizational actions that cause harm to stakeholders’ (p. 720) or, as discussed by Armstrong and Green (2013), the efforts engaged in by firms that benefit a few but cause substantive harm when considering all (indirect) stakeholders. While recent marketing research tends to examine how sustainability is legitimised in the marketplace (Gollnhofer, 2017a, 2017b; Humphreys, 2014), and the role of marketing therein (Fuentes, 2015; Kemper & Ballantine, 2019; Lim, 2016), the aim of the present article is to examine how sustainability may also be undermined in organisations.

Accordingly, the article contributes to the literature on sustainability marketing (McDonagh & Prothero, 2014) by examining and problematising the relationship between marketing discourse and the reproduction of corporate irresponsibility in markets. It does so by drawing on and extending an emerging yet marginalised body of scholarship that emphasises the activities or ‘institutional work’ (e.g. Lawrence, Leca, & Zilber, 2013) undertaken by individuals and organisations aimed at creating, maintaining, or disrupting institutionalised practices, normative understandings and rules in and around markets (e.g. Baker, Storbacka, & Brodie, 2019; Dolbec & Fischer, 2015; Perkmann & Spicer, 2008). In particular, a discourse analysis of food waste generated in and around Swedish retail marketing management demonstrates how corporate irresponsibility is temporarily legitimised in management practice through ‘institutional maintenance work’ (Dolbec & Fischer, 2015) aimed at maintaining high market demand. Keeping in mind the recurrent failure of sustainability to gain traction as a serious agenda in the marketplace, the article introduces the notion of ‘market maintenance work’ and shows how marketing discourse may perform in terms of restricting environmental responsibility in organisations, which thus help explain the reproduction of corporate irresponsibility in the marketplace.

Described by the UK newspaper The Guardian as the ‘multibillion problem’ (Moodie, 2016) food waste can be seen as a recurrent material expression of irresponsible conduct in the sense that it highlights the institutionalised reproduction of excess production and consumption. In more general terms, food waste represents one of the largest environmental problems in the European Union and in Sweden and the UK in particular (SEPA, 2015; WRAP, 2008). It has been described as a pressing matter of sustainability in the Global north economy and is typically associated with the mundane, unnecessary disposal of food by individual consumers (Gollnhofer, 2017b; Milne, 2013). While consumers make up for a large percentage of contemporary food waste in markets, food is not merely wasted by consumers. Recent estimations in the UK and Sweden suggest that about 50% of the food produced is disposed of as waste annually throughout the food chain and approximately 20% in the retail organisation context (Environmental Protection Agency, 2012; Kihlberg, 2014; Smithers, 2014; WRAP, 2008). In this regard, recent research has drawn attention to how retailers claim to address food waste although simultaneously setting standards for corporate conduct that result in the large-scale rejection of edible food on cosmetic grounds (Devin & Richards, 2016; Yngfalk, 2016).

This article proceeds in four additional sections. The next (second) section of the article presents the theoretical framework in which I discuss the notions of sustainability and corporate irresponsibility in contemporary marketing thinking followed by a discussion of legitimacy and institutional work. The third section of the article outlines the method and materials. Section four examines the findings divided across three themes of institutional work in retail marketing management and in which environmental irresponsibility is legitimised in the organisation. In the fifth and final section, I discuss and problematise this as ‘market maintenance work’ and draw attention to the concrete ways in which it contributes to the legitimation of corporate irresponsibility in retail organisations and beyond, in society at large.

Theoretical framework

Sustainability marketing and corporate irresponsibility

The relationship between marketing and the environment constitutes a central theme of discussions sustainability marketing (Belz & Peattie, 2009; McDonald et al., 2012; Prothero & Fitchett, 2000; Rettie et al., 2012). Previous research has approached this relationship through a number of interchangeable concepts, such as ‘green marketing’ (Kilbourne, 1998; Peattie & Crane, 2005), ‘enviropreneurial marketing’ (Menon & Menon, 1997) and ‘sustainable marketing’ (Gordon et al., 2011), which all relate to the sustainability marketing scholarship (McDonagh & Prothero, 2014; Rettie et al., 2012). Sustainability marketing, defined by Martin and Schouten (2014, p. 18) as ‘the process of creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers in such a way that both natural and human capital are preserved or enhanced throughout’, suggest that sustainability entails social and environmental responsibility (Prothero, McDonagh, & Dobscha, 2010). While marketing research tends to focus on examining consumer reflexivity in understanding problems with environmental responsibility in the marketplace, Scott et al. (2014) suggest this reproduces a too narrow focus on the relationship between marketing and the natural environment, with false dichotomies created as barriers against which sustainability marketing is continuously disrupted. Sustainability marketing research has, however, emphasised the disconnect between sustainability as norm and practice in the managerialist orientation of marketing as well as consumption (e.g. Burgh-Woodman & King, 2013; Kilbourne, 2010; McDonagh & Prothero, 2014; Rettie et al., 2012). In problematising, this disconnect, Lim (2016) has suggested a more holistic approach to sustainability marketing thinking, which integrates various economic, environmental, social, ethical, and technological dimensions into the sustainability marketing concept. Hackley (2009) has drawn attention to the dominant managerialist orientation of contemporary marketing thinking, in which sustainability is considered merely as a managerial, micro issue (e.g. McDonald et al., 2012; Woodall, 2012).

