it’s not easy being green: the role of self-evaluations … · 2014. 3. 17. · it’s not easy...

IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN: THE ROLE OFSELF-EVALUATIONS IN EXPLAINING SUPPORT

OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

SCOTT SONENSHEINRice University

KATHERINE A. DECELLESUniversity of Toronto

JANE E. DUTTONUniversity of Michigan

Using a mixed methods design, we examine the role of self-evaluations in influencingsupport for environmental issues. In Study 1—an inductive, qualitative study—we de-velop theory about how environmental issue supporters evaluate themselves in a mixedfashion, positively around having assets (self-assets) and negatively around questioningtheir performance (self-doubts). We explain how these ongoing self-evaluations, which welabel “situated self-work,” are shaped by cognitive, relational, and organizational chal-lenges individuals interpret about an issue from a variety of life domains (work, home, orschool). In Study 2—an inductive, quantitative, observational study—we derive threeprofiles of environmental issue supporters’ mixed selves (self-affirmers, self-critics, andself-equivocators) and relate these profiles to real issue-supportive behaviors. We empir-ically validate key constructs from Study 1 and show that even among the most dedicatedissue supporters, doubts play an important role in their experiences and may be eitherenabling or damaging, depending on the composition of their mixed selves. Our researchoffers a richer view of both how contexts shape social issue support and how individuals’self-evaluations play a meaningful role in understanding the experiences and, ultimately,the issue-supportive behaviors of individuals working on social issues.

At stake is the survival of our civilization as weknow it and the type of world we are going to leaveas a legacy for those who follow us.

Gore (2012)

Public figures can be important for drawing atten-tion to critical social issues such as climate change.Yet, for each of these public figures, there are scoresof often less visible people who act to support theseissues in a variety of ways, both inside and outside offormal organizations (Bornstein, 2007). These “socialissue supporters”—individuals who identify with asocial issue and desire to support it—are often on thefront lines of addressing pressing social issues likeclimate change not only through their work, but alsoin their daily lives.

Despite its importance, supporting a social issuecan be challenging. Scholars have suggested thatsupporting a social issue—whether climate change,gender equity, corporate social responsibility, orsomething else—can come at a cost to an individ-ual’s career, personal endeavors, and family com-mitments (Ashford, Rothbard, Piderit, & Dutton,

We are deeply appreciative of former associate editorMike Pratt for his guidance on this article. We are gratefulto Kristen Nault, Kim Jones-Davenport, Sharon White,Geordie McRuer, Sora Jun, and Patty Theokas for theirresearch assistance, Tina Borja for her editorial sugges-tions, and Richard Swartz for his assistance with thecluster analysis. We thank Tima Bansal, Roxana Bar-bulescu, Jeff Bednar, Erik Dane, Adam Grant, Geoff Leon-ardelli, Deb Meyerson, Lakshmi Ramarajan, and ErinReid for their comments on drafts. The first author is alsoappreciative of feedback from the 2007 May MeaningMeeting, 2010 Wharton OB Conference, the INSEAD So-cial Innovation Centre, the Rice University psychologydepartment, and the Organizational Behavior and Hu-man Resources Division at the University of British Co-lumbia. We also appreciate the financial support of the

Frederick A. & Barbara M. Erb Institute at the Universityof Michigan.

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� Academy of Management Journal2014, Vol. 57, No. 1, 7–37.http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.0445

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1998; Meyerson, 2001; Piderit & Ashford, 2003). Inaddition, it is often difficult to know when one ismaking progress in supporting an issue (Howard-Grenville, 2007), and individuals often confrontsetbacks and obstacles as part of their support ef-forts. Understanding how social issue supportersexperience these difficulties—and why they act de-spite these difficulties—helps answer scholars’ re-cent calls to better address the ways in which or-ganizations and their constituent individuals canmake a positive social impact (Golden-Biddle &Dutton, 2012; Walsh, Weber, & Margolis, 2003).

Given the potential difficulties of supporting asocial issue, it is not surprising that even thoughsocial issue supporters identify with an issue andhave a desire to support it, they do not always acton that desire. Scholars have suggested several rea-sons why this might be the case. First, some organi-zational researchers posit that individuals evaluatethe career risks of supporting an issue and that po-tential issue supporters withdraw support when itmight undermine their image (e.g., Dutton & Ashford,1993). Yet it is not clear if these arguments hold whenconsidering social issue supporters versus supportersof the more traditional strategic business issues schol-ars typically examine. This is because social issuesupporters, by their very definition, tend to holdstrong values and beliefs about an issue that maymake them more willing to take risks, making imagerisk less of an impediment to social issue support(Ashford & Barton, 2007; Sonenshein, 2012).

Second, organizational theories for explaining is-sue support focus on processes that explain supportin organizations, such as by focusing on the impor-tance of individual’s “sensemaking” about favorabil-ity of an organizational context in determiningwhether issue support is likely (Dutton, Ashford,Lawrence, & Miner-Rubino, 2002). Organizationalscholars also focus on issue supporters’ interac-tions with top managers (e.g., Andersson & Bate-man, 2000; Dutton & Ashford, 1993) and thereforeemphasize contextual features such as the extent towhich an issue is consistent with an organizationalnorm or relationships with top managers (e.g., Dut-ton, Ashford, O’Neill, Hayes, & Wierba, 1997;Sonenshein, 2006). Scholars argue that for cases inwhich contextual cues suggest an organizational orrelational context unsupportive of issues, individ-uals will likewise be less willing to support thatissue. Yet, examining social issue supporters instrictly organizational contexts, and predominatelyaround top managerial interactions, obscures thefact that social issue supporters often pursue sup-

port for issues with organizational actors beyondtop managers (e.g., Bansal, 2003) as well as in othersocial contexts, such as with friends and family. Incontrast, more traditional strategic business issuesare often exclusively sold to top managers insideorganizations (Dutton & Ashford, 1993).

Third, psychologists examining social issue sup-port offer a more general theoretical perspectivethat examines issue support that is often indepen-dent of an immediate context. Instead, primary pre-dictors of social issue support from this work areoften couched in theories such as behavioral moti-vation (Fielding, McDonald, & Louis, 2008; Nigbur,Lyons, & Uzzell, 2010), individual differences (Ar-nocky, Stroink, & DeCicco, 2007) or issue-relatedidentity (Whitmarsh & O’Neill, 2010). These expla-nations suggest that an issue supporter operateslargely outside the influence of context. For exam-ple, research in this area often overlooks how dif-ferent situations might pose difficulties or chal-lenges to issue supporters, focusing instead onindividual differences such as beliefs (e.g., Fergu-son, Branscombe, & Reynolds, 2011) or perceptionsof norms (e.g., Goldstein, Cialdini, & Griskevicius,2008) in predicting issue-supportive behavior. Fur-thermore, these studies often focus on the generalpopulation as opposed to social issue supportersidentified with an issue. This is a critical oversight,because social issue supporters are often stronglyidentified with an issue and thus are different fromthe general population, who might be on averagemore apathetic or indifferent toward the issue.

Our contention is that existing research in organ-ization studies and psychology does not adequatelyaddress the multifaceted context in which socialissue supporters operate, both inside and outside oforganizations. Furthermore, existing research hasprovided only a limited account of how context islinked to issue-related actions. Organizationalscholars study support in an organization context,and psychologists focus on the general population,with little emphasis on context. Both perspectives,while helpful, do not acknowledge that social issuesupporters traverse multiple contexts as they go towork, return home, and experience issue support ina variety of settings. By acknowledging the multi-contextual nature of social issue support, wesought to develop theory around how these dedi-cated and identified issue supporters experiencesupporting a social issue in the more complete setof contexts in which they live, something that alsohelps explain why they do not always act to sup-port the social issues they care deeply about.

8 FebruaryAcademy of Management Journal

We began this research with a focus on under-standing how issue supporters interpreted andframed social issues. We reasoned that how indi-viduals interpreted social issues might provide arich understanding of the experience of being asocial issue supporter in multiple contexts and thatissue framing might be helpful to understandingissue-related actions (e.g., Dutton & Duncan, 1987;Jackson & Dutton, 1988). As is often the case withqualitative projects, our research shifted as we col-lected and analyzed data. Most strikingly, our anal-yses revealed the prominence of self-interpreta-tions (particularly self-evaluations) as an ongoingpart of issue supporters’ everyday experience. Infact, rarely did an issue’s supporters interpret theissue separately from evaluating themselves.

Accordingly, we adjusted our research focus to-ward self-evaluations, posing the following emer-gent research question: How do issue supporters’everyday experiences influence their self-evalua-tions? Our answer to this question points to thearray of challenges that social issue supporters ex-perience and to how these challenges relate to theirongoing work of evaluating the self as an issuesupporter. Using a qualitative study of issue sup-porters who seek to address climate change, weinduce a theory of “situated self-work” that callsattention to the self-work involved in the ongoingexperience of being an issue supporter. By “self-work,” we refer to the effort involved in evaluatingthe self (where the self is defined as an individual’sperceptions, thoughts, and feelings about him- orherself as a person [Leary & Tangney, 2003]), aprocess we develop by grounding two core con-structs that arose from our data: self-assets andself-doubts. The former focuses on self-evaluationsthat endow the self with the psychological capabil-ities for acting on an issue, and the latter focuses onself-evaluations that negatively assess the self inregards to issue-related performance. By using “sit-uated,” we emphasize how both self-assets andself-doubts involve social issue supporters’ ongo-ing self-evaluations derived from reflecting on aspecific context, such as being an issue supporterfor a particular social issue (e.g., environmentalissues, gender equity issues) in a specific domain(e.g., work, home, school).

After unpacking issue support challenges, self-assets, and self-doubts using grounded theory, weconducted a quantitative study using observationalmethods to inductively examine a second researchquestion: How do patterns of self-evaluations relateto levels of issue-supportive behaviors? To address

this question, we induced three self-evaluation pro-files—self-affirmers, self-critics, and self-equivoca-tors—and showed how these profiles relate to realissue-supportive behavior, something we explainby drawing from and advancing theory on motiva-tion. This allowed for the presentation of two dif-ferent but complementary studies using mixedmethods (e.g., Creswell & Clark, 2011) to examineboth how social issue supporters’ everyday experi-ences influence their self-evaluations (Study 1) andwhy these self-evaluations matter through theirability to predict issue-related actions (Study 2).

A focus on how social issue supporters engage insituated self-work and the difference it makes forexplaining issue-related action is important for atleast three reasons. First, it provides a rich basis forunderstanding how the contexts in which a sup-porter operates (e.g., work, school, home) play arole in shaping the self by prompting self-reflectionthat takes the form of self-evaluation. More specif-ically, the idea of situated self-work links every-day and more generic issue support challengeswith an individual’s ongoing self-assessment, mak-ing clearer how the self is mutable (Markus & Wurf,1987). The self-evaluations prompted by challengesare also important for explaining how issue supportchallenges influence supportive actions or inac-tions on an issue. Second, our research highlightsthat social issue supporters confront multiple chal-lenges in a role that induces extensive efforts toassess whether one has the “right stuff” to be anissue supporter and whether one is doing wellenough being an issue supporter; both are forms ofself-work that can leave people feeling that they arecompetent or depleted. Third, our focus spotlightsthe different kinds of self-evaluation that areprompted by issue-related challenges, complicat-ing and enriching how psychologists construe theself-evaluation process and what it means for ex-plaining patterns of individuals’ actions. Our the-ory of situated self-work explains why it is a psy-chologically tall order to support social issues thatindividuals care deeply about, but also how someindividuals evaluate themselves in ways that allowthem to meet this lofty objective.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Social Issue Support in Organization Studies

The primary way organizational scholars haveresearched social issues in ways that inform a selftheory is within the issue selling paradigm (Anders-

2014 9Sonenshein, DeCelles, and Dutton

son & Bateman, 2000; Ashford et al., 1998; Dutton &Ashford, 1993; Howard-Grenville, 2007). Accord-ing to this perspective, individuals interpret a so-cial issue and then frame that issue to others(Sonenshein, 2006, 2009) or engage in other behav-iors to influence primarily top managers (Dutton &Ashford, 1993). The theory of self that underliesthis paradigm emphasizes image risk. For example,scholars propose that before choosing to support anissue, individuals weigh the potential reputationimplications against their desire to support the is-sue (e.g., Ashford et al., 1998; Dutton & Ashford,1993). As a consequence, issue selling researchlargely emphasizes an outward-looking self that ex-amines how others construe the self in ways thathave implications for one’s reputation or career.

