Abstract
This article focuses on changes in leadership’s discourse about the “triple bottom line” in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream from its founding days through to its acquisition by and integration into Unilever. For this study, we analyzed CEO claims about “who we are” from their letters in annual reports (what we label projected identity). A sample of employees (both long-service and relative newcomers) were interviewed about their perceptions of Ben & Jerry’s over the 30 years covered. Findings reveal that successive CEOs stressed different “logics” about the business and what would make it successful over the years with the founders emphasizing a strong linkage between the economic, product, and social components of the company’s triple bottom line and their next three successors decoupling these components and pushing, each in different ways, for stronger financial returns. As a result, organization members were “whipsawed” between their CEOs’ different logics and identity claims. The CEO letters exhibit a progression over time from a more normative to utilitarian tone familiar in the organizational identity literature. The messaging shifts, however, when a fifth CEO takes charge and reintegrates the firm’s triple bottom line. Thus, the firm’s projected identity evolved in a U pattern starting with an integrated triple bottom line logic, shifting to a more linear logic where the economic mission dominates, and then reintegration where multiple bottom lines are embraced once again. Here, we explore both the strategic (external) and personal (internal) challenges informing the different CEOs’ messages over years, the whipsaw effect on staff, and the longer term evolution of projected identity in the company and reemergence of its integrated triple bottom line. This study contributes to the corporate social responsibility and organization identity literatures by documenting how CEOs (and their company) must struggle with maintaining an integrated triple bottom line in the context of commercial challenges and major changes involved in mergers and acquisitions. It also speaks to the practical matters of keeping normative traditions alive amid competing pressures for change.
Keywords
In 2012, Ben & Jerry’s (B&J’s) ice-cream company became the first subsidiary of a publicly traded company to be named a B Corporation, a new type of corporate entity that is legally entitled to consider both social good as well as shareholder value when making business decisions. One of its cofounders Jerry Greenfield expressed his enthusiasm in this way: “I am thrilled that Ben & Jerry’s has become a B Corp. Kudos to the folks in the company that made it happen.” 1 This was an important marker in B&J’s history as it showed the company staying true to its founding values and “triple bottom line” identity over time—which in B&J’s case was expressed decades ago as a commitment to “linked prosperity” by meeting integrated social, economic, and product goals. An inside look at this case reveals, however, that this embrace of a triple bottom line was neither continuous throughout B&J’s corporate history nor was it all certain that its founder’s values and identity claims would endure. On the contrary, successive company leaders projected different and sometimes competing identities of “who we are” amidst a series of business challenges and organizational changes. And the company was repeatedly whipsawed by their contrasting business logics and identity claims.
In this study, we examine the leaders’ projected identity of corporate social responsibility (CSR) pioneer B&J’s over a 20-year period (1989-2007) to understand how successive leaders interpreted and expressed the firm’s triple bottom line mission. Events over this time period posed key challenges to company CEOs: the founders had to establish the legitimacy of their novel concept of linked prosperity, their successor to institute more “business-like” practices, the next CEO to improve financial performance and oversee the contested sale of B&J’s to Unilever (in 2000), the next to integrate B&J’s into the parent company, and the final one studied to repair damage done by the integration and operate the company on a global scale.
There are several studies that trace shifts in organizational identity to changes in strategy (Gioia & Thomas, 1996) and ownership (Corley & Gioia, 2004). Leaders of such changes often attempt to redefine their organization’s identity to better fit a new context or at least reinterpret its elements and their meaning (cf. Gioia, Patvardhan, Hamilton, & Corley, 2013; Gioia, Schultz, & Corley, 2000). Here we will explore some of the motivations behind and methods used by B&J’s CEOs to redefine and/or reinterpret the company’s triple bottom line identity during their tenure and the resulting “whipsaw” impact on the company and workforce. To capture how these successive leaders expressed B&J’s identity, we analyzed their letters in the company’s annual reports over some 20 years and interviewed a sample of B&J’s employees and managers about these messages and their meaning.
Projected Identity
Communication is a central element in the formation of identity (Chreim, 2000; Christensen & Cheney, 1994) and leaders play an important role in shaping and conveying an organization’s identity (Cornelissen, Haslam, & Balmer, 2007; Rodrigues & Child, 2008; Soenen & Moingeon, 2002): “The role of the manager is to create meaning, to create an imagery, to master the symbolic” write Reitter and Ramanantsoa (1985) and thus leaders actively engage in identity management (Elsbach & Kramer, 1996). The projected identity of an organization includes all the “elements an organization uses in more or less controlled ways to present itself to specific audiences” (Soenen & Moingeon, 2002, p. 17). In this context, discourse about identity encompasses a set of “interrelated texts” that, along with related practices of text production, dissemination, and consumption, bring an object or idea into being (Fairclough, 1992). Of course discourse may be expressed through multiple forms that range from written documents to images and symbols to conversations or speeches (Grant & Marshak, 2011).
Our use of the term projected identity, rather than projected image, is based on the notion that when company leaders publicly communicate about “who we are,” they not only speak to external audiences but also to and on behalf of employees whom they must lead (cf. Hatch & Schultz, 2000). The term projected identity seems more apt here than “projected image” as we focus on top management’s identity claims as they are expressed in formal communications aimed toward both external stakeholders and employees. On this point, Hatch and Schultz (2000) contend that the CEO’s voice serves as a mediating mechanism between culture (internal to the firm) and image (external to the firm) and thus a vehicle for projecting an organization’s identity.