In their substantial review of sustainability research in marketing during recent decades, McDonagh and Prothero (2014) suggest contemporary marketing thinking gives little or no attention to ‘what marketing is and what marketing is for – what are the basic premises of marketing, and what impact do these have upon the natural environment’ (McDonagh & Prothero, 2014, p. 1199). They argue that the fundamental question of how to address marketing’s relationship with the natural environment thus still remains unanswered and call for further research on the role of marketing discourses in how environmental conduct is performed in organisations (McDonagh & Prothero, 2014, p. 1197). While such discussions thus represent a marginalised area of marketing theory, sustainability marketing research has examined the role of marketing in the promotion of sustainability in markets. Caruana and Crane (2008), Giesler and Veresiu (2014) and more recently Yngfalk (2016) suggest that shortcomings of environmental conduct thus are made possible through the construction of notions such as the ‘concerned citizen’ and the ‘responsible consumer’, which are not pre-existing categories but are rendered possible and meaningful in prevailing discourses articulated by corporations in and around the marketplace (e.g. Geysmans et al., 2017). Burgh-Woodman and King (2013), for instance, show how companies are able to tacitly connect with the broader social concern for sustainability while ignoring the complications of their own position in this concern. They argue that discursive constructions of a ‘human/nature connection’ are utilised for the purpose of alluding to sustainability without having to commit to what it should entail (p. 162). Similarly, Kadirov and Varey (2013) argue that unsustainable conduct among corporations and consumers must be maintained as a way for subjects to commit to unsustainable practice as the basis for constructing the green self. They contend (p. 285) that by committing themselves to the structural way of meaning-creation, consumers and corporations are forced to perpetually reproduce inconsistencies in environmental conduct. Moreover, the emphasis placed in marketing discourses on consumption and its key subject (i.e. the consumer) (Arnould & Cayla, 2015) thus represents a central component of the dominant social paradigm in which corporations are able to continue engaging in unsustainable conduct (Dholakia, 2009; Kilbourne et al., 2009). This helps explain the disappointing performance of ‘green marketing’ in achieving sustainability, as highlighted already by Kilbourne (2010). Indeed, despite sustainability discourse having diffused into organisations and consumption, corporate irresponsibility remains a recurrent trait of contemporary markets (Lin-Hi & Müller, 2013; Mena et al., 2016; Price & Sun, 2017).

In examining the reproduction of corporate irresponsibility in markets, Lin-Hi and Müller (2013) have drawn our attention to how the dominant view on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in organisations is tied to the notion of ‘doing good’, whereas it fails to encompass the idea of ‘avoiding bad’. Consequently, corporations may remain inconsistent in relation to their formal environmental standards, which thus reproduces corporate irresponsibility in markets (Lin-Hi & Müller, 2013). Extending our understanding of the reproduction of corporate irresponsibility in society further, Lange and Washburn (2012) show how institutions not only constrain or enable organisational conduct but how attributions of corporate social irresponsibility may emerge and develop among the firm’s observers at the individual level, which then contribute to the production and shaping of institutions (pp. 318–319). This suggests that as long as the audience (i.e. observers) does not recognise and acknowledge corporate conduct as irresponsible, corporate irresponsibility may be reproduced in markets. In a similar line of reasoning, Mena et al. (2016) emphasise the role of ‘forgetting work’ which may, in the short run, enable actors to manipulate the immediate reactions to a particular event of corporate irresponsibility and, in the long run, silence collective memory. In this regard, they contend that ‘an instance of corporate irresponsibility can have an impact that extends far beyond the audience’s immediate evaluation of events’ (p. 733).

Notwithstanding the important contributions of the aforementioned literature, in order to deepen our understanding of how corporate irresponsibility is reproduced in markets further, we also need to examine the ways in which corporate responsibility is undermined and made subject to de-legitimation. In order to do so, we need theory that extends on the view highlighting the productive implications of individual and organisational conduct on the development of institutional frameworks of action. The current article therefore draws on neo-institutional theory and discussions of institutional work (Lawrence et al., 2013; Lawrence, Suddaby, & Leca, 2009; Perkmann & Spicer, 2008). The notion of institutional work is emergent in marketing theory due to its explanatory potential about how markets are shaped in reference to actors’ intentional conduct (Baker et al., 2019; Dolbec & Fischer, 2015). The combination of sustainability marketing thinking with discussions of institutional work in marketing organisation thus enables a stronger political analysis regarding the constitution of institutional conditions under which corporate irresponsibility is reproduced in contemporary markets.

Neo-institutional theory and institutional work

Neo-institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2008), represents a growing area of interest in marketing theory concerned with broadening the scope of marketing analysis to the macro-level (Chaney, Ben Slimane, & Humphreys, 2016; Humphreys, 2010a; Scaraboto & Fischer, 2012). Neo-institutional theory draws our attention to how institutions, as sets of regulative, normative and cognitive schemas for conduct in organisations, do not merely constrain action but are productive in that they also establish the conditions by which people come to learn about their preferences in an increasingly rationalised society (Bromley & Meyer, 2015; DiMaggio & Powell, 1991). As such, institutions produce and reproduce the social rules and norms of normalcy among the subject inside the institution, however strange and abnormal this might seem from outside. In this regard, much like the notion of discourse, institutions are constructed social realities, but they are also constitutive of reality of the actors involved. Conformity to institutions, whether it relates to the regulative, normative, or cultural-cognitive ‘pillar of institutions’, brings legitimacy to the organisation and strengthens its chance of survival (Scott, 2008). Developing organisational legitimacy thus refers to becoming, at least to some degree, congruent with dominant rules and norms in the social environment. For example, for a food retailer to become and remain legitimate in the marketplace, it needs to strive for isomorphism, thus accommodating institutional demands derived from norms, rules, and culturally shared principles and ideas in the organisation. In this regard, a small but growing body of marketing theory has examined and problematised the role of marketing in the legitimisation of corporate practices (Handelman, 2006; Handelman & Arnold, 1999; Humphreys, 2014), industries (Humphreys, 2010a), academic communities (Coskuner-Balli, 2013), and consumption practices (Giesler, 2008; Humphreys, 2010b; Humphreys & Latour, 2013).