In support of this outward-looking self, issueselling research emphasizes “contextual sensemak-ing” (Dutton et al., 2002). Contextual sensemakingrefers to the effort applied by individuals to discernand interpret the degree to which the context anissue seller is operating in is favorable or unfavor-able to selling an issue. By reading an organization-al context, issue supporters seek out clues for diag-nosing the degree to which top managers supportthe issue (Dutton et al., 1997, 2002) and, absentsupport, the best way to overcome this predicament(Sonenshein, 2006). Thus, in addition to an out-wardly focused interpretation of the self based onan assessment of image risk, issue selling researchemphasizes that supporters use an instrumentaltype of interpretation of their organizational con-text. In doing so, this research suggests that to theextent that this context supports a social issue (e.g.,it has norms consistent with the issue, or the issuesupporter has a relationship with a targeted topmanager [Ashford et al., 1998]), an individual ismore likely to support the issue.

One important implication of scholars’ emphasison an outward self-interpretation based on imagerisk and an instrumental assessment of an organi-zation context is that it implies that when individ-uals detect a potential image risk or an unfavorableorganizational context, they are likely to abandonor reduce their issue support (Dutton & Ashford,1993; Dutton et al., 1997, 2002). But although indi-viduals are often concerned about their careers andare attuned to organizational politics (Morrison &Milliken, 2000), some scholars propose that socialissue supporters’ deep passion for their issues maylead them to downplay these factors and insteadcontinue with their issue support (Ashford & Bar-ton, 2007; Sonenshein, 2006, 2012). Along these

lines, Bansal’s (2003) study of unfolding environ-mental issues revealed that individuals’ concernsabout the environment helped to explain patternsin organizational responses to issue support,thereby suggesting a view of the self that matters forsupportive actions and that does not focus solelyon image risk. In addition, Howard-Grenville’s(2007) ethnography in a manufacturing context un-derscored the importance of examining the situatedexperiences of social issue supporters, who oftenoccupy structural positions of weakness. Giventhese weak structural positions, what underlyingtheory of self might explain how individuals expe-rience and continue to support a social issue?

Another key limitation of previous research isthat contextual sensemaking is largely restricted toorganizational settings (Dutton et al., 2002). Al-though this is not terribly surprising given the fo-cus of organizational scholars, it is neverthelesslimiting in explaining issue supporters who notonly pursue their support at work but also do sooutside of work. This is because how a personinterprets the self at home may impact work behav-iors and vice versa. As some have argued, the rolespeople take and who they are at home inform theroles they take and the selves they are at work (e.g.,Rothbard, 2001). Segmenting the work self from thenonwork self gives scholars an incomplete pictureof the self of social issue supporters who read andreact to a variety of organizational and nonorgani-zational contexts in ways that may ultimatelyshape their sense of self and their behavior.

Social Issue Support in Psychology

Psychologists have addressed social issue sup-port in two primary ways that inform theories ofthe self: planned behavior theory, and research onvalues and identities of social issue supporters.First, in the theory of planned behavior, Ajzen(1991) posits that issue support comes from indi-viduals’ intentions to engage in issue support.These intentions are predicted by attitudes, socialnorms, and perceived control. The model of self inthis paradigm is shaped by social norms, in whichindividuals make assessments about how norma-tive issue support is (Fielding et al., 2008). As withorganizational research, this theory also conceptu-alizes a self that models difficulties associated withparticular behaviors (Boldero, 1995; Kaiser, Woelf-ing, & Fuhrer, 1999; Lynne, Casey, Hodges, & Rah-mani, 1995), an approach that may be less relevant


for committed issue supporters as opposed to ageneral population.

A second perspective in the psychological liter-ature on social issue support focuses on particularaspects of the self that are theorized to be key forexplaining actions related to values and identities.In addition, this research has focused mostly onpredicting behavior versus understanding how aself is constructed in the first place. For example,scholars have found that the stronger individuals’altruistic or prosocial values, the greater their is-sue-supportive behaviors (e.g., De Groot & Steg,2007, 2008; Nordlund & Garvill, 2002; Schultz &Zelezny, 1999; Stern & Dietz, 1994). Scholars havefound similar effects for issue-based identities,finding a positive relationship between issue iden-tity and issue-related intentions and behaviors (fora meta-analysis, see Rise, Sheeran, and Hukkelberg[2010]). For example, scholars have found that en-vironmental identity predicts a wide range of pro-environmental intentions and supportive behavior,such as recycling (Mannetti, Pierro, & Livi, 2004;Terry, Hogg, & White, 1999); intentions to consumeorganic vegetables (Sparks & Shepherd, 1992); andwaste reduction, energy conservation, and environ-mentally friendly shopping and eating behaviors(Clayton & Opotow, 2003; Whitmarsh & O’Neill,2010).

These approaches focus on the strength of valuesand identities as opposed to processes that shapethe self, taking a more decontextualized approachthat often misses the social processes of how othersshape the self (Leary & Tangney, 2003). Yet schol-ars who theorize a relational base of the self (e.g.,Chen, Boucher, & Tapias, 2006; Markus & Cross,1990) would encourage consideration of how, byinteracting with others, issue supporters come toknow themselves and can therefore judge how wellthey are enacting the role of a “good issue sup-porter.” In this relational view of self, other peopleare pivotal in shaping the ongoing view and under-standing of the self (Chen et al., 2006). Accordingly,other issue supporters, such as those encounteredat work, at school, at home, or in affinity groups,may play an important role in shaping the selfinvolved in being an issue supporter. By focusingon a broad set of contextual shapers of the self as anissue supporter, researchers may uncover key ele-ments for understanding self-processes that explainissue support (e.g., Wade-Benzoni, Li, Thompson,& Bazerman, 2007).

In summary, organizational scholars largely em-phasize organizational context while overlooking

other key settings that may be important for ex-plaining issue support. These scholars also empha-size image risk (a more outwardly focused basis fortheorizing how the self matters), which may be lessrelevant for social issue supporters that are identi-fied with an issue. Psychologists mostly examinethe general population and, as a result, largely fo-cus on factors that are likely to be less informativein explaining issue support among a group of iden-tified supporters. This research also often over-looks context, such as how others can shape self-concept and, in turn, issue-supportive behaviors.Both literatures fail to fully examine the everydayexperiences of issue supporters and how these ex-periences (in a variety of contexts) shape self-con-cept in ways that can influence issue support. Toaddress these limitations, we first turn to our qual-itative study of issue supporters in the “issuespace” of the natural environment (specifically, cli-mate change) and inductively examine the role ofself-interpretations for explaining issue support.

STUDY 1: METHODS

Sample and Context

We selected a context to address our initial inter-est in issue interpretation. We started by selectingas our issue climate change, defined as rapid andprofound increase in the Earth’s temperature andrelated impacts, such as the widespread melting ofice and rising sea levels (Bates, Kundzewicz, Wu, &Palutiko, 2008). As a key issue in the broader envi-ronmental issues space, climate change has theo-retical significance for our starting and emergentresearch question that moved to focus on self-eval-uations. For example, unlike issues tied to a job ororganization, climate change involves decisionsand behaviors that transcend organizational bound-aries and extend to individuals’ personal lives. Be-cause being a supporter of an issue such as climatechange may necessitate issue engagement in multi-ple settings, it is a role that often requires ongoingefforts, personal sacrifices, vigilance, and commit-ment (Dietz, Ostrom, & Stern, 2003; Griskevicius,Tybur, & Van den Bergh, 2010), thereby pushingthe boundaries of existing theories of issue supportthat are insensitive to the everyday experiences ofindividuals trying to support issues in a variety ofsettings. Moreover, engaging with climate changemay follow engaging with other environmental is-sues, which are often viewed as ambiguous, withconflicting interpretations about the issues coexist-


ing and competing for attention and legitimacy(Epstein, 2008). Such issues are classic “wickedproblems” in the sense that they are complex andill-defined (Mason & Mitroff, 1973), thereby allow-ing for more interpretive discretion.

Practically speaking, climate change weighsheavily on both organizations and society due inpart to the surge of devastating natural disastersthat have ravaged many communities’ health,safety, and economies. The economic damagewrought by natural disasters has affected a myriadof industries, including insurance, energy, agricul-ture, real estate, and manufacturing (Hoffman,2006). In addition, the public and all levels of gov-ernment regularly engage in debate about whetherand how to address climate change (e.g., Gore,2006), thereby making the impact of environmentalissues on businesses (and society at large) morevisible. As such, communities as well as public andprivate organizations are increasingly focused onremedying pressing environmental issues in an at-tempt to move toward a more sustainable future(Hoffman, 2009).

To examine issue support in the context of cli-mate change, we sought a sample of identified is-sue supporters and located a program at a NorthAmerican university called the Environment andBusiness Program (EBP),1 whose primary missionis to develop “sustainability-oriented leaders whoare widely respected as . . . catalyzing agents ofchange.” A main reason participants we inter-viewed joined the program was because they wereidentified issue supporters of a variety of environ-mental issues, including climate change. Althoughobviously different from the general population,our sample was important for theory development,as it allowed us to learn from a highly deviant set ofindividuals (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Whilemany individuals in the general population maywant to address climate change at some point, oursample represented individuals who had taken dis-tinctive steps to learn about how to do so and to bein the position to do so.

We asked the EBP office to provide contact de-tails on recent alumni and current students of theprogram to broaden the type of settings in whichwe could examine issue support, such as at schooland at work. Since we had no other available datawith which to categorize members beyond their

being either students or alumni, we asked for arandom list of 25 individuals from each category.From this list, we then theoretically sampled thoseindividuals specifically interested in climatechange by indicating in our invitation the scope ofthe study as requesting participation from support-ers of the issue. This led us to 29 participants (14current students and 15 working alumni of EBP)who agreed to participate in the study and self-identified as climate change issue supporters.

Upon completion, the hour-long, semistructuredinterviews were professionally transcribed (see Ap-pendix A for our interview protocol). FollowingMiles and Huberman (1994), we created contactsummary forms after each interview to capture andcoordinate emerging data interpretations. Most ofour sample members had previous work experience(mean � 8 years) in a variety of industries. SeeTable 1 for an overview of our informants.

We supplemented the interview data in twoways. First, we conducted field observations at twoannual social gatherings of EBP students in 2006and 2007. Second, we collected information aboutthe program’s mission, values, and structure fromfaculty, staff, and public information sources. Weused these supplemental data as a way to check thecredibility of our interpretations of the main data.

Analysis

Our analysis followed three steps and is capturedin our data structure shown in Figure 1.

Step 1: Initial data coding. We used open codesto classify informants’ statements (Strauss & Corbin,1998). As with many qualitative projects, ours wasvery iterative (Locke, 2001). For example, many in-formants talked about actions they engaged in toaddress climate change yet judged themselves asfalling short in terms of doing what they could toaddress the issue. We elaborated on these patternsin analytic memos (Lempert, 2007) and researchteam meetings. During this stage, we were mindfulof the different settings in which informants at-tempted to address climate change, inside and out-side their formal organizational settings. We devel-oped a list of open codes that attempted to stayclose to informants’ interpretations. It was duringthis stage that we began to shift our focus to self-interpretations, as our first-order codes highlightedsignificant attention informants gave to the self.

Step 2: Theoretical categories. In step 2, wemoved to create abstract, theoretical codes thatgrouped informants’ self-meanings and other con-

1 All names of organizations and individuals arepseudonyms.


structs into more generalizable categories (e.g.,Pratt, Rockmann, & Kaufman, 2006). This step in-volved abstracting informants’ categories to matchtheoretical concepts, with the goal of grouping in-formants’ conceptual schemes into theoretical cat-egories. We moved back and forth between our dataand existing theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) todevelop a set of constructs grounded in our data butelaborated on with the help of existing theoreticalconcepts.

Step 3: Theory induction. After settling on a setof theoretical categories, we identified three keyaggregate theoretical dimensions that we groupedinto our theoretical categories, thereby further ab-stracting them from the data. These aggregate di-mensions—issue support challenges, self-assets,and self-doubts—served as the basis for our in-duced theory. As a theory-generating study (Lee,Mitchell, & Sablynski, 1999), the goal of Study 1was not to test theory, but rather to propose theorybased on our findings (Golden-Biddle & Locke,

2007: 6). We experimented with several provisionaltheoretical claims, moving among these claims,data, and existing theory until we were confidentabout our own interpretations and confident thatour proposed theory remained wedded to infor-mants’ interpretations as well as to advancedtheory.