On a theoretical note, this construct of projected identity is somewhat different from projected image which represents the view that insiders want outsiders to have of their firm (Gioia & Thomas, 1996) or construed image that represents how insiders believe outsiders view the firm (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991). In some respects, “projected” identity is akin to what others term corporate identity but reflects subtle differences. Corporate identity has historically been defined as the controlled expression of an organization’s identity through, say, visual design and logos (Van Riel & Balmer, 1997) and concerns activities and symbols that give a company its “specificity, stability and coherence” (Rodrigues & Child, 2008). Projected identity renders more explicit the question of authorship of an organization’s identity and assumes that “there is a human being behind each organizational message” (McMillan, 1987, p. 42). And, as Chreim (2000, p. 11) points out, “…claiming that an organization plays a major role in the construction of its identity through its discourse impels us to look for the author(s) of organizational identity presentation messages.”
Some argue that leaders “impose their own monological and unitary perceptions of truth” on organizational members to create “the active consent of dominated groups” (A. D. Brown, Humphreys, & Gurney, 2005, p. 315, citing Clegg, 1989). For this reason, leadership discourse sometimes finds top managers projecting a false and self-serving organizational identity (Balmer & Greyser, 2002; Kanter & Mirvis, 1989). At the same time, leaders must strive to foster legitimacy for themselves and their change initiatives through the construction of credible narratives (Grant & Marshak, 2011). And because the CEO is the “face” of and spokesperson for a company, his or her words are not treated lightly as they contribute to a firm being granted (or not) legitimacy by stakeholders (Ferns, Emelianova, & Sethi, 2008).
Normative/Utilitarian Organizational Identity
Focusing on corporate leaders’ formal discourse reveals data not only on organizational persona (“what kind of organization we are”) but also on functional attributes of identity (“how we do our business”) that drive action and lead to success (cf. McMillan, 1987). In his classical “sociological approach to the theory of organizations,” Talcott Parsons (1956) differentiated between “normative” and “utilitarian” systems. Normative systems operate through traditions and symbols, an internalized ideology, and altruistic motivations whereas utilitarian systems operate on economic rationality, financial incentive, and self-interest (Parsons, 1960). In their initial formulation of organization identity theory, Albert and Whetten (1985) used these distinctions but noted, as well, that organizations can have “hybrid” identities, including both normative and utilitarian elements.
Where do you locate B&J’s in these regard? On May 5, 1978, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened their first B&J’s ice-cream scoop shop in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont. Cofounder Ben Cohen recalls that in 1981, there were thoughts of selling the business. He remembers telling a neighboring business leader why: “You know what a business does, it’s harmful to the environment, it’s harmful to its employees.” His neighbor replied, “Ben, if there is something you don’t like about business, why don’t you just do it different?” That, Ben recalls, “hadn’t really occurred to me before.” Thereafter, Ben and Jerry decided to make their business a “vehicle for social change” (Cohen & Greenfield, 1998, p. 24).
We define a CSR pioneer as a firm that embraces a social mission ahead of its competitors and most business firms in general. In B&J’s founding years, only a few companies, such as tea-maker Celestial Seasonings, outerwear-retailer Patagonia, and newly formed cosmetics company the Body Shop in the United Kingdom had embraced the idea of building CSR into their products and business model. To our knowledge, B&J’s in 1988 was one of the first for-profit firms to formally adopt a social mission and integrate into a triple bottom line framework.
The point to stress here is that B&J’s socially responsible organizational identity was much more than window dressing on a conventional business. Rather it reflected the company’s normative embrace of CSR and inculcation of a “socially responsible organizational identity” (Bayle-Cordier, 2010). Ben Cohen expressed its original underpinnings in this way: “The business of business is to give back to the community.” Thus, the company became a CSR pioneer for authentic reasons, not simply for marketing or public relations purposes. Authenticity has been defined as the alignment of one’s actions and behaviors with internalized values and beliefs (Harvey, Martinko, & Gardner, 2006). On this count, considerable effort was made in B&J’s founding decade to socialize employees into the firm’s nascent CSR identity and to inform its customers, shareholders, and other stakeholders of its socially responsible intentions, actions, and results (cf. Mirvis, 1991). Interestingly, analysis of surveys in the company in 1991 found that identification with the firm’s three-part mission was a much stronger predictor of employee’s organizational involvement than, say, job content and even job satisfaction as is usually the case (Mirvis, Sales, & Ross, 1991). The firm’s social mission also gained countless loyal “brand fans” and in 1988 Ben and Jerry were named U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year by President Reagan in a White House Rose Garden ceremony.
There were, of course, utilitarian elements in B&J’s organizational identity from the beginning. Ben expressed this clearly in his 1989 Chairperson’s letter: “It is our objective to run B&J’s for long-term financial and social gain . . . where our company’s success is measured by both our financial and our social performance.” This integrated triple bottom line differentiated the company from mainstream business and stirred the passion of employees, customers, and even the public at large. Of course, these were the formative years of the company when, as Albert and Whetten (1985) note, a normative identity is more prominent and an organization is at what Sarason (1989) terms its utopian stage infused with idealized aspirations and dreams. What happens to this normative identity when, over the organizational life-cycle, the founders depart, the enterprise grows, and the firm is acquired?