However, it is well known that the complex social reality of markets does not always allow organisations to become congruent with all, at times disparate demands in the institutional environment, which is why organisations may also engage in practices of ‘decoupling’ in which actors act in contradiction to formal statements and communication (Bromley & Meyer, 2015; Brunsson, 1989). In this regard, decoupling also relates to the notion of ‘institutional work’ or the ‘purposive action of individuals and organizations aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions’ (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006, p. 215). Institutional work thus highlights the meaningful efforts of individuals and organisations aimed at shaping institutions by rationalising (non)conformity to norms and rules (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006; Perkmann & Spicer, 2008). Accordingly, institutional work comprises the various activities of key individuals that may address the regulative, normative and cognitive ‘pillars’ of an institution (W. R. Scott, 2008). Moreover, institutional work requires what Heclo (2008) describes as the act of ‘thinking institutionally’. In order to undertake institutional work, then, managers must adopt an ‘appreciative viewpoint’ that allows them to ‘acknowledge, and then through choices and conduct, […] help realize some normative order reflected in the task of upholding (an) institution and what it stands for’ (p. 102). In the context of the present study, the retail managers engage in strategies of institutional work – ‘marketing work’ – based on their ability of ‘thinking institutionally’ in relation to the institutions of the market economy and contemporary marketing thinking in the retail setting. Although recent research has employed the notion of institutional work to examine market shaping and change (e.g. Baker et al., 2019), emphasising the non-orchestrated fashion of market shapers’ work, its potential to explain market maintenance (e.g. Dolbec & Fischer, 2015) and, moreover, organisation in and around market maintenance remains in the shadow of previous research.

In particular, the present article draws attention to four forms of institutional maintenance work highlighted by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006, p. 230): ‘enabling work’, ‘embedding and routinizing’, ‘mythologizing’ and deterring’. ‘Enabling work’ refers to the establishment of rules that may facilitate and support institutionalised practices, such as routines concerning how employees are allowed to handle food products in the superstore. ‘Embedding and routinizing’ in turn refers to the work conducted to ‘infuse the normative foundations of an institution into the participants’ day to day routines’ (ibid.), such as reminding employees of the risks and potential costs for the business of thinking too much of sustainability in daily retail activities in the supermarket. The third form of institutional work of relevance in the present article concerns ‘mythologizing work’ in which the normative underpinnings of an institution are preserved through the creation and sustaining of myths regarding its history (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). This may, for example, refer to how stories about consumers and unsustainable consumer choices are brought to life in organisations in order to re-distribute responsibility. Finally, Accordingly, ‘deterring institutional work’ represents the efforts aimed at establishing more or less coercive barriers to sustainable institutional change (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). In sum, the market maintenance work legitimises corporate irresponsibility through a process of de-legitimation of sustainability thinking in which such matters (e.g. environmental concern) are trivialised and subordinated commercial interests.

Method and data

In studying retail food waste as a material representation of corporate irresponsibility in the food market, the present article builds on a qualitative discourse analysis (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002) of how marketing managers enact environmental (ir)responsibility in organisations and beyond in the marketplace. Part of a larger longitudinal study between 2008–2015 of two of Sweden’s dominant national retail chains, COOP (https://www.coop.se/) and ICA (www.ica.se/), the data (about 500 pages of text) has been generated through semi-structured qualitative interviews with the managers of 15 small, mid-size and large concept ICA and COOP supermarkets in the larger Stockholm area. In the case of a few of these instances, two managers were interviewed, resulting in a total number of 25 interviews analysed in the present article (see Table 1).

Table 1. Data generation.

Retail chain	Number of supermarkets	Number ofinterviews conducted	Number ofobservations conducted	Formal positions, interviewees
COOP	7	11	5	Store managers (7), sales managers (2), product area managers (e.g. ‘fresh produce’) (2)
ICA	8	14	6	Merchants (8), product managers (6)
TOTAL	15	25	11

The interviewees all work with executive functions in the supermarkets and are in different ways involved in marketing management in the store. As such, they work with both strategic issues regarding formal marketing communication and the daily operations of the retail floor. To assure the anonymity of all participants, the findings presented in forthcoming sections do not disclose which quotes relate to which person and corporation and the names of the interviewees are anonymised. The interviews, which lasted between one and one and a half hour each, were in some cases complemented with on-site observations generating ethnographic data (Cayla & Arnould, 2013). This was done in order to generate deeper understanding of particular issues brought up during the interviews. The observations involved walking around in the supermarkets after the interview with the interviewee so that s/he could share with me their views on things, connect back to what was said during the interview and, for example, explain how they dispose of expired food from the shelves. The observations, when conducted (see Table 1), typically lasted between 10 and 20 mineach.

Keeping the notion of market reach and impact in mind, the study focused on the larger types of ICA and COOP store concepts in the selection process. First, I contacted and interviewed one head of marketing each higher up in the hierarchies of both ICA and COOP for the purpose of getting help with initial contact with the supermarkets. This was successful in the sense that it gave me support letters which I used in my contact with potential respondents. However, it did not result in all interviews conducted for the present article. Thus, I also adhered to the notion of ‘purposeful sampling’ (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) in which initial analysis led me to further ‘define subsequent individuals or groups to sample’ (Spiggle, 1994, p. 494). For me, this entailed contacting managers in selected superstores whom I believed could inform me on matters relating to food waste from a marketing perspective. The informants were asked to describe their roles and responsibilities within the organisation and how they encounter and manage food waste in the daily operations and in relation to their marketing thinking and practices. As the interviews developed, I continued to ask about the ways in which they work with reducing food waste, encouraging them to elaborate about problems that may arise. This was done in order to stimulate narrative production about how retailers manage conflicts and tensions regarding disparate institutional demands pertaining to, at the one hand, commercial interests of profit maximisation and, at the other, environmentalism sometimes entailing the opposite. In general, the respondents were encouraged to talk about their day-to-day marketing practices, and explain how they made sense of food waste generated in the supermarket in both their strategic work and day-to-day work. Most commonly, this resulted in narratives deciphering techniques for coping with problems related to the above-mentioned disparate institutional demands.