STUDY 1: FINDINGS

We find that informants interpret a variety ofissue support challenges, which we group intothree categories: relational, cognitive, and organi-zational. After unpacking these challenges, we fo-cus on the ways that individuals interpret the selfin response to these challenges. More specifically,we find that individuals’ self-interpretations focuson two key types of self-evaluation: self-assets andself-doubts. The former refers to issue supporters’evaluations that imbue the self as having the assetsor capabilities to act on an issue, and the latter

TABLE 1List of Participantsa

Name Interview Number Most Recent Position

Alex 22a Environmental health and safety affairs manager for an auto manufacturerAlice 19a Project director at a consulting firmAmanda 16a Mediator at a nonprofitAshley 29a Manager of corporate responsibility and sustainability for a consumer products companyBruce 17a Project development manager for an energy companyCandice 1 Real estate department for an auto manufacturerChad 25a Private equity specialist associate for a bankDoug 15 Environmental protection specialist at a federal agencyErika 6 Sustainability intern at consumer products companyErin 4 Project coordinator for wind energy at a nonprofitFran 9a Director of sustainable strategy for manufacturerFred 12 Small business development volunteer at a nonprofitHank 10a Senior marketing manager for a technology companyJack 7 Business development consultant for a nonprofitLeigh 18a Deputy director of a climate and energy program at a nonprofitLucy 21a Eastern conservation director at a nonprofitLuke 5 Investment banking associateMatt 8 Summer associate for a utility companyMegan 13 Intern at a consumer products companyPam 27 Energy information coordinator for a state agencyPatty 14 Policy director for a nonprofitPaul 26a Senior analyst of corporate strategy and business development for an electronics manufacturerPete 28a Managing director for a consulting companyRoger 24 Summer associate in marketing for a pharmaceuticals companyRyan 20a Northeast Colorado project director at a nonprofitSara 23a Environmental protection specialist at a federal agencySeth 11a Energy program director at a nonprofitTim 3 Manager at an accounting firmVeronica 2 Sustainable business industry consultant for an auto manufacturer

a All names are pseudonyms. An “a” after an interview number denotes an alumnus of EBP.


refers to issue supporters’ evaluations that raisequestions about how they are performing to addressthe issue. In following conventions in qualitativeresearch, we present power quotes throughout themain text and provide additional data to supportour analysis in Table 2 (Pratt, 2008).

Issue Support Challenges

Issue support challenges are real or imagineddifficulties that issue supporters encounter, arisingfrom a wide variety of contexts, including at andoutside of work. We find three broad categories ofissue support challenges.

Relational challenges. In the course of support-ing an issue, informants face a variety of relationalchallenges. Relational challenges refer to difficul-ties arising from engagement with other peopleabout the issue. We found two forms of relational

challenges arising from being a supporter of theclimate change issue: confronting other individualswho were complacent about the issue and engagingpeople who were skeptical about the issue.

Erin characterized the majority of people she en-countered at work as complacent about the issue,which challenged her own sense of effectiveness atissue support as she struggled to understand indi-viduals that did not share her concerns for theissue.

Most people don’t care. Most people aren’t worried. . . when you raise an issue and people are like, “Butthat doesn’t matter, like I’m going to make my cou-ple hundred thousand dollars creating money forrich people.” And I get judgmental and I’m like,“These people just don’t get it.” This is not justabout them and their quality of life and affordingthat car and that house.

FIGURE 1Data Structure


TABLE 2Representative Quotations Underlying Second-Order Themes

Second-Order Themes andFirst-Order Categories Exemplary Quotations

AggregateDimensions

Relational ChallengesComplacency of others Patty: “It didn’t give me a lot of hope as far as middle America is concerned. Frankly

the people that I was working with were just as middle America as you can get. Imean they got all their news from Fox. They drove their giant pick-up trucks andcomplained about the price of gas. To them it was like a white male world. . . .Trying to explain things like why you should care about the earth is really difficultto people like this.”

Veronica: “Getting people to do something, so anything, like just do tiny little thingslike re-replace their light bulbs and just, you know, drive less and stuff like that.”

Skepticism of others Roger: “I think I’ve been trying to bring it up with people who aren’t already theconverted, so to speak, and trying to open up conversations about it, and thechallenge is to take either people who are completely apathetic or who activelydisagree or who have framed it into a box to get them more, because they are veryentrenched in their . . . whoever it is, it is kind of a dogma. It’s a religious beliefalmost. It’s either you are or you aren’t, so switching people’s perspective on it ispretty hard.”

Ashley: “A number of people that are still skeptical about it even though that’schanging, that’s decreasing, but you always run into people that are like, ‘Oh, youknow, I don’t believe it’s true.’ You know, and to that I say, well, you know, evenif they don’t believe it’s true, they could still do it just to save money for thecompany, you know, but then I guess the other thing is it requires investment andI guess just making people comfortable with that level of investment.”

Cognitive Challenges Issue SupportChallenges

Scope of issue Doug: “There’s the make-or-break issue of our generation and it’s the equivalent. . . .It’s equivalent to World War II as for our grandparents’ generation, so this will bethe, this will be a defining moment in history in humanity and relations to eachother and especially the planet. You know, if we don’t solve it in the next 20 to 30years, then generations will be impacted, will be detrimental. . . . It’s one of thosepreeminent humanity issues that needs to be vastly understood by mass populousin order to do the type of radical changes necessary, and it is a huge challenge toget to that point where folks are willing to make sort of a sacrifices and life-stylechoices and sacrifices in consumption patterns necessary to get us there.”

Lucy: “Well it is such a . . . I mean it is such a large issue. You know like if you areby yourself as an individual and what kind of impact you can have it is so, itappears to be so small. . . . There has to be . . . I think in order to get more peopleto start to change their actions, they need to feel like they are actually going to ifothers are doing it too. That it is not just, oh, me off here by myself redoingsomething because what is the point of that? I can’t make a significant enoughimpact on my own.”

Complexity of issue Jack: “Such a complex issue, that it’s difficult to . . . be versed in all the differentareas that climate change impacts. So business, economics, policy, environment,you know, energy and social implications, developed countries versus developingcountries—it’s such a wide-ranging issue that it’s difficult to feel like you’re sortof, if not an expert, then at least, you know, well versed in all the different topicareas.”

Bruce: “It’s the most complicated, you know, to quote Timothy Worth, it’s probablythe most difficult and complicated challenge humanity has ever faced, more sothan the spread of nuclear weapons, because it’s so perverse. The sources ofemissions are so varied in so many different geographic locations, and they aredirectly tied with quality of life increases, that I think this issue is going to be anenormously difficult one to solve.”

ContinuedContinued


TABLE 2(Continued)


AggregateDimensions

Interconnectivity of issue Tim: “This is a problem that’s going to involve changing so many embeddedinfrastructures, and procedures, and mind-sets, and, you know, it . . . it’s reallygoing to take like just a quantum shift in . . . in our awareness, in our processes, inthe way we do things and the way we approach the world around us. . . . Climatechange is sort of a broad-reaching issue that spans across all other disciplines andis something that we all need to start thinking about immediately.”

Alice: “I just think there’s so many stakeholders involved, and it’s quite a challenge,and . . . and the more stakeholders you have involved, the more time it takes to getit sorted out, to get something that everybody can sign up to.”

Organizational Challenges Issue SupportChallenges

Getting organizationalbuy-in

Tim: “Many of the challenges I faced a couple of years ago, even trying to explain topeople what I was interested in, why I was doing it, and some of those haveevaporated and some of the bigger challenges now are trying to get the right peopleinterested. . . . One of the big issues there was getting buy-in from the people whoare making the top-level decisions. There’s kind of an open question as to at whatpoint should they take action. If the CEO or CFO has the fiduciary duty toshareholders, at what point should they say ‘we’ll take a little less money, butwe’re going to address climate change when the federal government is not takingaction,” etc. It is, ultimately, there’s a conflict there and it is an issue that thefreedom of businesses to address this issue is oftentimes limited, and then we havea political system that has been very slow in taking action on it as well, and sometimes with good reason and sometimes without.”

Seth: “It’s a challenge to try to translate because . . . not everybody will be convincedby the same set of arguments. So it’s kind of tailoring arguments to each individualperson. And then, going back to the thing I said earlier about, you know, youreally have to listen to people before you can . . . you can develop a . . . anargument that works for changing their mind on something.”

Economic challenges oforganizational support

Erin: “It doesn’t always make economic sense to act now, and it’s hard to make thatcase that, okay, well, make as much like Exxon as you can right now, and if it . . .something bad happens, you’ll have enough money to help fix it later, relying onthat technological, long-term solution or that spot solution rather than thepreventative approach, which I think is something I advocate.”

Alex: “I think professionally the difficult thing with it, being a traditional—I am in atraditional manufacturing environment. . . . We sell them to the automotivemanufacturer, and so as hard as the dialog is with auto manufacturers and theconsumer, it is that much harder sort of one level up the chain, where you knowprice and quality are very much in demand, and you know some of the secondaryand tertiary qualities of the product that may be very meaningful and verybeneficial to the end consumer, but you know they don’t always garner as muchinterest if you can’t show clearly that . . . price and quality hurdle first. . . . Someof those types of companies, you know, they don’t even know how much energythey use in their facilities ‘cause they just don’t have the manpower or thecapability to track it. Maybe they will work on ways of improving it. Soprofessionally, it has been a . . . you know, [I] sort of had to slow down, I guess, alittle bit from the time frames for my expectations of how fast things can change.And that has been a difficult thing to do.”

Value Assets Self-AssetsEthicality Candice: “I’m doing what I’m doing ‘cause it feels right.”

Seth: “I was just compelled to do something when I graduated that . . . that reallymade me feel like I was, you know, at least trying to make a difference at the endof the day when I came home.”

ContinuedContinued


TABLE 2(Continued)


AggregateDimensions

Issue values Erin: “Part of my personal philosophy, it’s where I find my spirituality, all thatcoming from an environmental background. . . . Protecting the environment iswhat drives me and helps me. . . . It makes a lot of my decisions . . . it’s beenmy career path since I was 16 years old. It’s just been a long-standing valuethat I’ve had.”

Bruce: “I am unapologetic about my environmental leanings. I’ve said it in front ofmanagement introducing myself. I’ve used those same words. I’m in this businessbecause it’s renewable energy and I’m unapologetic about my environmentalleaning and my concern about climate change.”

Knowledge Assets Self-AssetsAcquiring knowledge Sara: “People are always bringing in the latest articles, journal articles, or whatever,

publications, reports from different sources and sharing them. So . . . I think Idefinitely have a high level . . . of exposure to these things at work, and it’susually really current, and important, and you know, has been reviewed and . . .it’s really interesting to sort of have that kind of access.”

Pam: “Personally, just educating myself more about the issue and I thinkespecially the . . . the sort of debates on either side of . . . you know, fromwhether it’s happening to whether it’s not, and then also sort of [what] theimpacts [are] going to be. . . . I’ve just been trying to build up my ability toenter that debate.”

Integrative thinking Luke: “Probably that I’m a bit more of a holistic thinker, so I look at the issue notonly from the scientific aspect . . . but also, what are the effects relative to ussociologically. . . . I’m kind of a holistic thinker and want to sort of . . . think[about] things. . . . I don’t get mired in details as much or maybe not as concernedabout details, but maybe more about the overarching system and how that systeminteracts.”

Pete: “I have a global perspective, that I realize that it’s just not a glo . . .—Climatechange is not just a national issue, but a global issue, that I understand the facts.”

Experience AssetsFlexible issue framing Erin: “It’s given me the tools I need to communicate it without spirituality,

without the value judgments. It’s given me . . . the ability to communicate withpeople who talk about return on equity, return on investment, you, evaluationof products, marketing from a consumer vantage point. The . . . tools ofbusiness and the rational side of this movement that I didn’t necessarily comewith into school.”

Chad: “But within the financial community, I understand how they think, why theythink it, and . . . and that has enabled me then to go away and introduce newconcepts to it, because I understand what they’re thinking and I can anticipatetheir needs, you know. And know what they want. I know what keeps themthink—awake at night thinking. And nervous. And when you know that about anindustry participant and for all different sectors in an industry, then you can speaktheir language, and then you can introduce them [to] your ideas. And so that hasbeen tremendously valuable for me.”