Questions Raised About Identity, Leadership Discourse, and Change
This longitudinal study of B&J’s opens up a number of theoretical and practical questions about organizational identity, leadership discourse, and change. First, one set of questions here pertain to successive leaders’ motivations for projecting a different identity of B&J’s. In many instances, of course, new CEOs seek to put their own imprint on an organization and some characterize their organization in ways that are more consistent with their self-picture—an oft-cited expression of narcissism (Kets de Vries & Miller, 1985; Maccoby, 2003). However, as a firm matures or encounters problems, internal political maneuvering (Mintzberg, 1984), shifts in strategic demands (Greiner, 1972), and changes in the larger commercial or social context (Gray & Ariss, 1985) may occasion a leadership transition and organizational change. Here, new CEO identity projections may pertain to commercial, organizational, or cultural attributes—claiming, for instance, that “we” are a competitive organization, or an adaptable company, or even a compassionate firm—which can be self-referential but also have an evident appeal to the self-image of employees and other stakeholders ( Anholt, 2006; Cameron, 2012; Gardner, 1995).
What are the mechanisms used to advance new business logics and identity claims? Typically, the recommended work of leader-as-communicator is to “unfreeze” the situation by stimulating people to disidentify with the “old ways” and extant understandings of “who we are” and “how we do business” that might impede change (cf. Schein, 1964, 1985; Tichy & Devanna, 1986). But leading people to reidentify with “new ways” and internalize a different or modified organizational persona is tricky (Curry, 2002). Traditional tools such as statements of a new vision and values or the introduction of new rituals and symbols that connote a new identity can be effective in some instances but also engender resistance and yield only compliance rather than identification and internalization (Kelman, 1974).
An alternative approach for leaders is to present a new logic that speaks pragmatically to changes needed for the sake of a firm’s success—or even its survival (McCarthy, 2003). Prahalad and Bettis (1986) describe an organization’s “dominant logic” as a cognitive schema or map used by managers to understand and interpret their environment and to establish what makes their organization successful. There are many examples of firms that have shifted their dominant logic to become, say, more quality oriented (Gummesson, 2008), or customer centric (Lusch, Vargo, & O’Brien, 2007), or technologically advanced (Gawer & Phillips, 2013). In time, a new institutional logic cannot only change the way an organization operates but also provoke and reinforce new identity claims (Glynn & Abzug, 2002). Our study seeks to answer if this recipe applies, as well, to modifying a “socially responsible organizational identity.”
Second, the B&J’s case enables exploration of the continuity of organizational identity over time. Leaders’ projected identity claims do not exist in a vacuum. Problems or crisis can challenge prevailing beliefs and mind-sets and the dominant logic in an organization. Leadership succession, in turn, provides an opening for introducing a new logic—one that can, as new leaders often promise, ameliorate problems and move a company successfully through stormy times. What does this do to organizational identity? An organization and its employees can be “whipsawed” in different directions.
Whipsaw is defined by Merriam-Webster as a transitive verb in its first definition as “to saw with a whipsaw” and in a second definition as “to beset or victimize in two opposite ways at once, by a two-phase operation, or by the collusive action of two opponents (wage earners were whipsawed by inflation and high taxes).” Using the second meaning of whipsaw, we argue that as successive leaders took command and introduced a new logic to respond to strategic and commercial demands, B&J’s was whipsawed in oppositional directions as each of the company’s social, product, and economic missions were shifted to the foreground and background by successive CEOs. We seek to understand how this whipsaw affects organizational identity and more particularly, socially responsible organizational identity.
Finally, the B&J’s case introduces an exception to Albert and Whetten’s (1985) claim that normative organizations will over the years become more utilitarian (“over time a church will begin to look more like a business,” p. 278). To assess B&J’s shifts in terms of normative or utilitarian orientations, we focus on leaders’ claims about the company’s triple bottom line, a concept which many hold synonymous with corporate social responsibility (Norman & MacDonald, 2004). Here we consider: Does the arc of a firm’s projected identity progress from normative-to-utilitarian as Albert and Whetten (1985) contend or is its progression shaped more so by internal and external tensions (Bick, Jacobson, & Abratt, 2003) and thus more dialectical?
A Brief History of Key Events at Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream
There are several volumes on the history and practices of B&J’s, including an “inside scoop” by the company’s first general manager (Lager, 1994), a description of its socially responsible principles and practices by the founders (Cohen & Greenfield, 1998), and a journalistic account that brings the company story up to date (Edmondson, 2014). We have mentioned a bit about the founding years of the company. To highlight features of its history germane to organizational identity, leadership discourse, and change, we take up the story in 1984, when B&J’s set a precedent by establishing the first ever Vermont-only public stock offering to raise money for a new manufacturing facility. In 1985, the company went public on NASDAQ to gather sufficient capital to build new plants and expand distribution. In 1985, the Ben & Jerry Foundation was created (it received at the time 7.5% of annual pretax profits), and a 5-to-1 salary ratio was instituted (the highest paid person in the firm cannot make more than 5 times the lowest paid worker).
While the two founders expressed an uplifting philosophy for running the business, there was within the company a divide over the ice cream maker’s social versus commercial emphasis. Accordingly, the Board drafted a “three-part” statement of the firm’s economic, social, and quality missions (see Appendix A)—all connected and considered equally under the rubric of “linked prosperity.” This was debated by Board members and managers and then adopted as the company’s mission in 1988.