Regarding the analysis, discourse analysis is a suitable method for examining the content and politics of the discourses of organisations (Fleming & Spicer, 2007). It is thus particularly appropriate when phenomena are scrutinised in relation to the development of wider discourses in society, such as sustainability discourses, with both institutionalising and deinstitutionalising implications on corporate practices (Maguire & Hardy, 2009). The analysis followed an iterative process aimed at identifying and abstracting emergent themes that suggest how the managerial statements construct legitimacy around irresponsible conduct related to food waste. This process followed standard procedures and was guided by the standard principles of qualitative discourse analysis (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002) and, for example, identifying units of data in the text that illustrate particular categories of discursive practices. Focus was thus not on particular word use per se, as in standard conversation analysis, but on analysing and problematising patterns of expression and their relation to, in the particular case of the present article, marketing discourse.

The findings and analysis in the upcoming section are presented as three themes of market maintenance work (cf. Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006) that actualise the organisational process through which irresponsible environmental conduct is legitimised and diffused in the retail setting. The analytical emphasis was thus on organisations’ roles in enacting institutional conditions under which this process was facilitated in and, as will be argued below, beyond the formal boundaries of the organisation in the marketplace. This analytical approach involves investigating statements by key actors (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002) and by approaching them not merely as reflections of social reality, but also as constitutive of it. Although these statements are expressions – discursive practices – of how actors make sense of their actual practices, which may be different or may contain other ‘doings’, the focus of the present article is on the power and politics of practices (i.e. how and why marketing discourse is used to justify questionable conduct, see, e.g. Yngfalk & Fyrberg Yngfalk, 2015) and not the actual practices themselves (e.g. that food is wasted, which other research already has showed). Accordingly, from this discourse analytical perspective, people’s narratives are not a neutral means of expression but that they are expressions of power relations and they thus have wider, ideological and historical implications. Although I was not participating myself in the practices the respondents speak about, their narratives may be analysed as essential to the organisational life examined here.

Furthermore, by analysing the practices of the institutional work of the retail marketing managers, analytical focus was not on waste generation as excess consumption per se, but on the organisational forces and institutional conditions under which such waste practices are constructed and shaped. Based on the theoretical lens of institutional theory explicated above, the problem of food waste in society is not restricted to the practices of consumers but seen as constituted and legitimised by an array of various actors in the marketplace. With the rise of sustainability as a powerful marketing discourse for corporate social responsibility (Gordon et al., 2011; Lim, 2016; Martin & Schouten, 2014), it thus comes as little surprise that food retailers in Sweden are keen on using their efforts of promoting the environment in marketing campaigns and corporate communication. However, retailers still play a key role in the vast regeneration of food waste in the marketplace (Devin & Richards, 2016), with around one third of the food produced being ‘consumed’ not by individual consumers but by the supermarket organisation through the recurrent disposal of unsold and expired products (Smithers, 2014; WRAP, 2008; Yngfalk, 2016). In their narratives on food waste, then, the marketing managers explained how they seek to reduce the amounts of waste generated in their organisations, not at least because it makes up a large cost for them. This is done, for instance, through marginalised forms of collaboration with ‘second-hand retailers’ that redistributes discarded food to people in need under the mantra of social responsibility. Despite these formal efforts, however, the managerial narratives give expression to strategies of institutional work aimed at maintaining things as they are in the market. Indeed, Swedish and UK retailers thus still account for the majority of food waste generated in the marketplace (see, e.g. SEPA, 2015; WRAP, 2008). In the upcoming sections, therefore, food waste is subject to various forms of rationalisation in which the managers engage in different forms of market maintenance work that legitimises and thus reproduces corporate irresponsibility in the marketplace.

Findings and analysis: subverting sustainability in the supermarket

Framing environmental responsibility as corporate risk

In repeatedly framing environmental conduct as a risky endeavour in terms of managing the brand experience for the consumers (Skarmeas & Leonidou, 2013), this theme draws attention to how the managers spend much effort on making sure unsold, yet typically perfectly edible food products are removed from the shelves, making these ‘invisible’ in the eyes of consumers. In this regard, the managers speak vividly of how a certain amount of waste is always inevitable when it comes to managing the brand. Reproducing what Lin-Hi and Müller (2013) have described as the dominant organisational view of ‘doing good’ whereas not avoiding bad, the primary task is, so to say, to make sure that the consumers remain satisfied with their visit to the store and the products despite the increased levels of food waste generated from maintaining such a retail ethos. Justifying a continuous form of corporate irresponsibility, this process entailed practices embedding and routinising (Dolbec & Fischer, 2015; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). Here, a ‘fresh store atmosphere’ was maintained by instilling routines and thus making a ‘mundane’ activity out of the everyday disposal of products that no longer fit the criteria of food freshness, for example, fruit and vegetables starting to deteriorate and changing colour, or products with expired date labels.

We don’t want products [on the shelves] that could damage the customer experience. […] we want products as new and fresh as possible […] Not because it becomes dangerous for people to eat, but [simply] because we don’t want to risk someone eating it. Those decisions are made with the brand in mind […] [I]t may damage consumers’ conceptions about our products. (“Gustaf”, Supermarket manager)

As illustrated by this quote, the managers tend to emphasise the risk associated with focusing too much on environmental issues. In this regard, contrary to Lehner (2015, p. 396), the retailers of the present study did not seem to be willing to forgo short-term benefits to achieve long-term results from their activities. This particular manager, in particular, goes on to explain the importance of making ‘daily sweeps’ in the supermarket in which store employees throw away and clear the shelves of products that potentially could have a negative effect on consumers’ experiences of the store. Recurrently acknowledging the waste mountain generated from such practices, the following managers go on to describe how waste is inevitable in order to be respectful to consumers’ rights and to build a good reputation in the marketplace.