Perspective taking on theissue

Tim: “I was working with a fellow who’s championing climate issues within thecompany and had been following it for 10 years and following the development ofthis issue both politically and financially, etc., for [company] and working withhim, I really got an understanding of the politics of the company and how tosteward an issue like this through it.”

Alice: “I do think I’ve learned a lot in terms of how business is run, how decisionsare made, and how to position issues so that people would, you know, think thatit’s relevant to them.”

ContinuedContinued


In this excerpt, Erin struggled with the majorityof people she encountered who are not “wor-ried,” interpreting her efforts at raising the issueas clashing with others’ being contented withmaking a lot of money without sharing her con-cern for the issue.

Issue supporters also faced complacent individ-uals at home. Sara described her parents’ views onclimate change as follows: “I think their attitudewas partly that they’re in their 60s and they’reprobably not going to be around to see the . . . worstof it for it to really impact their lives.” As a result,our informants faced relational challenges in a va-riety of their life domains, interpreting these chal-lenges as something they encounter on an ongo-ing basis.

Although issue supporters interpret interactingwith complacent individuals, they also encounterothers who are overtly skeptical about the issue—not simply being apathetic about the issue but out-right questioning its legitimacy. Jack said,

[It is] challenging to always have answer to everyskeptic . . . or people who don’t believe in it, or don’twant to believe in it . . . you can’t prove a negative,so like people say, “Well, we don’t know whether

like sun spots and solar flares, maybe that’s likethe biggest driver of climate change” . . . challengesof . . . talking with people who either don’t under-stand it or don’t want to believe it in the first place.

As Jack noted, issue supporters interact with in-dividuals who share different views of the issue.Jack noted that skeptics try to use logic (i.e., “youcan’t prove a negative”) to question whether cli-mate change is occurring, which leads to chal-lenges around trying not only to construct a viableself as an issue supporter but also to create andbuild support for the issue for those who do notshare his assumptions about it.

Informants also identified skeptics in their ownfamily, such as parental figures challenging theirchildren (i.e., our informants). Pam described howher father portrays climate change: “My father likesto joke that it’s a good thing [laughs], you know, it’llget warmer.” But beyond levity is a sense of skep-ticism, according to Pam: “He started off thinkingthat it was, you know, not a real issue.” Theseinteractions serve as a setting beyond work inwhich issue supporters perceive a lack of backingfrom others concerning something about whichthey deeply care.

TABLE 2(Continued)


AggregateDimensions

Doing Questioning

Self-Doubts

Taking insufficient issueaction

Luke: “I also have some feelings of embarrassment that I personally don’t do asmuch as I could.”

Lucy: “I know pretty much what I can do as an individual to make some kind of adifference. But I don’t take enough action I think to try to have a positive effect.”

Acting in ways thatcontribute to the issue

Luke: “I think it’s just a matter of convenience that it’s really hard to change ourbehavior. . . . I’ll be traveling a lot on the plane and I can buy carbon offsets or . . .I want certain luxuries in my life. And even though I’m very committed, if youlive in this very consumer oriented society, and it’s hard to . . . curb that, it’s hardto change your patterns of living. And sometimes it’s in the face of significantinconvenience to do that. So to what degree should you go to . . . to those lengths?And so that an aggregate has created a significant barrier.”

Ryan: “I haven’t made some of the personal life-style adjustments that I could.”

Doing ConstraintsSituational impediments

to actingTim: “My wife and I have faced those constraints as well. We’d love to replace our

furnace and get the most efficient model we can and get a new hot water heater,etc., but there’s limitations to doing that when you’re in graduate school andtaking out a lot of debt. . . . There are steps we would love to be able to take andsimply can’t afford to do. . . . There’s that economic tension. There’s multipletensions and issues that I’ve run into personally . . . that have prevented me frombeing carbon neutral, if you will, or greenhouse-gas free.”

Ashley: “As a working mom, I don’t have that much time to be on the lookout forinformation all the time.”


Cognitive challenges. Issue supporters also wres-tled with a number of cognitive challenges thatmade addressing climate change difficult. By cog-nitive challenges, we refer to difficulties arisingfrom the way an individual thinks about the issue,which informants experienced as draining or tax-ing cognitive resources. Our data suggest that issuesupporters faced cognitive challenges arising fromthe perceived scope, complexity, and interconnect-edness of the issue—all three of which were appli-cable inside and outside work contexts.

Informants interpreted the boundaries of climatechange as being broad, making the issue seem over-whelming at times. Fran described the issue as “soenormous,” noting that “there’s . . . over six billionpeople on this planet that need to start to changetheir behavior and change how they power in theirhome and their vehicles. So it is pretty overwhelm-ing when you look at . . . the issue itself.” Byinterpreting the issue as having such a wide scope,informants imbued it with meanings that madetheir task seem insurmountable. As a result, theyraised questions over whether any actions insideand outside work can resolve the issue. Ryan de-scribed it as an “overwhelming issue” and asked:“Are we going to be able to deal with it?”

In addition to the issue scope, informants alsointerpreted the issue as complex in ways that makeacting on it difficult. Tim interpreted the issue asfollows:

The greatest challenge is the complexity of this is-sue. . . . It’s very difficult to begin to discuss whatneeds to be addressed in order to mitigate climatechange without wanting to throw your arms in theair and wanting to give up because it requires atremendous amount of education. . . . It requires somuch investment and change in the way we’re do-ing things that it’s easy to get pessimistic and tothink that it won’t happen. Tied in with that issimply how complex it is to convey to someone thisnotion that our everyday actions . . . are causingchanges globally, in that you’re driving your car 30miles to work every day is causing a frog in therainforest . . . to go extinct.

As Tim eloquently put it, the issue’s complexitymakes it hard to educate others about it, and heexplained how seemingly mundane tasks (such asdriving a car) relate to consequential events on theother side of the planet, such as the extinction of afrog in a rainforest. By interpreting the issue asinvolving this level of complexity, informants fur-ther imbued the issue with meanings that impliedthat an extraordinarily high degree of action is

needed to support the issue, making effectively ad-dressing the issue especially difficult.

A final cognitive challenge involves informants’interpretations that climate change is strongly in-terconnected with other environmental, and morebroadly, social and economic issues. Leigh inter-preted climate change as “an issue that spans con-sumer behavior, how businesses operate, how theUnited States looks at its future in terms of itseconomic development and the technology we useand the life style [to which] we’re accustomed.” Byinexplicitly intertwining climate change with someof society’s basic institutions and practices, infor-mants imbued the issue with formidable obstaclesas they needed to address not only climate changebut also a host of related issues, activities, prac-tices, and institutions. Leigh’s interpretation alsohighlights how informants often readily traversedbetween work (e.g., “how businesses operate”) andnonwork (e.g., “consumer behavior”) settings in ar-ticulating the challenges of climate change.

Organizational challenges. While issue sup-porters wrestled with relational and cognitive chal-lenges inside and outside of work, they also faceddistinctly organizational challenges in acting as is-sue supporters. These challenges involved gettingissue “buy-in” and managing the economic chal-lenges of the issue. Erika talked about how tiring itwas to garner organizational buy-in and contrastedwork environments that differ in their propensityto support the climate change issue:

It’s exhausting to try to convince people of the threatover and over again. And I’ve definitely been doingthat for like a decade now. And so I think when youare in an organization where that’s basically theconversation that you have to have every day, everyday you have to say like, “Oh yeah, no, this isserious and we really need to do something aboutit.” . . . I think that if you’re an organization that isbasically not aware or not believing . . . then that’stotally exhausting. . . . It would be a place where Ifrankly would probably avoid the issue after a whileand stop talking about it. On the other hand, whenI was working at an environmental consultingagency, which was basically all environmentallymotivated and scientifically educated people, therewas a lot more interesting and compelling conver-sations about climate change that I felt were like lessrhetoric, more like education and more deepthought.

As Erika’s quotation illustrates, organizationalcontext matters for how issue supporters interprettheir support. In a supportive context, Erika found


the dialogue more scientific, which led to moreinsightful conversations about the issue. However,when the organization struggled to grasp the seri-ousness of the issue, Erika portrayed herself as be-coming exhausted and interpreted that she mightwithdraw her effort at trying to obtain organizationalbuy-in.

Another organizational challenge issue support-ers face involves trying to balance issue supportwith the realities of the economics of organizations.Luke offered a good illustration:

If your idea is to try to make things better withregard to the environment, in this case climatechange, how much browbeating do you do before itgives you diminishing returns? When do you com-promise? When do you try to find a middle ground?How do you maximize the improvement on thatfront? . . . We all are so passionate about this issuethat we won’t take anything less than perfection,but . . . to get to that point is just . . . it’s economi-cally infeasible. How do you get this group of peopleto move a little bit closer, try to get us all together sowe can actually take action?

As Luke described, work contexts involve com-promise, but issue supporters are prone to inter-preting the world as black and white—seeking onlyperfection. But such perfection is economically dif-ficult, thereby creating an inherent tension betweenbeing a good issue supporter and a realistic issuesupporter. Work contexts bring to the forefrontthese tensions, as issue supporters face the realityof the economics of climate change, leading Luke toultimately conclude: “There’s got to be a way totranslate that information that might otherwiseseem . . . idealistic or altruistic . . . into businessterms. [It] is vital to be able to be able to . . . createactivism within a business. It’s got to be put intofinancial concepts.”

Self-Assets

In response to issue support challenges, wefound that issue supporters evaluated their self-assets, defined as the ways in which individualsidentify and positively assess the capabilities theyhave for being an issue supporter. The focus onself-assets arises from reflecting on the challengesof being an issue supporter. This suggests that self-assets reference a particular issue and arise in aroutine manner as individuals interpret the chal-lenges of supporting the issue. We found threemain types of self-assets: value assets, experienceassets, and knowledge assets.

Value assets. In the face of challenges, someinformants determine that they have the correctvalues to be issue supporters, either in terms oftheir general ethics or more specific issue-relatedvalues. Ethicality involves issue supporters evalu-ating themselves in ways that generally focus ondoing the right thing. For example, after Leigh de-scribed climate change as an all-encompassing is-sue that interconnects consumer behavior, eco-nomic development, and technology, she evaluatedherself as follows: “I’m somebody who . . . feels agreat sense of responsibility.” Roger described cli-mate change as “the greatest business challengeand greatest sort of inner personal challenge andthe greatest organizational challenge.” Roger thenevaluated his ethicality, declaring: “I like to thinkof myself as having a political and socialconsciousness.”

Issue values involve self-evaluations around hav-ing the requisite values of a climate change issuesupporter (or more generally, an environmental is-sue supporter). Roger characterized his businessschool classmates as “very strong antiscience kindof anti-environmentalist.” Thus, EBP memberssometimes position themselves against others topositively evaluate their own environmental valueswhile discounting the more materialistic values ofothers. For example, Chad evaluated his environ-mental values with respect to American overcon-sumption after interpreting climate change as “a bigenvironmental issue.” He evaluated himself as fol-lows: “My changing behavior and sense of ethicsthat I have with respect to how I live my life per-sonally and professionally is entirely related towanting a minimal impact in the world, and think-ing that Western culture, particularly America,lives in excess.”

Knowledge assets. Knowledge assets capture anindividual’s positive self-evaluations about the vol-ume and appropriateness of knowledge relevant tothe issue of interest here. These knowledge-basedself-evaluations came in two primary forms: acquir-ing knowledge and integrative thinking.

Acquiring knowledge involves evaluations thatan issue supporter has learned or is learning moreabout the issue over time. Fran interpreted climatechange as “a complex science topic and . . . a verypolitical topic” while evaluating herself in termsof her growing knowledge about the issue: “I’vegotten much more aware of . . . the technical side.I’d say my understanding of the source of theproblem increased a lot more.” Fran’s evaluationof her increasing awareness of the “technical


side” followed the specific challenge of the com-plexity of the issue she identified, thereby illus-trating the intertwinement of the issue supportchallenge and self-asset.

Integrative thinking involves an issue supporter’sself-evaluation as someone who approaches cli-mate change in a holistic way and appreciates thenuances of the issue and its relationship to otherissues. After Tim outlined the cognitive challengeof climate change interconnectedness as being “soclosely tied to our society, our economy, our energyinfrastructure . . . otherwise pretty much everythingwe do,” he evaluated himself as an integrativethinker: “I’m a bit of a system thinker, if you will,and definitely think more realistically and whatthe impacts of different actions are, and not just theprimary impacts or the short term impacts but thelong term impacts. . . . I’m fairly well informedabout this issue.” In short, Tim evaluated himselfas having what it takes to meet the issue supportchallenge he identified.