In 1993, after 10 years of double digit growth, the company slowed with only +6% growth ($140 million in sales) and its stock price plunged as investors questioned if the success story had come to an end. In 1994, B&J’s founders acknowledged they needed to hire professional management to take the company forward and launched a public campaign, with the founders, aping a WWII-army recruiting poster, pointing their fingers outward and saying “We want you to be our CEO.” Hundreds of applications were received and in 1995, Robert Holland, an African American and ex-McKinsey consultant was hired as the first professional manager to run B&J’s. However, after less than 2 years with the company, he resigned, “citing the need for a more experienced consumer-products marketer to boost growth” and for an “accelerated succession” because of “marketplace challenges” and “the predictably tough demands associated with succeeding founders” (Pereira, 1996).
In 1997, B&J’s hired Perry D. Odak—a senior manager at U.S. Repeating Arms Company, the maker of Winchester rifles. The new CEO was praised by financial analysts for bringing more of a “corporate” culture to the company and improving sales and profits due to “more effective advertising, new packaging, lower production costs and a host of new products” (Byrt, 1999).
On December 2, 1999, B&J’s announced it had received indications of interest to acquire the company. Initially, the founders did not wish to sell their company and so brought together a group of socially responsible investors to counter bids made by Unilever and Dryers’ Ice-Cream. They were, however, unable to bring enough capital together to successfully outbid their rivals. On April 12, 2000, Unilever Corporation acquired the B&J’s Ice Cream Company in a hostile takeover for $326 million.
Post-acquisition, there was a succession of two CEOs who played very different roles. Yves Couette (2000-2005), a long-time Unilever executive, led B&J’s through the difficult post-acquisition period focused on effecting cost synergies, layoffs, and factory closings. Then Walt Freese (2005-2010), a marketing manager with experience in leading social businesses, sought to resurrect the founding values of the company. The shift in CEOs also marked a shift in the reporting relationship between B&J’s and Unilever. Within 2 years after the acquisition, B&J’s manufacturing began to report to Unilever’s North American Ice-Cream (NAIC) Division, thus giving NAIC’s general manager increasing control over B&J’s ice-cream making, supply chain, distribution, and sales structure. Conflicts between marketing and manufacturing continued into 2008 until Unilever corporate realized the importance of giving B&J’s more decision-making power not only in marketing but also in other key business issues such as sourcing and operations. This led to the decision that B&J’s manufacturing operations would no longer report to NAIC but instead to Unilever’s foods business (Mirvis, 2008).
Method
The research methodology in this study was qualitative, grounded, and case based. Nascent theory research aims to develop “insight about a novel or unusual phenomenon” and often calls for a grounded theory approach as “researchers do not know what issues may emerge from the data and so avoid hypothesizing specific relationships between variables” (A. Edmondson & McManus, 2007, p. 1162). Although scholars have observed the evolution of managerial projected identity in a large bureaucratic organization (Chreim, 2005), our study is the first to track a firm’s socially responsible projected identity in the particular context of an organizational crisis such as M&A. Because we developed this notion of socially responsible projected identity (Bayle-Cordier, 2010) and sought to come to a better understanding of its nature and drivers of change, we needed to allow theoretical insights to emerge from the data through a back and forth between emerging findings and theory.
Sample
B&J’s was chosen as the research site given the long-term relationship of the second author to both B&J’s and Unilever, which allowed us to have exceptional access to the field (Mirvis worked as a consultant to B&J’s Board and leadership from 1986 to 1992 and with Unilever from 1998 to 2004). B&J’s also exemplifies an “extreme case” (Eisenhardt, 1989) of a normative business organization. The company is a pioneer in adopting principles of a multiple bottom line (in 1988) and has been consistently ranked as the most socially responsible business in the United States for more than 20 years. It is also a founding member of three prominent business organizations that promote social responsibility: Business for Social Responsibility, Inc.; the Social Venture Network; and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.
Research Participants and Data Sources
Due to the long-term relationship of the second author to both B&J’s and Unilever, we were able to have privileged access to the field site and research participants, to access annual reports and company documents, and to interview employees and managers at B&J’s Burlington, Vermont headquarters and Waterbury factory.
Many researchers conducting longitudinal studies have relied on annual reports as the single or major source of data (cf. Barr & Huff, 1997; Bettman & Weitz, 1983; D’Aveni & MacMillan, 1990; Salancik & Meindl, 1984) .“Letters to shareholders are particularly good indicators of the major topics that organizational managers attend to,” according to D’Aveni and MacMillan (1990). To analyze top management discourse (projected identity), we undertook a content analysis of CEO and Founders’ letters found in B&J’s annual reports from 1989 to 2007.
Of particular interest to us was how employees received the projected identity messages crafted by top management and to what extent employees perceived CEO messages as legitimate. Our focus on how employees interpreted CEO messages builds on organizational identity scholarship that seeks to go “beyond the dominant textual ‘mode’ of inquiry, to include explorations of the meaning of symbolic and embodied sources of data” (Jacobs, Oliver, & Heracleous, 2013). Interviews were conducted with 51 current B&J’s employees and managers, as well as ex-CEOs and top managers. We collected data from employees from different hierarchical levels, functional areas, and tenure (half of the people interviewed arrived post-acquisition and the other half had been in the company pre-acquisition). To gain a more dynamic perspective, interviews took place at three different points in time between summer 2007 and November 2008 at the B&J’s headquarters in Burlington, Vermont and at the B&J’s factory, in Waterbury, Vermont. Internal company documents and press clippings were also analyzed for further background information on B&J’s, Unilever, and the acquisition.
