ABSTRACT
Whilst the previous chapter concentrated on conventional business organizations, this chapter focuses attention on a very different type of organization – what I have called social mission companies. The notion of a social mission company was broadly defined in Chapter 3. I suggested that the main criterion for inclusion into this category was an explicit pursuit of particular social goals through economic activity. This chapter reports results relating to case studies of four such organizations: a retail consumer co-operative (RetailSoc) a mutually owned, environmentally branded financial services provider (FinanceSoc), a manufacturer of ‘vegetarian’ cosmetics (ManufactureSoc) and a broker and marketer of ‘sustainable’ wood products (MarketingSoc). In many ways these four companies were a fairly diverse group. However, as argued in Chapter 3, the purpose of investigating social mission companies was to provide a comparative case study methodology with which to explore significantly different organizational contexts for the enactment of morally relevant green marketing practices. The explicit integration of social goals into the founding mission of these companies was thought to provide such a distinction. This is not to say though that we should consider the social mission companies to be a wholly homogeneous group. In particular, one of the case organizations, RetailSoc, was clearly much larger and much longer established than the other three. Not only did this mean that a far greater volume of useful data could be collected for RetailSoc, but also its age and size were seen to distinguish it from the rest of the group in certain important aspects. Accordingly, over the course of this chapter, certain commonalties and contrarieties between the case organizations as a result of size and age differences will be indicated and discussed.