Experience assets. Experience assets involveevaluations of the self as someone who has gainedmeaningful practice in supporting the issue inquestion. Informants described experience assets intwo primary ways: by evaluating themselves asflexible issue framers and as individuals whoseexperiences provide them perspective on the issue.

Informants evaluated themselves as experiencedin framing the issue for different constituencies,especially business organizations. In reflecting onher time at a major retailer, Fran evaluated herselfas now better equipped to support the issue. Frandescribed a shift from a corporate responsibilityrole to one that involves having profit and lossresponsibility:

I was in the environmental affairs department . . .didn’t have any profit and loss responsibility. . . .The whole department was geared around educatingpeople and getting people to do things for the rightreason. But actually, I think that’s a really difficultstrategy to execute because people don’t all dothings for the same reason. . . . With climate change,if the goal is to actually reduce emissions, weshouldn’t really care why people reduce emissions,as long as they do. And some people might do itbecause it’s easy and convenient for them to do.Some people do it because they care about the issueand they’re willing to make that effort. And somepeople do it because it might save them money. . . .That is the big shift in my thinking, from when I wasin a corporate social responsibility department tothen when I went into business, where I had profitand loss responsibility. . . . The more you can put it

in their language, and the more you can get them tosee the benefits to them, the better.

In Fran’s reflection, she concluded that framingthe issue to resonate with the needs or back-grounds of other people is an asset of hers. Sherelated this experience to an organizational chal-lenge she had getting the organization to embracethe issue.

A second type of experience asset involves issuesupporters gaining perspective on the issue, partic-ularly on the person or group from which one triesto gain support. Luke first interpreted a key issuesupport challenge, noting the “global environmen-tal effects, global sociological problems” of climatechange, and then talked about an experience thatinformed a self-asset of being able to take perspec-tive on the issue. More specifically, Luke recountedan event he organized for EBP. Luke was shocked athow the event unfolded. He moved from someonewho targeted environmental wrongdoers to himselfbecoming the target of environmental do-gooders,which provided an important perspective on issuesupport:

I helped organize an event that brought three envi-ronmental managers from big corporations. . . . Un-beknownst to me, there was a massive campuswideactually . . . national boycott against Coca-Cola forissues in Columbia and in India. . . . I becamequickly aware of that when [I] received a flyerthat . . . there was a group on campus called “KillerCoke” and this group called “Soul” that were goingto protest the event that I was organizing. So Iwent from being the protester . . . to being theprotestee. . . . That experience . . . made me realizeis that it’s not cut and dry [and] dealing with bothsides and trying to understand . . . the mind-set ofthose that are opposed to taking action.

Luke operated as an issue supporter without ap-preciating the perspective of activists at his school.As Luke realized, the issue was intertwined in abroader context that included an activist campaignagainst a soda maker. As a result, his effort to sup-port the issue became challenged by issue support-ers who questioned the integrity of Luke’s ownsupport. Luke used the story to positively evaluatehis experience as making him better able to under-stand the perspective of others.

Self-Doubts

In addition to self-assets, we also found that issuesupport challenges led individuals to have self-


doubts about themselves as issue supporters,defined as negative self-evaluations, in whichindividuals assessed their performance as issuesupporters in a negative light, such as falling shortin some way. We found two ways in which indi-viduals engaged in self-doubts: “doing question-ing” and “doing constraints.”

Doing questioning. When informants engaged indoing questioning, they evaluated their actions asnot fully meeting the demands of addressing theissue. We found two types of this form of self-doubt: taking insufficient action to support the is-sue and acting in ways that contribute to ratherthan resolve the issue.

Patty described the extensive efforts she has in-vested in recycling but questioned their ultimateimpact:

I went through a lot of trouble for recycling and thatsort of thing, and so the actions that I was taking, Ifelt that they were so small and so just individual. Iwas doing everything myself and I didn’t feel anylike I could affect the world system and all thosethings were beyond my control.

Patty raised a self-doubt in the context of consid-ering the enormity, complexity, and intertwine-ment of the issue, adding that it was “systematicand very large.” Thus, Patty interpreted the issue asinvolving a wide scope and came to question herown actions in being able to address it. These rathercritical self-assessments were shared by other in-formants, with Ashley offering another powerfulillustration of doing questioning: “There’s . . . al-most like a fear, like you can’t do enough . . . a senseof inadequacy. . . . Does it make sense to do any-thing if you’re never going to do enough anyway?”

While taking insufficient action can be construedas an act of omission, acting in ways that exacerbatethe issue the supporter is trying to address is bestcharacterized as an act of commission. In theseinstances, informants had self-doubts about howtheir actions might be contributing to climatechange. For example, Megan questioned her ac-tions rather harshly:

Knowing the facts I know, I still choose actions thataren’t always right. So I put myself beyond the beliefI have. My convenience and superficial happinessfronts my need to be more environmental. . . . If myneed to be more environmental is more important tome than anything else, I wouldn’t do many of thethings that I do. . . . I eat meat. I drink wine andbeer. . . . I’ll buy Patagonia when I can, but I also buyNorth Face.

Megan traced her acts of commission to her daysas a consultant, when she became “used to havinga lot of money and living in a big city and having allthese expectations of life,” suggesting how climatechange is inextricably interconnected with basicaspects of American life and culture. As an issueintimately connected with many aspects of individ-uals’ lives, Megan found it hard to escape her con-ditioning as an American, despite her commitmentto the issue.

Like Megan, Seth offered a very critical evalua-tion of his actions, identifying an “inconsistency”he has in his life:

I’ll go to a really strong word, guilt, but you know, Ithink something that we all have internally whenwe learn about this issue is kind of this contradic-tion that we’re doing some, you know, we still go onkind of doing things as usual, business as usual. Wedrive our cars . . . we go out to restaurants and webuy seafood that was harvested from halfwayaround the world . . . we travel to Europe for vaca-tions. And these are things that I enjoy doing. And Ithink . . . it’s like a really hard contradiction to tryto . . . remove or reduce.

Seth was acutely aware of the “very big problem”of climate change. Yet he questioned his perfor-mance as an issue supporter and raised specificexamples of actions that contrast with his desire tosupport the issue. While the actions Seth criticizedmay appear common to most people in America,Seth characterized these actions as contradictingsupport of the issue.

Doing constraints. Doing constraints involve is-sue supporters considering that situational obsta-cles inhibit them from acting in sufficient ways,such as by taking an environmental job (or being astudent without any job), and therefore not havingan adequate wage to live in ways that would bemore consistent with supporting the issue. For ex-ample, Ryan challenged his choice of automobileand declared that:

in my heart of hearts I know I should drive a Priusbut . . . that is not necessarily [easy] to do given myeconomic choices professionally in terms of the jobI do. Or adding insulation to my house or replacingwindows. Those things all cost money, and so whileI might to do those things, they are not necessarilyeasy to afford, and also you know some of thatrelates to infrastructure of life style.

Ryan’s articulation of his constraints was alsointertwined with the scope of the issue, as hepointed to the “infrastructure of life style,” thereby


acknowledging that addressing the issue impliesmajor adjustments to how he lives.

As another example, Lucy doubted her actions asan issue supporter at home, because she had giventoo much to the issue at work, thereby identifyingher situation as putting a constraint on her abilityto support the issue: “I spend so much of my timeat work doing environmental related activities thatI don’t have a real strong focus outside of work. . . .I just burnt out. . . . When I leave work, I don’t wantto talk about environmental stuff anymore.” Lucywent on to note that she was “trying to think aboutways to be more engaged in the issue in my per-sonal life” but considered important issue supportchallenges as being formidable obstacles: “Asidefrom family and friends, if you were to try to actu-ally make some kind of . . . changes with your localgovernment, I would think it would be a challengeto try to accomplish change at that level.” In hercase, Lucy negatively evaluated her performancearound the issue in a key setting of her life as aconsequence of the time she spent on the issue ina different setting. This suggests that for someinformants, the idea of always acting in ways thatsupport the issue is rather elusive, as some par-ticipants interpreted such support as a zero-sumgame, in which efforts in one sphere of their lifetook away from their efforts in another sphere.

STUDY 1: THEORY DEVELOPMENT

We use the three induced constructs from Study1—issue support challenges, self-assets, and self-doubts—to propose theory around how individualsdevelop ongoing self-evaluations in response to is-sue support challenges. The process starts with is-sue support challenges. Social issue supporters in-terpret multiple types of challenges when trying tosupport an issue. Cognitive challenges demand ef-fort to think about issues that are complex, wide inscope, and interconnected with other issues; rela-tional challenges demand effort to interact withothers who are complacent or skeptical about is-sues; and organizational challenges necessitate ef-fort to get organizational buy-in and cope witheconomic challenges of issues. Many of these chal-lenges arise from engagement in being an issuesupporter inside and/or outside of work, wheresocial issue supporters interact with others whodo not share their views and face a cognitivelychallenging issue that transcends organizationalborders. As a result of repeatedly interpreting issuesupport challenges in a variety of contexts, issue

supporters are constantly interrupted by these chal-lenges, as the issue pervades many aspects of theirdaily experiences. Unlike many strategic or opera-tional issues that face supporters inside organiza-tions, climate change—and social issues more gener-ally—cross organizational boundaries and demandissue supporters’ attention in multiple settings. It isthis frequent confrontation of issue support chal-lenges that is psychologically disruptive (e.g.,Weick, 1995), jolting a person into an awarenessthat the current situation may pose some barriersor difficulties to being an effective issue sup-porter. In response to these interpreted chal-lenges, issue supporters engage in self-work byevaluating the self in response to two ongoingquestions: (1) Do I have the assets needed to be anissue supporter? and (2) How am I performing asan issue supporter?

The first question informs what we labeled self-assets—a type of self-evaluation that positions is-sue supporters as having the requisite capacities tosupport the issue. Issue support challenges enableindividuals to evaluate themselves as having theassets to meet what a given context demands. Morespecifically, knowledge assets may be a particu-larly helpful antidote to cognitive challenges, asissue supporters evaluate themselves as acquiringknowledge and being integrative thinkers, both ofwhich can help them to wrestle with the scope,complexity, and interconnectivity of issues. For ex-ample, recall how Fran evaluated her understand-ing as having increased upon reflection on the“complex science” involved in the issue. Valueassets may allow issue supporters to claim the eth-ics and values necessary to face others that eitherquestion the fundamental premises of the issue(skeptics) or simply do not care about the issue(complacent others). Such evaluations may remindindividuals of the intrinsic importance of their is-sue support, even if others do not embrace theissue—an experience Roger recounted in his storyabout the charged e-mail exchange between EBPstudents and traditional business students. Experi-ence assets affirm the self as having gained therequisite skills of an issue supporter, as Fran didwhen she moved from a role focused on environ-mental affairs to one with profit and loss responsi-bility. These experiences may be helpful for meet-ing organizational challenges in which it is difficultto sell an issue to others or navigate potential trade-offs between economic goals and issue goals. Moregenerally, the matching of a particular type of self-evaluation (e.g., cognitive challenges with knowl-


edge assets, relational challenges with value assets,and organizational challenges with experience as-sets) suggests that self-evaluations prompted by aparticular type of interpreted issue challenge mightcall forth certain challenge-appropriate self-evalu-ations to use to attempt to counteract thesechallenges.

Although issue supporters respond to challengeswith self-assets that indicate a viable self that canmeet these challenges, issue supporters also ex-press doubts about their own performance. Thus,the second question issue supporters address inresponse to issue support challenges informs whatwe call self-doubts—a type of self-evaluation thatquestions the actions an issue supporter takes vis-à-vis the issue. These doubts arise as issue support-ers reflect on the challenges of addressing an issue,experiencing a discrepancy between what the con-text demands (issue support challenges) and whatthe issue supporters have done. More specifically,doing questioning involves critical self-evaluationswhereby an issue’s supporters question the suffi-ciency of their actions in supporting the issue, oreven more severely, question whether their actionsactually exacerbate the issue. These rather harshself-evaluations emanate from issue support chal-lenges that supporters confront in different life do-mains (e.g., work, school, family). For example, byinterpreting the issue as having a wide-reachingscope, issue supporters may create an insurmount-able challenge to overcome, thereby rendering anyaction they might take as insufficient to address theissue (such as Fran’s description of the issue as“enormous”). Facing organizational challenges thatnecessitate compromise in the face of economicrealities (such as Luke’s focus on perfection to en-act environmental values as an all-or-nothing prop-osition) leads issue supporters to focus on theirown actions that harm the environment, while ob-scuring all of the supportive issue actions they take.For relational challenges, the skepticism and com-placency of others can lead issue supporters toevaluate themselves as primarily responsible forthe issue, such as Jack’s felt need to “answer . . .every skeptic.” As a result, issue supporters oftenevaluate their actions as insufficient to address theissues or even as worsening them.