Data Analysis
Using the grounded theory method of moving between data and interpretation (Miles & Huberman, 1994), the CEO/Founders’ annual letters from 1989 to 2007 were analyzed to identify themes and categorize them (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). Narrative material can be analyzed along several dimensions such as content, structure, styles of speech, and so on (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998). We chose to focus on the content of the narrative material and our main unit of analysis was subject themes.
In the coding of the CEO/Founders’ letters, themes were derived based on terms directly used by the founders and CEOs. Our approach in the analysis of the different themes was inductive as we did not apply a preconceived analytical grid. For instance, in the first period, some first-order themes expressed by the founders were “quality,” “spirituality,” “breaking the rules,” and so on. We regrouped some of these themes under a second-order/umbrella theme which we labelled as “attention to multiple logics.” Overall, the themes of this first period reveal an integrated three-part mission. For the second period, first-order themes were, among others, “consumer franchise,” “sales numbers,” “distribution issues,” “CEO legitimacy,” “family.” Regrouping these first-order themes, expressed by professional managers, we arrived at two umbrella themes for the second period: “CEO legitimacy” and “economic mission.” As analysis progressed, we discovered that most of the themes pertained to elements of the “three-part mission” (product, economic, and social) and that these themes were closely linked to internal or external events (“growth,” “merger,” “layoffs,” “globalization”).
In the third period, the umbrella themes expressed are “social mission” (spiritual orientation, reconnection with founders) and “linked prosperity” (balancing three-part mission, brand/business; power of business to change the world; globalization and Vermont roots). Underlying these themes is a desire to reach a new equilibrium with regards to the three-part mission.
To ensure internal validity and consistency of the themes, the three researchers involved in this research discussed and confronted their viewpoints on the centrality of the themes expressed and their evolution. From our analysis of the different themes emerged three main projected identity periods, reflecting the influence of different top managements and important organization-defining events. We labelled these periods as (a) Entrepreneurial Idealism, (b) Managerial Instrumental, and (c) Leadership Rebirth. Based on a closer analysis of each successive leader/CEO, we uncovered five critical turning points in the evolution of the firm’s triple bottom line orientation that we labelled as: Integrated, Deemphasized, Decoupled, Reemphasized, Reintegrated (see Figure 1 in discussion section).
Ben & Jerry’s “triple bottom line” identity.
To gain an understanding of how employees perceived these different leadership periods and the evolution of B&J’s projected identity, much like for our annual report analysis, we focused on the content of the narrative material and our main unit of analysis was subject themes. Employee interviews were based on open-ended questions about how employees perceived the evolution of B&J’s organizational identity over time and under specific leadership periods. In a second part of the interview, we asked employees more focused and closed-ended questions relating to B&J’s three-part mission (product, social, and economic) and how they thought the Unilever acquisition may have affected each element of the mission.
Findings and Commentary
The coding of the different themes reveals three main periods in terms of leader logics and how leaders communicated about the firm’s triple bottom line mission. During the first period (1989-1993: Entrepreneurial Idealism), the founders promulgated an integrative logic whereby the company’s product, social, and economic mission were interconnected and taken together aimed to produce benefits for employees, farmers, customers, shareholders, and the community, as the founders originally put it.
During the second period (1994-2005: Managerial Instrumental), professional managers took charge, advanced new business logics, and reframed understandings of B&J’s triple bottom line in their annual letters. The social and product mission would successively diminish in importance or be reframed solely in instrumental terms. Bob Holland, for instance, wrote about the importance of better marketing and never addressed himself to the firm’s social mission. Perry Odak, in turn, emphasized improved sales, efficiencies, and financial performance in his communiques. He would comment on the importance of B&J’s social mission in decision making but decoupled it from the firm’s economic mission. Yves Couette, a Unilever executive taking over the parent company’s subsidiary, introduced an aggressive integration agenda where “some changes were radical, others more moderate—all were strategic.” He wrote of the importance of preserving B&J’s social mission in the acquisition but stressed its instrumental value—“it feeds our brands.”
Interestingly, during the third period (2005-2010: Leadership Rebirth), an integrative logic was adopted once again. Walt Freese wrote of company traditions and the normative underpinnings of the social mission—“it’s the motivation of doing what’s right . . .” In turn, several of B&J’s “old hands” were rehired in key product and social mission functions and the founders began promoting the company’s three-part mission once again. Consider the communications of each of these CEOs and the reactions of select B&J’s employees.
Entrepreneurial Idealism: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (1989-1993)
This first period marks the entrepreneurial phase of the company where the founders’ ideals and beliefs shape the firm’s projected identity (Adizes, 1988; Gray & Ariss, 1985; Greiner, 1972; Hoang & Gimeno, 2010). In this instance, the founders express an ideology of using business as a vehicle for social change and adopt a triple mission statement of linked prosperity. During its formative years, B&J’s social mission was experimental, fluid, and a source of continuous innovation. After establishing a company foundation and setting a 5-to-1 salary ratio between the top and lowest paid employee, the founders began sourcing from socially responsible suppliers such as minority-owned Greyston Bakery, adopted fair-trade pricing practices for dairy farmers, launched a series of cause-related ice-cream products, and immersed themselves in political issues, including launching a controversial campaign that would have companies donate 1% of their profits to the peace movement (1% for Peace Campaign).