And it’s not that we’re bad, but it’s like, we’ve got about 3.000 customers here, we’ve got 70.000 articles, our turnover is half a billion, of course there’s a lot [of waste]. Fruit and vegetables, for example, that alone, it’s about [hundreds of kilos] each day that we clean out. It goes in the bin. The apple has got a small spot on it, and no one will buy it because of it. If one was to have [such] fruit out [for sales], then ‘you’re a bad store’. […] it’s like: ‘that’s something one never finds at your competitor’, that’s what one gets. (“Pia”, Supermarket manager)

No, because then it spreads that if my neighbour is so good, and he throws away everything, then I have to do the same. (“Lars”, Supermarket manager)

For these managers, focusing too much on reducing food waste in the store environment, such as lowering the prices on expired produces, brown bananas or milk approaching its best before date, is framed as too risky in terms of managing the consumer shopping experience, which is why such products need to be thrown away. Disposing of such products represents one way in which the retailers can manage risk and uncertainty related to what is argued to be competition.

The marketing work that emphasises consumer orientation over environmental responsibility in order to maintain control and competitive advantage related to consumers’ brand experiences is continuously represented in the findings. It is also expressed in terms of a rationality of management concerning the employees meeting the customer. Keeping the store looking clean and fresh for the consumers, as one of the managers describes it, thus not merely entails enabling work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006), which refers to the establishment of rules that may facilitate and support institutionalised practices, such as food safety rules concerning how employees are allowed to handle food products in the superstore, but taking such demands ‘one step further’, as one of the managers expressed it. Working hard with discharging products that could suggest that the store potentially is not in control of food quality, this entails a growing emphasis on fine-tuning, embedding and routinising the details of their work and control procedures (cf. Dolbec & Fischer, 2015; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). For instance, the mangers describe inventing various techniques for discharging products without the consumers seeing it, such as walking around in the stores and talking to and reminding the employees that what they do is special and that they have an obligation towards consumers to remove certain products.

And we talk a lot in our store about us dealing with other peoples’ food. It places high demands on us […] We usually think whoever should be able to enter our store whenever and look in our refrigerators and [in the storage rooms] where we work without us having to be ashamed of anything. That’s why we always keep everything nice, clean and fresh. (“Jonas”, Supermarket manager)

As this quotation illustrates, the managers see food waste as necessary in order to meet and maintain consumers’ rights of getting ‘good products’ and, accordingly, to maintain what is perceived as a high degree of service towards the consumers. Store employees are continuously encouraged by the managers to think about their work as dealing with consumers’ perceptions about the brand, which recreates a culture of risk surrounding marketing activities. As one of the informants put it, ‘… consumers should never have to experience a situation where there is uncertainty regarding food quality. Consumers should not need to possess any food knowledge themselves, but they should be able to trust us’. For the managers, then, maintaining a focus on risk aversion in the marketing activities is central in order to build reputation in the market and to induce a sense of consumer trust in the service relationship and brand management. In this way, the managers paradoxically see food waste as an unfortunate effect from ‘doing good’ in terms of corporate responsibility. However, as an inadvertent consequence, this way of rationalising waste further actualises and maintains a managerialism among the retailers in which corporate irresponsibility is legitimated on behalf of the principles of consumers’ rights. This is further effected in the next section outlining how the managers employ another yet interrelated form of marketing work making corporate irresponsibility into a mundane matter and thus maintaining and reproducing the contemporary institution of excess food production and consumption in the market.

Framing environmental responsibility as cost

Drawing on financial and economic rationality in the managers’ justification of food waste generated in the supermarket space represents another recurrent theme of marketing work conducted by the managers in order to build legitimacy for irresponsibility. In particular, this marketing work refers to the ways in which food waste, as a material representation of environmental irresponsibility, is recurrently associated with cost inefficiency. This strategy is typically expressed in managerial talk about the potential costs related to the promotion of alternative forms of food distribution (Gollnhofer, 2017a) and consumption (Gollnhofer, 2017b) in which food waste may be reduced. While the managers see food waste as a cost in and of itself, such an expense thus tends to be favoured in comparison with other costs derived from, for example, a damaged brand due to customer dissatisfaction of consuming a particular product. In this way, sustainability is constructed as a matter of continuous economic rationalisation in which the managers are able to legitimise deviant conduct from more formal organisational efforts of corporate social responsibility and promoting the environment through reduced food waste. By utilising economic rationality, so to say, to ‘assess’ sustainability and to defend deviant conduct, the managers explain, for example, that the cost of food waste in the supermarkets must be considered as collateral damage and, in many ways, unavoidable and thus also preferable compared to the cost from a damaged reputation in the market. Accordingly, the framing of environmental responsibility as cost actualises a form of ‘deterring’ maintenance work in which the managers establish normative yet tacitly coercive barriers to sustainable institutional change (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). In this sense, while decisions made in relation to ‘unsustainable’ conduct producing food waste were described as rational, thinking about the natural environmental was framed as irrational.

Yes, it is, it is much waste, sure it is, absolutely. But it has to do with that you …, well, you need to understand this thing with waste, and costs and such things, and [the need for] correct ordering points. (“Camilla”, Supermarket manager)

This economic rationality, which permeates the managers’ narratives, was further expressed as resistance to more conventional retail methods for reducing waste, such as price reductions on perishables over time in order to stimulate the consumers. One of the managers explained how these old-fashioned methods, focused on lowering the price on particular products, represent unwise marketing strategies today. Lowering the prices on particular products, the manager goes on to explain, will promote unwanted forms of consumer behaviour that might very well be more environmentally friendly but will have negative effects on revenue.