Similarly, doing constraints emanates from re-flecting on issue support challenges in a way thathighlights situational obstacles individuals con-front in the course of acting as issue supporters. Forexample, the effort involved in managing organiza-tional challenges around getting issue buy-in led

Lucy to evaluate herself as not having the ability tosupport the issue outside of work, as she viewedherself as having a limited capacity to do so. Sheexpressed skepticism that she could muster theeffort to address relational challenges outside ofwork to make meaningful change. Cognitive chal-lenges such as a wide issue scope led some infor-mants to focus on constraints to acting. For exam-ple, Ryan evaluated his choice to not buy a Prius asresulting from his financial constraints, which areintertwined with interpreting the issue as embed-ded in the “infrastructure of lifestyle.” These exam-ples all highlight the deeply situated nature of self-work, in which challenges encountered in being anissue supporter in specific contexts go hand inhand with self-evaluations that vary in the extent towhich they endow assets or doubts. Unlike self-assets, both forms of self-doubts appear to emanatefrom a wider range of issue support challenges asopposed to being tied to any particular type ofchallenge.

We collectively label self-assets and self-doubtsas self-work to capture the effortful and ongoingself-evaluations our informants engaged in to re-spond to the plethora of issue support challengesthey interpreted. The “work” part of self-work im-plies that these forms of self-related processes in-volve efforts to focus on and evaluate the self; but ithas a secondary meaning, calling attention to thesignificant labor that issue supporters undertake byconstantly evaluating the self in context.

We further modify self-work by referring to it as“situated” because individuals reflect on differentsettings (including work and nonwork settings)about a specific issue (i.e., issue supporter for cli-mate change) to evaluate the self. The context isimportant because it provides some of the raw ma-terials that prompt issue support challenges thatfurther spark the effortful undertaking of self-work.For example, some individuals evaluated them-selves as having developed knowledge about theissue that was relevant to their organizations, usedvenues such as organizational contexts to posi-tively evaluate their values (sometimes in referenceto others in these contexts), and assessed them-selves as developing a repertoire of experiencethrough efforts at work (and beyond) that equippedthem with what it took to be an issue supporter.Similarly, individuals questioned their own perfor-mance as issue supporters on the basis of how theyevaluate what they are doing (or not doing) in thevariety of contexts in which they regularly findthemselves. Put more succinctly, situated self-work


calls attention to the elaborate challenges confront-ing individuals trying to support an issue that mo-tivates effortful self-evaluations directed towardcreating a viable self as an issue supporter, even asthere are ongoing self-doubts about how they areperforming as issue supporters.

STUDY 1: DISCUSSION

Our theory of situated self-work portrays an ac-tive self that interprets an issue’s challenges inways that inform an ongoing evaluation of the self,positively (self-assets) and negatively (self-doubts).It shines a spotlight on the experiences of issuesupporters who wrestle with imbuing a self withpositive meaning while nevertheless offering harshself-criticism. In doing so, it provides a windowinto the interpretive experiences of issue support-ers, linking their interpretations of key challengesto self-evaluation in situated self-work. In unpack-ing situated self-work, Study 1 makes three keycontributions to research on issue support andthe self.

First, Study 1 portrays a self that differs from theself organizational scholars’ emphasize, a self pred-icated on a strong concern for image (Ashford et al.,1998; Dutton et al., 1997, 2002). By examining theresponses of some of the most ardent issue support-ers, we found that instead of focusing on an out-ward assessment of how others construe them, andrelated worries about its consequences (e.g., careerrisk), individuals evaluated themselves particu-larly with regard to whether they have the assetsthey need to be issue supporters and whether theirperformance as an issue supporter is sufficient.This shift from interpretations of how others per-ceive the self to how the focal individual perceivesthe self suggests several important implications.First, freed from constraints about image and careerrisk, individuals may focus more on trying toadvance social issues versus selling only thosesanctioned by top managers (Ashford & Barton,2007; Sonenshein, 2006). Additionally, the focusof an issue supporter’s self-evaluations movesbeyond a calculation about job performance andtoward issue performance—namely, whether anissue supporter has what it takes to perform (i.e.,self-assets) and how that issue supporter per-forms (i.e., self-doubts) with respect to his/herissue.

Second, we find that individuals evaluate them-selves in a decidedly mixed fashion using self-assets and self-doubts. Our findings regarding the

mixed nature of these self-evaluations, whichrange from the most critical to the most favorable,build on other issue support research that hasalso discovered a mixed self, most notably theresearch on tempered radicals (Meyerson, 2001;Meyerson & Scully, 1995). But the mixed self inresearch on tempered radicals is based on differ-ences between a self identified with a social issueand a self identified with an organization thatdoes not embrace that social issue. In our partic-ular case, the mixed self is predicated on com-peting self-evaluations that encompass an af-firmed self, but also somewhat paradoxically, anineffective self that falls short.

Third, our theory of situated self-work explainshow the different contexts issue supporters experi-ence (such as work and home) shape ongoing self-evaluations. We describe an active self that engagesin interpreting contexts, not so much to assess theirfavorability for issue support as previous researchhas suggested (e.g., Ashford et al., 1998; Dutton etal., 1997, 2002), but rather to inform self-evalua-tions, thereby providing a richer view of how con-text influences issue support. This contrasts withorganizational scholars’ emphasis on organizationcontext that overlooks the possibility that individ-uals may positively equip themselves outside of afocal organizational context to be able to engage inissue support inside that context (or conversely,may develop self-doubts outside of a work contextthat stymie issue support in that context). As aresult, this research joins a growing emphasis ofscholars on the spillover effects between work andnonwork contexts (e.g., Pratt & Rosa, 2003; Roth-bard & Wilk, 2011). In this manner, a focus on howself-work is situated in multiple contexts suggests anew way of thinking about issue support as notbeing tied to a particular context (e.g., work, school,organizations).

On a related basis, the multiple social contexts inwhich individuals evaluate their issue support maypresent opportunities to develop self-assets about aparticular issue in alternative contexts to boost theself, despite engaging in some self-doubts aboutthat same issue. In contrast with psychological ap-proaches about self-evaluations that often do nottheoretically incorporate context (e.g., Arnocky etal., 2007; Fielding et al., 2008), we found that self-work is situated in the sense of being connected toexperiences with a particular issue in multiple con-texts. This is important because it suggests thatindividuals might still evaluate a self as havingassets despite having self-doubts in another con-


text. This contrasts with a central tenet of self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988), that whenthreatened in one domain (by, for example, self-doubts), individuals can regain confidence andself-esteem by affirming themselves in an unre-lated domain of value to them. For example, afterreceiving negative feedback about his/her perfor-mance at work, an individual can maintain apositive, competent sense of self by thinkingabout how competent he/she is at parenting. Im-portantly, our findings suggest that social issuesupporters can boost their self-esteem by devel-oping self-assets in a single domain (i.e., socialissue support). This might reflect the importanceof an issue to dedicated issue supporters; that is,because of their dedication to the issue, they maysee unrelated domains as less important thantheir work supporting the issue. Affirmations as-sociated with the issue itself become especiallypowerful. Put simply, a social issue supporter’sevaluations of self-doubts at work one day may befollowed by that issue supporter’s evaluations ofself-assets at home the same day about the sameissue, thereby providing an alternative pathwayto self-affirmation.

STUDY 2: OBSERVATIONAL STUDY

We designed Study 2 to empirically and theoret-ically deepen our core premise that social issuesupporters experience a mixed self by inductivelyexamining the different ways this mixed self ismanifested and how these differences relate to is-sue-supportive behaviors. To do so, we recruitedtwo independent samples of environmental issuesupporters and examined whether self-assets andself-doubts could be measured and meaningfullyrepresent those of other social issue supporters.We inductively examined these new data, whichdemonstrated that individuals clustered into pro-files of different combinations of mixed self-eval-uations based on individuals’ responses to mea-sures developed to capture the self-assets andself-doubts constructs at a single point in time.We found that among these issue supporters,three main profiles or combinations of mixedselves existed: self-affirmers, self-critics, andself-equivocators. Finally, we examined howthese different profiles related to individuals’levels of issue-supportive behaviors.

STUDY 2: METHOD

Sample and Procedures

We first examined whether the two constructsunderlying the mixed self-evaluations—self-assetsand self-doubts—were reliable and valid. To do so,we collected pretest data to demonstrate constructvalidity for measures we created for self-assets andself-doubts (reported in Appendix B). Afterwards,we recruited a second sample of issue supportersand used surveys with concealed observation toinductively examine patterns of self-assets and self-doubts and investigate how these patterns relatedto issue-supportive behaviors. We collected datafrom 91 environmental issue supporters who wereactive members of environmental groups in a majorNorth American city. We recruited participants bycontacting 21 leaders of the groups whose missionstatements explicitly defined them as active in en-vironmental change and sustainability. We heardback from 19 groups, which then forwarded infor-mation about our study to their members with alink to a secure website by which they could signup. Each of the 19 groups had 1 to 15 members whoparticipated in the study. Participants came to acomputer lab for 45 minutes in exchange for $15and free pizza and snacks. Participants ranged from18 to 55 years old (mean � 23.8) and included 58women and 31 men (2 participants did not reporttheir gender). They averaged slightly less than 3years of full-time work experience, and 56 percentwere currently working full time in variousindustries.

When participants arrived, we sent them to acomputer station to begin a survey. Following sur-vey completion, we instructed them to refrain fromdisturbing others by talking and to raise their handto receive instructions for the next portion of thestudy. A research assistant then provided a papersurvey that asked for study feedback and theirpizza (cheese or vegan) and beverage choice. Eachparticipant received a beverage, three slices ofpizza, vegetables, and strawberries. We left straw-berries with the greens still attached, so that par-ticipants would be less likely to eat everything ontheir plate, even if they were hungry. Plates andnapkins were compostable and beverage containerswere recyclable. A compost bin of a type commonin that city was set up, along with a three-partcomposting/garbage station of a type commonlyseen in the building.

We told participants to stay as long as theywished and to finish all food and beverages in the


computer lab. We instructed participants to raisetheir hand upon completing the meal and thendirected them to clean up their eating space andmeet the research assistant at the door of the com-puter lab for payment instructions. A second re-search assistant took notes on each participant’scomposting behavior. We then instructed partici-pants to go down the hall to the payment table,where a research assistant had them sign out andissued payment. After receiving payment, we toldparticipants they would receive the results of thesurvey via e-mail.

Participants then left the building, presumablyassuming that the study was over. However, we hadtwo research assistants pose as environmental ac-tivists on the street about ten yards outside of thecomputer lab. The two research assistants woreWorld Wildlife Fund (WWF)2 hats and carried clip-boards to mimic the WWF activists commonly seenon the city’s streets. The research assistants/streetactivists approached each participant by asking,“Do you have a minute for the Earth?” If the par-ticipant stopped, the street activist told the partic-ipant about Earth Hour—a real upcoming eventsponsored by WWF—and asked the participant tosign the pledge and include her/his e-mail addressfor a reminder to turn their lights off for Earth Hour.Hidden from view inside a building across thestreet, we videotaped the street activists’ interac-tions with participants to identify them after thestudy. To ensure realism, we instructed researchassistants/street activists to approach participantsnaturally and to not chase participants who ap-peared to be in a rush. Additionally, to enhance theperception of realism, activists occasionally ap-proached nonparticipants, both street pedestriansand those coming out of the university building.Following data collection, we fully debriefed allparticipants and asked them to again consent to theuse of all of their data. No one refused reconsent.

Measures

Self-assets and self-doubts. Following Study 1,we created and validated items with a pretest thatconceptualized and measured self-doubts and self-assets (Appendix B)3 as reflective constructs with

indicators (Bollen & Lennox, 1991). To provideconstruct validity for these items, we recruited asample of students who participated regularly in asubject pool for payment and only selected thosewho self-identified as environmentalists in a pre-screen. We designed items to tap environmentalissue supporters’ sense that they were living up tothe standard of being a “good environmentalist”primarily through their sense of whether they were“doing enough” to deserve this label. To measureself-doubts, participants rated how strongly theyagreed or disagreed with three items (see Appen-dix C; � � .88). We also drew on our initial study indesigning items to measure self-assets, which weconceptualized as a single latent reflective con-struct consisting of three elements derived from ourqualitative study: knowledge, experience, and val-ues. Participants indicated the extent to which theyagreed or disagreed with nine statements on a sev-en-point scale (Appendix C; � � .88).