As chairman, Ben Cohen was the main voice behind the company’s projected identity during this period and he expressed the belief that high-quality products are an essential component of linked prosperity and “critically important to our success and sustainability.” He wrote each year about B&J’s social mission, noting a “spiritual commitment to solving social problems” and how “redefining the social responsibilities of business has been one of the keys to our success.” The projected identity of this period also highlighted struggle (“We keep trying because that is the essence of the human spirit”), innovation (“. . . go the extra mile to create new models of business/social partnerships”), and learning (“we are learning that excellence is not a place but a process”).
Employees generally affirmed this identity of B&J’s in interviews. Said one, “They [Ben and Jerry] wanted to do something more than make a profit . . . They were pioneers for social responsibility.” Said another, “I think Ben and Jerry had a dream and everybody wanted to be part of it.” And a third one noted that “Ben was a crazy man . . . but one thing Ben never screwed with was the quality of the product.” Some employees reported, however, that “there was a lot of money wasted because people did not have a sense of the economics involved” and that the company’s three-part mission did not address the environmental aspects of social responsibility at that time (cf. Mirvis, 1994).
The dominant first-order themes that emerged from the data in this era are “quality mission,” “spirituality,” “linked prosperity,” “struggle and learning,” and “breaking the rules” in developing a new model of business (see Table 1). These can be grouped under second-order themes pertaining to quality mission, social mission, and various business logics that connect to linked prosperity. What should be underscored here is that B&J’s projected an integrated triple bottom line identity in its founding era whereby social, product and economic missions were seen as interconnected elements that feed each other. This was portrayed as a winning formula for both the company and its stakeholders, noted Ben, because “as we have supported communities, communities have supported us” and, quoting iconic prankster Wavy Gravy, “as we help others, we cannot but help ourselves.”
Projected Identity and Employees’ Perceptions (1989-1993).
Second-order themes are in parentheses.
While B&J’s performed extremely well since its creation, 1993 marks for the first time a decrease in the stock market value of the firm because of investor reaction to the firm’s slowing growth. This led the founders to hire professional managers with a stronger business and economic orientation.
Managerial–Instrumental Period: Bob Holland, Perry Odak, Yves Couette (1994-2005)
The “Managerial–Instrumental” phase corresponds to a maturing stage for an organization when more formal structures and processes are introduced and the founder is often replaced by professional managers (Adizes, 1988; Greiner, 1972). Often those in power recast symbolic language and rituals into concrete policies and procedures (Gray & Ariss, 1985). In B&J’s case, new CEOs also reframed the firm’s triple bottom line mission and introduced different identity claims. As Albert and Whetten (1985) predict, they would project an identity that is less normative and more ground in utilitarianism. In this era, references to spirituality, experimentation, and learning give way to instrumental messages—about marketing and being a “consumer franchise,” about profitability and “record setting sales numbers,” and then, after B&J’s acquisition, about focusing “intensively of the economics of this business and its contributions to a collective competitive edge across Unilever’s total business.”
Bob Holland and then Perry Odak, two “outsiders” who replaced the founders at the lead of B&J’s, typified professional managers in their credentials and emphases. Holland introduced himself in the company’s annual report in this way, “I have run businesses on my own and have consulted with many others.” He stressed that he would bring “business management and strategic planning skills” to the company. In comparison, Odak did not address his credentials in his letters. He spoke instead about sales numbers and distribution concerns. Yet many employees had a clear sense of him; as one described it, “He’s a turnaround artist—it’s easy to see this in his bio—this guy flips companies for his own game—he came from an arms company which was a total disconnect for all of us . . . And then we’re all surprised when he sells the company.”
The two CEOs projected different B&J’s identities. Holland, for instance, said “I’d like to talk about the past year at Ben & Jerry’s in the language of family.” He then added that the “resilient strength of the Ben & Jerry’s family, despite all the challenges it has faced and all the tasks not yet done, is the best reason for confidence in our future. I am grateful for this family.” Yet the authenticity of this message was questioned. A reporter following the company wrote, “Employees leave no doubt that the company today is more buttoned-down. Holland, they say, is a more distant, traditional CEO” (Judge, 1996, p. 70).
Odak, in turn, spoke separately about the firm’s social and economic mission—and in his letters emphasized the latter. His discourse was all about strategic matters and financial performance, and he neglected mention of employees and the company product mission. Interestingly, Odak did speak of B&J’s social mission but he interpreted it from an instrumental perspective: “Essential to our reputation both at home and abroad is a renewed commitment to our social mission . . .” Moreover, social mission–related issues that arose, such as the introduction of unbleached pint packaging and the rBGH-free milk (rBGH, recombinant bovine growth hormone), were treated instrumentally—as measures to steer consumer relationships and brand equity. Odak’s position was perceived accordingly by employees; one commented, “He wasn’t driven by the values of the company—he was really focused on the economics and maybe tolerated the social side, but it was nothing that he had a passion for.”
The dominant first-order identity themes expressed by Holland and Odak during their tenure concerned “CEO legitimacy,” “Family,” “Consumer franchise,” “Sales numbers,” and “Distribution concerns”—all of which can be regrouped under themes of “CEO legitimacy” and “economic mission” (see Table 2). During their tenure, the three-part mission of B&J’s was disembedded from its normative foundations and the ideals of “linked prosperity” gave way to marketing logic.