You understand, it’s not easy. We don’t want products out there [in the market] if it feels it’s not okay for us, ‘it’s not this we want the customer to experience’. But we want products as new and nice as possible […] I’m not fond of the idea of throwing away products that we know are more or less flawless [in terms of quality], it’s not good for the environment. But at the same time, I’m not particularly attracted to the idea of creating a second-hand market in which we lower the price of [those] products merely to be able to sell them with a loss of revenue. (“Bill”, Supermarket manager)

This quote illustrates further how the retailers in the present study tend to negotiate environmental responsibility from an economic perspective, inventing false dualities that hinder sustainable development (Scott et al., 2014, p. 288). While this manager acknowledges the method of lowering prices as a way to reduce the food waste generated by the organisation, they are cautious in pointing out that it will not increase revenue. Rather, the manager expresses reluctance towards such methods for reduced food waste by which a second-hand market for goods with lowered prices will influence the overall turnover as customers become used to the reduced prices. As long as the audience (i.e. the customers/consumers) does not recognise and acknowledge this corporate conduct as irresponsible it remains legitimate in the market (Lange & Washburn, 2012). Accordingly, the managers negotiate environmental responsibility as a balancing act between potential costs derived either from wasting products or allowing customers to purchase the products at a loss in revenue.

This economic and cost-oriented view on environmental responsibility are further expressed in the way that the managers talked about the rise of more ecological, environmentally friendly products in the market. In expressing scepticism towards such products, the managers are able to dispute environmental responsibility as a successful business endeavour. The following manager, for example, explains how most of their ecological products are also available as standard, non-ecological products to a lower price in order to attract segments of price-oriented consumers. Conventional products have typically not undergone the same manufacturing procedures or may contain particular additives in order to prolong their lifecycles, but which disqualifies them as ecological products. In explaining this difference between ecological and conventional products in relation to the example of a top-selling product, the manager emphasises the costs of producing and vending ecological products compared to conventional ones.

Consider as an example a top-selling product of ours, tomato purée. It comes as two different products. The first one is ecological in a jar and the other is more conventional with additives. If you buy the conventional one and open it up, and you take some for your meat sauce and then [place] the jar in the fridge and take it out again a week later, [take some more] and so on. Even if you and your girlfriend cook on Friday and leave the jar out for two hours at room temperature with the lid off [for the whole evening], it would still be as good as before after several weeks. In the case of the ecological one there cannot be any preserving additives. You open up the jar and do the same thing as earlier, four days later it’s mouldy. Then what’s the point? […] I consider the environmental perspective here, I see waste. Here someone has put much into [making products out of] tomatoes; harvesting tomatoes, transporting tomatoes, putting tomatoes through an expensive process, putting them in a glass jar also costs a lot, and then they [the consumers] take two spoons and throw away the rest. (“Mats”, Supermarket manager)

By expressing scepticism towards new forms of ecological products in the market, this manager explains his view that ecological products may not necessarily have ecological effects in the market, and that these products in most cases can rather be seen as unnecessary phenomena. In expressing scepticism towards ecological products, then, this manager enacts a view of environmental responsibility as a cost to both the company and society. Moreover, in recurrently explaining how the costs from such investments in the environment that ecological products represent, in the end, are dependent on consumers’ ‘free choices’ and behaviour. Accordingly, which is the topic of the next section, the managerialism of the corporations entails a distribution and reallocation of environmental responsibility from the organisation towards the consumers. Here the corporate social irresponsibility that enacts food waste is framed within contemporary consumerism and the image of consumers’ irresponsible and selfish demand for high-quality foodstuffs.

Framing environmental responsibility as consumer choice

The third theme of maintenance work actualised in the data refers to how environmental responsibility is framed as a consumer choice. Accordingly, the retail marketing managers tend to blame the consumers for the waste generated in their supermarkets. Entailing a process of responsibilization (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014; Yngfalk, 2016), the consumers are assigned responsibility for the irresponsible conduct of the corporations. Indeed, the managers often refer to the consumers as very demanding subjects, meticulous and unsustainable market actors that accept nothing but the best in terms of food and service quality. This mobilises an ethos or corporate culture in which a standard is set that result in the large-scale rejection of edible food on cosmetic grounds (Devin & Richards, 2016; Yngfalk, 2016), such maintenance work is represented in the managerial narratives describing consumers as too concerned with acquiring the freshest foodstuffs. In the organisation, this responsibilization process is further coupled with ‘deterring’ maintenance work, in which the employees are required to throw away everything that does not fit into consumers’ ‘tough demands’, and ‘mythologizing work’, in which the normative underpinnings of an excessive consumer culture as an institution of contemporary market economy are preserved through the creation and sustaining of myths regarding its history (cf. Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). These forms of maintenance work are further illustrated in how the following manager explains how particular products such as slightly brown bananas, apples with spots on them and so on are typically left behind on the shelves by the consumers and how the store employees have to throw them away at the end of each day. Notably, the manager explains how it thus has become routine to dispose of such food before it becomes unattractive to the consumers. Moreover, the manger emphasises how it is consumers’ rights to be picky regarding the products.

The thing is, it’s up to the customer to choose for him/herself. And if it’s so that the customer always chooses not to buy particular [e.g. less fresh] products, then we will get rid of those, we will of course not just leave it on the shelves. We’re not supposed to be some sort of guardian, telling [the customers] what to buy, deciding for them, so to say. (“Carl”, Supermarket manager)

As exemplified here, the retailers enact environmental responsibility as consumer choice by ascribing irresponsible consumers with a sovereign status in the organisation (cf. Arnould & Cayla, 2015) and embedding this in various forms of sympathy. For the managers, meticulous consumers who ‘dig around’ the shelves after the freshest products ‘leave them with little or no choice’ but to throw everything away which is not chosen by the consumer. By blaming consumers through such sympathy, the managers engage further in ‘deterring’ maintenance work. Here, sustainability is constructed as a consumerism by placing focus on the key notions of consumer sovereignty and choice (Schwarzkopf, 2011; Yngfalk, 2016).