We conducted a confirmatory factor analysis onall independent measures, including the items forself-assets on a single factor, covarying it with asingle self-doubts factor, and allowing the errorterms of the three types of self-assets to covary.Because of our small sample size, we ran a boot-strapped model (n � 200). Although we had lim-ited power to reject a model, our results demon-strated a sufficient fit to the data (�2[44] � 68.96,p � .01; CFI � .96, RMSEA � .08) (Browne &Cudeck, 1993; Hu & Bentler, 1999). Each itemloaded significantly with its intended constructand with no significant cross-loadings (p � .001).

Profiles. We used cluster analysis to inductivelyexamine how participants grouped into combina-tions of mixed selves based on degree of self-assetsand self-doubts. That is, all individuals exhibitedsome degree of a mixed self but they varied incomposition. Scholars use cluster analysis to formgroups of individuals based on their similaritiesusing a meaningful set of measures. We usedWard’s (1963) hierarchical cluster analysis tech-

2 The WWF is an activist group focused on environ-mental conservation.

3 Our measure of self-doubts only includes doing ques-tioning. Doing constraints, our second, second-order

theme, did not emerge from the qualitative data untilafter subsequent analysis (i.e., after we collected the ob-servational data). Because of our extensive design, itwas not feasible to rerun the study. However, we thinkthat doing constraints, which emphasizes situationalchallenges to issue support, were less relevant to ourobservational study context, because we placed individ-uals uniformly in a different situation (i.e., as part of astudy) that made the situational constraints we identifiedin Study 1 less relevant and less variant.


nique to group participants’ scores on the twoscales. Following procedures to determine appro-priate clustering, we examined the dendrogramthat suggested a three-cluster solution was mostappropriate.4 Upon examining the scores associ-ated with the individuals in each cluster, we inter-preted the three clusters of participants as follows:Those having low self-doubts (mean � 2.55) andhigh self-assets (mean � 5.94) were self-affirmers;those with high self-doubts (mean � 5.12) and highself-assets (mean � 5.37) were self-equivocators;and those with high self-doubts (mean � 5.40) andlow self-assets (mean � 4.04) were self-critics. Wethen used dummy codes to categorize participantsinto one of these three profiles (38 self-affirmers, 33self-equivocators, and 20 self-critics).

Issue-Supportive Behaviors

Our study design allowed participants three op-portunities to engage in issue-supportive behaviorsthat represented a range of likely behaviors in avariety of contexts. First, we coded participantswho composted their leftover food and/or dishwareas having composted (consumption-offset opportu-nity). Thirty-five out of 63 participants composted.Because some people left in a rush and because wedid not want to disrupt natural observation, wewere unable to observe or record the compostingbehavior of some participants (16). Additionally,some participants refused the meal (7) and, despiteour instructions, some participants took food withthem as they left (5). Upon probing participants forsuspicion about whether we were measuring theircomposting behavior, we found no one indicatedany suspicion.

Second, participants had the opportunity to offerfeedback in a handwritten survey (interpersonalinfluence opportunity). Twenty participants voicedtheir opinion about various aspects of our study notbeing environmentally friendly enough, includingcomments such as:

The vegan pizza was great and I like that you sup-ported a small business. . . . In-season snacks wouldhave been better than importing (strawberries fromCalifornia, for example). I don’t think any beverageproducts from Coca-Cola or Pepsi should be of-fered—both of these companies have caused mas-sive environmental damage and have been accusedof human rights abuses.

Others noted that some materials (e.g., Post-Itnotes) were not environmentally friendly becausethey were not made from recycled paper or thatthey would have preferred water in reusable drinkcontainers rather than the beverage containers pro-vided. In addition, six participants complained ver-bally to our research assistants/street activistsabout aspects of the study, focusing on issues suchas environmental waste or our unsustainable be-havior. We coded each participant that exhibitedeither a written or verbal complaint about environ-mental issues with our study as having engaged inan interpersonal influence attempt (26) or not (65).All participants filled out a written survey and thushad the opportunity to voice their opinion in thismanner.

Finally, we examined whether participants signedthe pledge to turn their lights off for Earth Hour(collective advocacy opportunity). All of the 14participants who signed the pledge also left theircorrect e-mail addresses. An additional 50 partici-pants approached by the activists did not stop tosign the pledge. We left remaining participants asmissing values on this variable. More specifically,we excluded 5 participants: 4 because they knewone or both of the assistants/activists and 1 becauseshe/he indicated suspicion of the activist. The as-sistants/activists did not approach another 8 par-ticipants because they were busy with other partic-ipants or it was not possible to approach them in anatural manner. Notably, 14 participants were notvisible on the videotape and presumably leftthrough a different building exit.

STUDY 2: RESULTS

To examine how different profiles engaged indifferent levels of issue-supportive action, we as-signed categorical codes to each profile member-ship and ran a one-way ANOVA with post hoccomparisons, predicting the sum of individuals’issue-supportive behaviors from profile member-ship. We found that self-critics engaged in the low-est number of actions (mean � 0.45 actions, s.d. �0.76), followed by self-equivocators (mean � 0.61

4 We also examined a four-cluster solution, reasoningthat we might find a low self-assets and low self-doubtscategory to represent a complete 2 by 2. This was not thecase and is likely indicative of our sample’s dedicationand focus on the issue. That is, as our qualitative studyshowed, individuals routinely interpret self-evaluationsas they face issue support challenges and therefore likelyhave developed some combination of self-assets andself-doubts.


actions, s.d. � 0.70), and finally, self-affirmers(mean � 1.21 actions, s.d. � 0.99). Results of theANOVA indicated significant differences amongthe categories (F � 10.56, df[1], p � .01), and Tukeycomparisons demonstrated that self-affirmers en-gaged in significantly more issue-supportive behav-iors than both self-critics (mean difference � 0.76,s.e. � .23, p � .01) and self-equivocators (meandifference � 0.60, s.e. � .20, p � .01). However,while mean differences suggested that self-equivo-cators had slightly more actions than self-critics,this difference did not reach statistical significance(mean difference � 0.16, s.e. � .24, n.s.). Thismight be due to several statistical issues, includinglow power/sample size and restricted range on thedependent variable (Hays, 1994).

STUDY 2: THEORY DEVELOPMENT

In this section, we explain the findings from ourinductive derivation of the three self-evaluationprofiles using a motivation lens. Study 1 showedthat informants interpret being an issue supporteras posing severe challenges. These challenges haveimportant implications for how social issue sup-porters stay motivated to continue to support anissue.

Self-Affirmers

The results of Study 2 showed that self-affirmersexhibited more extensive issue-supportive behav-ior than those with other profiles. This finding isconsistent with motivational research in self-deter-mination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Sheldon,2002; Sheldon & Elliot, 1999), which explains howpositive self-perceptions such as self-concordancecan foster motivation. This perspective suggeststhat self-affirmers may have more self-concordanceand therefore be more motivated to pursue theirgoal of issue support through more action. Self-affirmers’ might also be interpreted with researchon goal setting, which has shown a relationshipbetween self-efficacy and greater goal achievement(Bandura, 1977; Locke & Latham, 1990). Individu-als who have greater self-assets may in turn havegreater self-efficacy in being able to achieve theirgoal of issue support and therefore are better able toachieve that goal.

One interesting departure from existing theory isthat self-affirmers demonstrated some (albeit low-level) self-doubts, a factor that self-concordanceand self-efficacy models suggest might deplete self-

efficacy and decrease goal-directed action. Whilesomewhat speculative, our findings suggest thatlow-level self-doubts could foster issue-supportivebehavior when found in combination with highself-assets. This may occur because, when in thepresence of self-assets, low-level self-doubts mightfunction as reminders of important goals and stan-dards rather than as burdens. This idea is consis-tent with research on goal setting and self-regula-tion showing that self-monitoring of progress (i.e.,feedback) toward important goals is crucial for goalattainment (Carver & Scheier, 1981, 1982; Locke &Latham, 1990).

Self-Critics

We found that self-critics exhibited less actionthan self-affirmers. For self-critics, we posit thathigh self-doubts are likely functioning not as gentlereminders, but rather as externally imposed bur-dens. Without greater self-assets, these individualscould see their goals and standards as less inter-nally driven (i.e., less self-concordant), and moreexternally imposed (i.e., something they are forcedto do) and thus as decreasing their motivation(Sheldon & Elliot, 1999). While self-doubts signalto people that they are falling short of a valued goal(Carver & Scheier, 1982), self-critics who are with-out the motivational strength provided by self-as-sets may not feel they can meet these demands.That is, in the absence of important perceived self-assets, the reminder of a valued goal could makethese individuals feel guilty, incapable, and hope-less—feelings that could lead to negative self-rumi-nation, distraction, and depletion rather than in-creased goal-directed behavior. Notably, a tenet ofself-affirmation theory (Sherman & Cohen, 2006;Steele, 1988) is that when individuals perceive athreat to their sense of self (such as a self-doubt),which then negatively influences their behavior,they can overcome this threat by affirming the selfby feeling a sense of value in a different domain.But our results differ in two key ways. First, wefound that individuals can generate self-assets inthe same domain in which they perceive a threat(here, environmental issue support) and that thepresence of greater self-assets appears to relate togreater issue-supportive behavior. Second, wedo not posit a sequential order to self-doubts andself-assets. Instead, we found that the simultaneouspresence of self-assets and self-doubts was associ-ated with different levels of action, depending onthe types of self-evaluations. This is important


when thinking about Study 1, because we posit thatself-evaluations are ongoing and thus do not triggerisolated self-doubts that might be more illustrativeof traditional views on self-affirmation theory.

Self-Equivocators

The final profile from our cluster analysis wasself-equivocators, who have both high self-doubtsand high self-assets. This group, while not statisti-cally significantly different from self-critics, had aslightly higher mean level of behaviors. The resultssuggest the presence of strong self-doubts might beenough to psychologically derail these individualsand cause them to significantly decrease action,regardless of the simultaneous presence of strongself-assets. Thus, it could be that the strong doubtsdecrease self-concordance and self-efficacy in sucha way that self-assets no longer have a positiveeffect on action.

STUDY 2: DISCUSSION

Our Study 2 findings, like those of Study 1, showthe presence of a mixed self in environmental issuesupporters in relation to self-assets and self-doubts.Self-affirmers engaged in the most extensive issue-supportive behavior, reflecting their strong psycho-logical foundation based on low self-doubts andhigh self-assets. The idea that individuals can in-terpret such a positive self despite a challengingcontext (i.e., environmental issues) contrasts withthe dominant portrait of social issue supporters asactors who routinely burn out and often fall short oftheir objectives (Gomes, 1992; Maslach & Gomes,2006)—a portrayal most consistent with our self-critic profile. At the same time, even the psycho-logically strongest environmental issue supportershad self-doubts. This may reflect the idea thathighly committed individuals nonetheless retainimportant self-doubts (Brickman, 1987).

Our second study also raises important questionsaround how self-doubts function for environmentalissue supporters. Although high self-doubts mayoverwhelm environmental issue supporters and inthis case were associated with less extensive behav-iors (findings consistent with research in psychol-ogy [Carver & Scheier, 1981, 1982, 1998; Higgins,1987]), low self-doubts might compel behaviorwhen coupled with high self-assets. In addition,self-doubts may foster a type of humility abouteffectiveness as an issue supporter that keeps issuesupporters open to learning and self-change (Ow-

ens, Rowatt, & Wilkens, 2012). This can act as acheck on overconfidence, keeping issue supportersgrounded in the everyday reality of being an issuesupporter. More generally, this suggests the impor-tance of examining not only social issue support-ers’ beliefs and values but also their self-doubts.But somewhat paradoxically, even when issue sup-porters interpret negative self-evaluations—some-thing that may happen quite frequently, giventhe issue support challenges we found in Study1—they may nevertheless act supportively on thisnegative self-evaluation when it is combined with apositive self-evaluation. This perspective is consis-tent with the research of Maitlis (2009), who de-scribed the generativity and forward movement ofindividuals who must deal with clearly negativeself-interpretations.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Using two complementary studies, we developeda theory of situated self-work and then examinedhow two core constructs in this theory—self-assetsand self-doubts—related to real issue-supportivebehaviors. Collectively, these two studies present aview that is an alternative to that of organizationalscholars who emphasize an outward-looking selfconcerned with image and reputational risk devel-oped from contextual sensemaking inside organiza-tions, as well as an alternative to psychologicalperspectives that emphasize theories that down-play context. Instead, our two studies extend priorwork by embedding self processes in multiple con-texts, such as work and home, with a focus on twocore ways that issue supporters evaluate them-selves: through self-assets and self-doubts. Theseconstructs not only play an important role in theprocess of self-interpretation but also predict realissue-supportive behaviors.