Projected Identity and Employees’ Perceptions (1994-2005).
In this post-acquisition era Yves Couette, the first Unilever CEO to lead acquired B&J’s, continues the “Managerial–Instrumental” emphases and rhetoric, but with important differences. Couette’s job was to integrate the subsidiary into the parent company while preserving its brand identity and gaining the loyalty of B&J’s employees. Keys to success in his mind were espousing respect for B&J’s traditions and harmonizing its three-part mission with the ways that Unilever does business.
The parent company intended to manage B&J’s just like its many other acquired “brands”—as a subsidiary that more or less plugged into its organizational structure and systems. Thus, B&J’s was positioned as a business unit in Unilever’s marketing organization, led by a parent company CEO Couette, and its manufacturing operations were hived off and joined with other ice-cream brands in the Unilever NAIC supply chain business—reporting to another CEO with different P&L responsibility. This, in effect, separated operations from marketing and the home office and “disintegrated” the company.
Dominant first-order themes expressed by Couette during this period are “life experience,” “dedicated team,” “social mission,” “economic mission,” “layoffs,” “plant closings” and “Ben & Jerry’s brand.” Once regrouped under umbrella second-order themes, we have again, “CEO legitimacy” and “economic mission” but also renewed attention to the “social mission” (see Table 2). On this count, Couette wrote in 2003, “Our determination to preserve B&J’s uncommon culture and purposeful Social Mission is steadfast.”
Employees’ appraisal of social mission expression post-acquisition was also positive and they unanimously praised Couette for his ability to embrace B&J’s social mission even if this was a learning process for him; as one employee put it, He (Yves) was a great guy, he had a hard job to do—once he was with Ben & Jerry’s for a year, he really got a sense—this is a very different company–and he saw the value of how we worked and what the intentions of the founders were. And I think he was a convert by the end of his tenure here. And little by little, he saw the incredible value in the social mission.
Yet the projection of the mission continued to take a utilitarian turn as Couette praised the firm’s social mission for being the driver of “this extraordinary brand.” Furthermore, the identity he projected was that B&J’s was now a “mature” brand which has “passed from adolescence to maturity” and his job would be to “raise the bar for a new generation of consumers.”
The three-part mission under Yves’s mandate regained some degree of authenticity because the importance of the social mission (to Unilever and the market) was elevated. But the product mission suffered. Following layoffs and plant closures, NAIC instituted cost-cutting in ingredients, challenged long-standing commitments to pay dairy farmers a premium to sustain them through tough times, fought against further use of organic and fair trade ingredients, and pushed constantly to increase margins. Their justification: B&J’s product costs, particularly compared with Good Humor and Breyers, the other brands in the Unilever NAIC portfolio, were simply too high. And they reduced profitability in NAIC’s P&L. Consumer complaints multiplied. But Couette, now the public face of B&J’s, made scant mention of products in his public communications and the only discourse on product quality expressed over this time period was a report that issues were being addressed.
Leadership Rebirth: Walt Freese (2005-2010)
This period marks a renewal of B&J’s normative identity with the reintegration of its triple bottom line mission. Walt Freese, a former CEO of socially responsible business Celestial Seasonings, is hired in to run B&J’s. Freese was not an insider nor was he part of Unilever. His tasks, as he saw them, were to reenlist the founders, reinvigorate the firm’s social mission, and reinvent the company to operate on a global stage. In so doing, he resurrected the authenticity of B&J’s social mission by reengaging Ben and Jerry personally in social campaigns and introducing new “Ben & Jerry’s-like” product concepts such as the Stephen Colbert “AmeriCone dream” and “Hubby Hubby,” supporting gay marriage. “We used the power of our brand to draw national attention to important causes,” Freese reported in his first CEO letter in 2005, “preserving the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, fighting global warming and supporting family farms.”
Freese, titled Chief Euphoria Office (CEO), also hired back several former employees in marketing and social responsibility, formed a new management team called “MOM” (Managers of Mission), and launched myriad progressive green and social initiatives. In so doing, he said, “we must keep examining our own practices, assessing our impacts, and pursuing honest dialogue to find new ways to make Ben & Jerry’s a better company—and the world a better place.” The umbrella themes (see Table 3) expressed during this period are “social mission” (spiritual orientation, reconnection with founders) and “linked prosperity” (balancing three-part mission, brand/business; power of business to change the world; globalization and Vermont roots). Underlying these themes is a desire to reach a new equilibrium with regard to the three-part mission (“to balance economic, product and social goals”).
Projected Identity & Employees’ Perceptions (2005-2010).
Freese, unlike the three previous CEOs before him, did not have to convince employees and other stakeholders of his legitimacy to head B&J’s as his personal values and CSR experience spoke for themselves. “Walt comes out of the same cloth [as Ben], he’s a Buddhist, he’s a good man,” said one B&J’s former leader, adding “I think people genuinely like him—he’s a nice guy—he’s a smart man, [and] he sort of has the right pedigree from a social point of view.” Still, the company has to expand globally and provide “healthier” yogurt-based product options for consumers. A global vision emerged. Freese wrote, “Our ice cream business is thriving in the United States and Europe, and we have a growing presence in Asia. So it’s time we started thinking like a Company with a truly global reach.”
Meanwhile, poor performance in the North American market for Unilever’s ice-cream brands led to the decision to move B&J’s ice-cream making out of NAIC and have it operate as a stand-alone unit in the marketing organization formally linked to B&J’s. As a result, B&J’s not only reintegrated its triple bottom line mission but also its operating organization.