[I]t’s the customer on the floor that really holds most power. If enough people comment on something in a certain period of time, then we agree …, because we know we’ve got a problem. And that’s, I’m sorry to say, that’s all too often the way one acts, it’s the customer who decides by complaining, it’s that simple. But that being said, they most certainly should. (“Jens”, Supermarket manager)

As illustrated by this quote, the retailers’ narratives about food waste actualise a marketing strategy for managing corporate irresponsibility in which consumers’ rights to be demanding and picky, and to complain about poor product or service quality, is emphasised over alternative practices of interfering in such practices in an effort to change unsustainable consumption patterns. Food waste and, accordingly, corporate irresponsibility are thus legitimised as an undeniable effect from consumers’ sovereign status. Taking such ideas to an extreme form, some of the managers were keen on emphasising how the consumers, in turn, may express empathy for the store employees who have to dispose of the unwanted products on the supermarket floor. For these managers, the consumers are not merely responsible for the food waste generated by themselves and the organisations but may very well be willing to help out in with process by finding and pointing out products on the shelves with expired freshness dates. In such a way, by referring to customers’ demands for food quality, the managers recurrently shifted focus to the consumers when talking about the food waste generated directly by the organisation. The managers are thus able to hold consumers responsible for the environment by blaming them for disrupting ongoing processes of sustainable development. Contrary to Lange and Washburn (2012, pp. 318–319), this suggests attributions of corporate social irresponsibility were thus developed within the organisation and enacted upon the firm’s observers (i.e. the customers/consumers), which then contribute through a dynamic process, and by ‘confirming’ their irresponsible conduct by ‘digging through the shelves’, to the production and shaping of the excess consumer culture as an institution of the market economy. As this marketing manager goes on suggesting, food consumers remain too demanding.

Because, I mean, 12,000 articles, we’re not perfect, there’s not a chance we’ll ever be. As soon as a customer finds anything …, and customers can express it in different degrees of intensity, to choose a balanced term. Some comes at you and sort of waves it under your nose, so you think they will shove it right in there. Others simply point it out, ‘there’s something [bad] over there’, they’re a bit more delicate, so to say … (“Nils”, Supermarket manager)

As this quote illustrates, managers tend to moralise about the contemporary consumer; with respect to the abundance of products demanded or the tendency to focus too strongly on quality. Moralising about consumers’ practices of being too concerned with food quality occurs with reference to notions about the consumer as a demanding subject that is beyond satisfaction.

One thinks we’re a bit extreme about it, but I don’t want to complain, because food quality is very, very important in Sweden. And then I have to either leave the business or believe it’s important, so I put up with it. (“Nils”, Supermarket manager)

Referring to the consumer as sovereign in the sense that the ‘customer is king’, the managers are able to justify practices questioned by the media and that may account for contemporary norms of reducing food waste (Milne, 2013). To stay in the food market game, so to say, one has to ‘follow the rules’ set primarily by the sovereign consumer that becomes subject to fetish in organisations (Arnould & Cayla, 2015). Often, the blaming of customers is articulated in a context in which the managers explain that there is no choice but to accept the way it is, as in the quote above. Because they find it hard to alter the system, they have to invent strategies in order to cope with it, which then contributes to the reproduction of corporate irresponsibility in the market. The one-sided focus on consumer choice in framing environmental responsibility (Smith & O’Sullivan, 2012) shifts focus from the companies to consumers who are blamed for their irresponsible conduct.

Discussion and conclusions: market maintenance work and the reproduction of corporate irresponsibility in the marketplace

The present article has showed how sustainability is recurrently undermined and made subject to de-legitimation efforts in contemporary marketing organisation. It contributes to the literature on sustainability marketing thinking by problematising the relationship between marketing discourse, with its central ethos of consumerism (Arnould & Cayla, 2015; Yngfalk, 2016), and the reproduction of corporate irresponsibility in the marketplace. Accordingly, the article shows how marketing discourse performs in organisations in terms of not merely legitimising but restricting sustainability, which thus help explain the general reproduction of environmental irresponsibility in the marketplace.

Previous marketing research tends to focus on how sustainability is legitimised in the marketplace (Gollnhofer, 2017a, 2017b; Humphreys, 2014) and the role of marketing therein (Fuentes, 2015; Kemper & Ballantine, 2019; Lim, 2016). Indeed, the sustainability marketing scholarship has substantially acknowledged the diffusion of sustainability discourses in the marketplace, for instance, through the notions of ‘green marketing’ (Kilbourne, 1998), ‘green’ or reduced consumption (Cherrier et al., 2012; McDonald et al., 2012; Rettie et al., 2012), corporate social responsibility (Carlini et al., 2019; Garcia-Rosell et al., 2011), alternative forms of materialism in marketing (Scott et al., 2014), and the corporate trend of ‘greening’ products, services and organisations (Fuentes, 2015; Harris & Crane, 2002; Pane Haden et al., 2009). Notwithstanding these important contributions in marketing thinking, corporate irresponsibility remains a recurrent trait of the contemporary marketplace and organisations (Lin-Hi & Müller, 2013; Mena et al., 2016).

Legitimising excess production and consumption

The analysis of the present article explicates the organisational process through which retail marketing managers are able to create temporary yet recurrent forms of legitimacy in and around irresponsible practices producing food waste by utilising marketing discourse to justify their conduct. More specifically, marketing rationality is used in the process of framing pressing issues of environmental sustainability, such as the organised reduction of food waste, as seemingly ‘mundane’ matters of everyday retail organisation. Consequently, this entails a process of creating ‘false barriers’ to sustainability (Scott et al., 2014) but, furthermore, it also places sustainability in direct opposition to sustainability marketing.