The two studies we examined, while comple-mentary, nevertheless answer two different parts ofthe larger puzzle of how self-evaluations informsocial issue support. Our qualitative study not onlyinduced three core constructs pivotal to this puz-zle—issue support challenges, self-assets, and self-doubts—but also developed a theory of situatedself-work that has tied these constructs together.More specifically, this study addresses how indi-viduals’ self-evaluations are generated from the in-terpretation of issue support challenges in multiplecontexts inside and outside work settings. In doingso, we developed theory about an active, mixed selfthat interprets self-assets and self-doubts. In our


quantitative study, we examined, at a specific pointin time, self-assets and self-doubts and their rela-tionship to real behaviors, finding that the self-affirmer profile exhibited the highest level of issue-supportive behaviors.

Limitations and Future Directions

Our mixed methods design has several strengths.We used both qualitative and quantitative studieswith different field-based samples. Furthermore,our observational study used real issue behaviorsand presented evidence of validated measures ofour inductive constructs. Yet, as with any research,our study has important limitations and raises newquestions that scholars should investigate in sub-sequent research.

First, our studies raise the question of how mixedself-evaluations influence social issue support. Ex-isting research suggests that individuals can re-spond to a mixed self in two primary ways. Onecamp argues that individuals have a strong motiva-tion to resolve such ambivalence (e.g., Brickman,1987; Pratt, 2000) and go to great lengths to do so,using a variety of techniques (Pratt & Doucet, 2000).This might suggest that a mixed self is a relativelyfleeting state for social issue supporters. A secondperspective suggests that individuals need not re-solve a mixed self and instead use seemingly con-tradictory beliefs as a foundation for wisdom(Weick, 1998, 2004), such as by asserting beliefsand doubts (e.g., Locke, Golden-Biddle, & Feldman,2008). According to this perspective, the contradic-tory forces allow individuals to be more flexibleand open to a broad range of acting (Pratt & Pradies,2012), something especially important for socialissue supporters, who often integrate a concernwith an issue with membership in an organizationthat does not endorse those same concerns (Meyer-son & Scully, 1995). While future research is clearlyneeded, one manifestation of the wisdom of amixed self comes from how low self-doubts createurgency. When the self acknowledges performanceshortcomings, greater performance may result, be-cause the acknowledgment functions as usefulfeedback, and thus individuals might adjust goalsor efforts (Locke & Latham, 1991). At the same time,self-assets provide a sense of capability to reach agoal. This sense of self-efficacy has also been dem-onstrated as critical to individuals’ motivation asthey aspire to act in accordance with their valuedgoals (Bandura, 1991; Locke & Latham, 1991). Putsimply, a mixed self may ground wisdom for a

social issue supporter by criticizing itself for notdoing better while also boosting itself to ensure thatit keeps trying to do better.

Second, we examined social issue support vis-à-vis the natural environment. It is not clear that ourfindings will generalize to other social issues. Butmany properties of environmental issues are com-mon to social issues more generally, includingcomplexity, contested nature, and seemingly un-limited opportunities to act inside and outside for-mal organizational settings. Even so, the self-eval-uations induced by issue support challenges mayvary for different kinds of social issues.

Third, additional empirical work can help disen-tangle the relationship between a mixed self andissue-supportive behaviors. For example, how doself-evaluations change over time and relate to on-going issue-supportive behaviors? Our profiles rep-resent self-evaluations at a single point in time, butlongitudinal research could unpack the extent towhich self-evaluations change over time. For exam-ple, do individuals end up with more self-doubtsover time as they burn out from trying to support anissue, or do they accrue more self-assets as theycapture small wins acting on an issue over time? Ordo the different profiles of self-evaluations repre-sent different stages in which individuals workthrough an ambivalent self (Pratt & Pradies, 2012)?

Implications for Practice

Our findings help explain why it is difficult tobe a social issue supporter but also present guid-ance for strengthening social issue supporters.Those who work on the issue of interest here inmultiple contexts constantly interpret significantissue challenges. Unlike with more traditional stra-tegic issues, there is often no refuge for social issuesupporters when they leave the office. As a result,they engage in self-evaluations that generate self-doubts that question the self in multiple contexts.It is thus not surprising that a key concern forthem is a high level of burnout and depression(Maslach, 1982), a likely outcome when an ex-ceedingly strong commitment to an issue is com-bined with very high standards for action (Gomes& Maslach, 1991). Our findings suggest that bol-stering self-assets may not be a sufficient remedy.Instead, social issue supporters may also need todevise ways to mitigate their self-doubts.

On a more positive note, our findings also revealhow, through the ways in which they evaluatethemselves, social issue supporters can create con-


ditions that foster behaviors important for action onan issue. For example, our findings suggest thatindividuals can develop self-assets outside theirwork context, something that may be particularlyimportant for social issue supporters who findthemselves in contexts where they often lack accessto tangible resources (such as financial resources)or in less politically legitimate parts of an organi-zation (such as a corporate social responsibilitydepartment) (Meyerson, 2001).

Conclusion

Supporting social issues often requires persever-ance from individuals who want to make a differ-ence. Our research explains how mixed self-evalu-ations of these individuals spring from theirinterpretation of issue support challenges. While“it’s not easy being green” or, for that matter, beinga social issue supporter of any shade or stripe, ourstudy takes an important step toward understand-ing of the role of this mixed self-evaluation in help-ing (or hindering) individuals’ actions that play avaluable role in advancing a social issue in workorganizations and beyond.

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APPENDIX A

Interview Questions

1. Describe what the issue of climate change means toyou?a. Follow-up: What does this description tell us

about you?2. If you are trying to describe the issue of climate

change to your current boss (if no current boss, mostrecent boss), how would you describe it?

3. When and how did you first hear about this issue?4. I have a simple timeline where I am trying to map

your understanding over time? How has your under-standing of the issue changed over time? Whatcaused these changes?

5. Since you first heard about the climate change issuewhat, if any, actions have you taken?

6. What challenges, if any, have you encountered withrespect to this issue? How have you responded tothese challenges?


7. In what ways is the climate change issue positive?8. When you think about the climate change issue,

what feelings do you associate with this issue? Why?9. On a scale of 1–5, how central is the climate change

issue to you as a person? Please explain why yougave this rating.

10. In what ways does your work organization (if notcurrent, previous work organization) affect how youthink and feel about this issue?

11. In what ways has your participation in the EBP pro-gram affected how you think and feel about this issue?

12. If I were asking you to fill in the blank I am “_ _ _”five times, how would you answer I am_ _ (repeatfive times)

13. How does your family think about the issue of cli-mate change? What, if any influence, does your fam-ily have on your own understanding of this issue?

14. What country/ies are you a citizen of?15. How long have you worked full-time?16. What was your most recent job title?17. What place do you currently work? What was the last

place you worked?18. Were any part of your job responsibilities related to

the climate change issue?19. What year were you born?

APPENDIX B

Construct Validity

To demonstrate construct validity for self-assets andself-doubts, we collected data from a sample of 58 un-dergraduate students from a North American university’sresearch pool. We asked potential participants to ratehow strongly they agreed/disagreed with items from anenvironmental identity scale (� � .87) and only recruitedthose who scored at or above the mean consistent withour theoretical population. These participants came tothe computer lab about one week later and responded tomeasures based on Study 1 (self-doubts and self-assets)as well as validated measures of self-categorization (� �.79), resilience (� � .84), self-efficacy for social change(� � .92), hope (� � .88), and optimism (� � .83) (Ban-dura, 1997; Bergami & Bagozzi, 2000; Scheier & Carver,1985; Snyder, Sympson, Ybasco, Borders, Babyak, & Hig-gins, 1996; Wagnild & Young, 1993). In addition, weassessed participants’ interest in working for environ-mentally responsible organizations using a six-item scale(� � .78). Finally, we asked participants to rate howlikely they were to engage in five environmental issue-supportive behaviors (� � .82).

To examine the underlying factor structure of our self-assets and self-doubts scales, we placed all original 12items into an exploratory factor analysis (principal com-ponents) model with direct oblimin rotation. Three com-ponents emerged: self-doubts, self-assets related to val-ues and knowledge, and self-assets related to experience.All loadings were above .60. While they were unique

components with acceptable cross-loadings (� .4), theinteritem correlation matrix indicated a number of highlycorrelated items among the affirmation items. This, to-gether with our qualitative findings, guided us to con-struct a final nine-item self-assets scale (sample � � .88)and a three-item self-doubts scale (sample � � .81) formeasuring these constructs in our quantitative work (seeAppendix C for final items and the text for the results ofthe confirmatory factor analysis).

To demonstrate convergent and predictive validity forour self-assets and self-doubts constructs, we ran corre-lational analyses. As expected, we found that self-assetscorrelated positively with cognitive resources, includingoptimism (r � .34, p � .01), hope (r � .42, p � .01),resilience (r � .49, p � .01), and self-efficacy for socialchange (r � .44, p � .01). Self-doubts correlated nega-tively, as expected, with the measure of self-categoriza-tion (r � –.38, p � .01), in which participants were askedto place themselves on a visual diagram of a series of twogradually overlapping circles representing their currentand ideal environmental selves (Bergami & Bagozzi,2000). Self-doubts also correlated positively with a two-item measure of “state guilt” (r � .31, p � .01; � � .90[Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988]). Next, we ran a seriesof hierarchical regressions to examine predictive valid-ity. As expected, participants’ self-assets positively pre-dicted their self-ratings of interest in working for envi-ronmentally responsible organizations (� � .61, p � .001)and their likelihood of engagement in environmental is-sue–supportive behaviors (� � .53, p � .001). Partici-pants’ self-doubts negatively predicted likelihood of en-gagement in environmental issue–supportive behaviors(� � �.35, p � .01).

APPENDIX C

Survey Itemsa

Self-DoubtsI don’t do enough to be called a good environmentalist.I do not deserve to be called a good environmentalist.A good environmentalist would be doing a lot more than

I am for the environment.Self-AssetsI am knowledgeable about environmental issues.I stay up to date on environmental issues.I know a lot about environmental issues.

aAll items were measured on a scale ranging from 1,“strongly disagree,” to 7, “strongly agree.” We used thepopular term “environmentalist” instead of the academic“environmental issue supporter” because our interviewsindicated that “environmentalist” was a common way ofreferring to this group of individuals. Please note that thesurvey also included demographic items, and we alsoconducted a paper “filler” survey; these items are avail-able from the authors upon request.


I am an experienced advocate for positive environmentalchange.

I am well practiced at making positive environmentalchange.

I am experienced at influencing the environmental opin-ions of others.

I care deeply about environmental issues.I strongly value the protection of our environment.I am someone who cares about the environment.

Scott Sonenshein ([email protected]) is Jones School Dis-tinguished Associate Professor at the Jesse H. Jones Grad-uate School of Business at Rice University. He receivedhis Ph.D. in management and organizations from theRoss School of Business at the University of Michigan.His research, which utilizes a range of methods in fieldsettings, focuses on organizational change, social change,and business ethics.

Katherine A. DeCelles ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at

the Rotman School of Management, University of To-ronto. She received her Ph.D. from the University ofMaryland and completed a postdoctoral fellowship atthe University of Michigan. Her research interests arein ethics/social issues and organizational change, andshe can be found exploring research questions in fieldcontexts such as state prisons, Occupy Wall Streetdemonstrations, and with environmental changeagents’ settings.

Jane E. Dutton ([email protected]) is the Robert L.Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Business Ad-ministration and Psychology at the University of Michi-gan. She is one of the founders of the Center for PositiveOrganizational Scholarship at the Ross School of Busi-ness. Her current research focuses on how high-qualityconnections, positive meaning, and emotions contrib-ute to individual and organizational flourishing. Herresearch has explored compassion and organizations,resilience and organizations, as well as energy andorganizations.


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