As explicated in previous sections, this process is enabled through ‘market maintenance work’, which entails the de-legitimation and subversion of sustainability thinking in the marketplace. Here, excess production and consumption are maintained despite the formal attempts of organisations and individuals to endorse sustainability. Such market maintenance work is grounded in the efforts of ‘enabling, ‘embedding and routinizing’, ‘mythologizing’ and ‘deterring’ corporate irresponsibility (cf. Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). Accordingly, first, the efforts of the mangers entail practices of framing environmental responsibility as reputational risk in which environmental conduct is constructed as a risky endeavour in terms of managing the brand experience for the consumers (Skarmeas & Leonidou, 2013). The second form of market maintenance work highlights how corporate irresponsibility is legitimised by framing environmental responsibility as cost and inefficiency in which sustainability becomes associated with cost inefficiency. Finally, the results draw attention to the distribution of environmental responsibility from the corporations to the consumers in which sustainability is framed through the notion of consumer choice. Corporate irresponsibility represented in excess production and consumption is thus legitimised in the organisation and beyond, in the marketplace generally, as an inevitable consequence of institutionalised consumerism and excess production and consumption.

In an effort to generalise this further, marketing discourses are put to use by the managers as a form of maintenance work to legitimise non-conformity to sustainability discourse. In concrete terms, the managers abilities to ‘think institutionally’ (Heclo, 2008), especially in terms of cornerstone notions of contemporary consumerism (Assadourian, 2010; Nixon & Gabriel, 2016), the notion of consumer sovereignty is employed in order to de-couple formal efforts towards sustainability discourse and to justify a pure focus on maximising consumption at almost any cost. For instance, the managers describe their strategy for efficient disposal of unsold products from the store shelves, that is, the efforts of making employees turn food waste invisible for the consumers despite that it represents a central aspect of everyday organisational activities in the store. Such practices derived from deterring institutional work are typically legitimised in terms of central marketing notions, such as competition and brand management, in which the shopping experience is placed at the centre of institutional thinking (cf. Heclo, 2008).

Trivialising waste: depoliticising corporate responsibility

Moreover, the market maintenance work that the managers engage in typically seek to depoliticise and trivialise corporate responsibility in the sense that food waste is framed as an inevitable consequence from contemporary marketing standards and values pertaining to, for instance, food safety, quality, brand experience, etc. Marketing discourse, in this sense, functions as a toolbox for (unsustainable) market maintenance. Extending previous work on institutional work in and around the marketplace (Baker et al., 2019; Dolbec & Fischer, 2015; Perkmann & Spicer, 2008), such maintenance work is interrelated to and thus not necessarily distinct from ‘disruptive’ institutional work. Indeed, while preserving the status quo of the contemporary unsustainable system of production and consumption (Scott et al., 2014), this maintenance work of the marketing managers simultaneously disrupts the process of institutionalising sustainability thinking by operating as its ‘legitimate opposite’. Indeed, in the marketing practices actualised by the aforementioned institutional work of the managers, that is, the institutional thinking of the managers (Heclo, 2008), thinking too much about sustainability and too little about, for example, the consumer experience represents an ‘illegitimate’ construct of the commercially efficient organisation. Here, the managers implicitly struggle with disparate and contradicting institutional environments in everyday marketing activities. However, contrary to Lehner (2015, p. 396), the retailers in the present study did not seem to be willing to forgo short-term benefits to achieve long-term results from their activities.

Distributing environmental responsibility to the consumers

Furthermore, the corporations engage in a variety of practices of blaming the consumers for the food waste generated in the supermarket environment in which environmental responsibility is actively distributed to the consumers. In the findings, the managers explain how they have to dispose of food products as these are about to expire in order to avoid being held responsible for consumers becoming sick from eating or drinking what may be bad quality food. The results draw attention to the fact that food waste is accompanied by an organised re-distribution of responsibility in the market from companies to consumers in which distrust and blame are key mechanisms of legitimation. For example, food products that are merely superficially ‘damaged’ or ‘flawed’ on the retail shelves, such as brown bananas or apples with spots on them, or products with ‘short’ best before-dates, are systematically removed from retail space and disposed of as waste in order to manage customer relationships and protect the brand. In these marketing practices, such removal of products is justified based on the notion that the consumer brand experience will be damaged. Indeed, the maintenance work elucidated here reproduces a marketing managerialism in which discourses of sustainability are pushed back and become de-prioritised. In taking this responsibilizing managerialism to extreme lengths in organisational conduct, through the market maintenance work, the retail managers in the present study are able to construct legitimacy around corporate irresponsibility and thus contribute to the creation and maintenance of a market system in which food waste is normalised in consumer culture as a consequence of marketing discourse and its central institutional elements – consumer sovereignty and choice, which are actualised in managerial notions of service management, customer relationship and brand management. Contrary to Lange and Washburn (2012, pp. 318–319), this suggests attributions of corporate social irresponsibility are constituted through organisation and enacted upon the firm’s observers (i.e. the customers/consumers).

Final remarks, limitations and future research

The present article has showed how market maintenance work constitutes a central characteristic of contemporary marketing management and organisation. Moreover, the article highlights the power of marketing discourses in framing – enabling and restricting – environmental responsibility in the marketplace. Contrary to much of contemporary marketing management scholarship, it shows how consumer orientation as commercial logic is recurrently emphasised at the cost of environmental responsibility. This suggests that regulation and new forms of retail policies are needed in order to reduce food waste and bring about organisational change at the market and industry levels and, in so doing, endorse a more sustainable consumer culture.

While partly containing on-site observation data from the retail spaces examined here, the small amount of such data in relation to the interview data constitutes a limitation of the article worth underscoring. Extending the scope of the ethnographic data would have generated a more detailed illustration of the market maintenance work conducted in the organisations. Future research should thus continue examining how corporate irresponsibility is legitimised in organisations, supported by ethnographic analysis, thus drawing further attention to the concrete ways in which the institutional frameworks of unsustainable systems of production and consumption are reproduced in markets under neo-liberal capitalism.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Carl Yngfalk

Carl Yngfalk is a research fellow at the Stockholm Center for Organizational Research (SCORE), Stockholm University, Sweden. His research interests are in the politics and ethics of marketing discourses. In particular, he examines how resistance, identity and embodiment are expressed in and around the organizations of consumer culture. He has published in different journals including Journal of Macromarketing, Consumption, Markets and Culture and Marketing Theory.