Discussion and Implications
Observing B&J’s projected identity unfold from birth to maturity reveals how statements about “who we are” are shaped both by key challenges experienced over an organization’s life cycle and by how leaders interpret and respond to the internal/external forces at play. In our analyses, founders Ben and Jerry’s projections represent Entrepreneurial Idealism; Bob Holland, Perry Odak, and Yves Couette speak to a more Managerial–Instrumental identity; and Walt Freese reconnects past to present in enacting Leadership Rebirth. Behind each of these identity projections lies a “dominant logic” (Prahalad & Bettis, 1986) about what it takes to be successful.
In the following sections, we first discuss leadership logics and factors that affect these logics over time. Drawing from our grounded empirical research, we focus on multiple versus single business logics, new leader’s legitimacy in cases of succession, how shifts in strategic demands occasion new messages about “who we are” and “how we do business.” Then we examine the whipsaw effects of these new messages on an organization and whether the arc of a firm’s projected identity inevitably progresses from “normative” to “utilitarian” as Albert and Whetten (1985) contend.
Leadership Logics and Organizational Maturation
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield built their business with the idea to make it a vehicle for social change. Their business logic and mind-sets were rooted in growing up in the 1960s in the United States amid social movements in favor of civil rights, women’s rights, environmental protection, and world peace (antiwar demonstrations against U.S. military involvement in Vietnam). Prior to starting B&J’s, Ben, a college dropout, had been a potter, social worker, and social activist. B&J’s founders were pioneer social entrepreneurs in the sense that they, like other pioneers studied by Czarniawska-Joerges and Wolff (1991), saw “a flaw in a social construction of economic reality” and were able “to interpret it as an opportunity to actualize their ideas of what the world should look like” (p. 534).
When creating a business that was to be a vehicle for their beliefs about changing the world, the founders adopted an integrative leadership logic that stressed both “long-term financial and social gain.” At that time, the emergence of “both/and” or multiple logics thinking was a “megatrend” in society (Naisbitt, 1982). Businesses were learning, for example, that they could achieve high quality and productivity. Ben and Jerry, Anita Roddick (Body Shop), Yves Chouinard (Patagonia), and their like were proffering the same idea as regards the triple bottom line. Interestingly, studies on multiple logic thinking associate it with perceptions of generativity and abundance (cf. Gergen, 1982/1994); and, in turn, with organizational creativity, innovation, and transformation (Nonaka & Taceuchi, 1995; Weick & Quinn, 1999).
The “outside” CEOs who succeeded the founders, however, projected a different message embedded in a more linear logic—where, in traditional formulations the primary business of business is to make profit (cf. Friedman, 1970; Karnani, 2010). This more linear logic does not allow for a more hybrid form of organization with multiple and sometimes conflicting objectives (Haigh & Hoffman, 2012). On this count, Czarniawska-Joerges and Wolfe (1991) caricature the manager concerned with economics above all else as the “scrooge without imagination, with ridiculous common sense and care for money and things . . . the enemy of creativity and change . . . the one with the truly economic mind, ridiculous as it might seem to all who care about higher things” (p. 538). Now this portrayal does not fully correspond to the character of Holland or Couette or even the identity projected by Odak. But each of them disembedded B&J’s social mission from its normative origins and projected it as a means-to-the-ends financial performance and brand appeal.
The dynamic nature of projected identity discourse allows leaders to adjust their language and emphases (Grant & Marshak, 2011) as they interpret and react to internal and external change events (Vaara, 2002). Nevertheless, company leaders also speak for and to their employees who have their own sense of organizational identity. When, as in this case, leaders project an identity that seems at odds with history and prevailing understandings of what makes us successful, their credibility and authenticity as company spokespersons may be questioned.
Legitimacy in Leadership Transitions
Replacing the founders in visibly running an organization is never easy and it may be doubly difficult in the case of a socially responsible business. Naturally, this raises questions about the social bonafides and competencies of successors—and the founders’ support of them. No doubt the CEOs who followed B&J’s founders each had different career histories and personal traits that played a role in their identity projections (cf. Hambrick & Mason, 1984; Illies & Reiter-Palmon, 2008; Toor & Ofori, 2009).
Holland, for example, was an outsider on three counts: he was a former McKinsey consultant with no prior connection to B&J’s or socially responsible business; he was an African American heading a company based in predominantly White Vermont; and he never resided in Burlington, instead visiting the company weekly while maintaining his home in multiracial Mt. Vernon, New York. These may have been factors in his projecting an image of B&J’s as “family” in his communiques and to its lack of resonance with employees.
Perry Odak had worked for an arms manufacturer and was known as a firm turnaround specialist. Speaking to an MBA class at Cornell, shortly after taking charge at B&J’s, he remarked, “We put the economic mission ahead when we start something new, and then we bring the social mission alongside as we go.” Soon, he was loggerheads with Ben “trying to identify the incremental costs of the social mission.” In addition, he was seen as handling the takeover bid and sale to Unilever in a self-serving way. Said one observer, “He (Perry) managed it to make the most money for the people who owned stock options, starting with himself” (as cited in B. Edmondson, 2014, pp. 122, 126)
Yves Couette had spent his entire career at Unilever. He found B&J’s social mission personally appealing but also had to effect big changes that would divide the business, reduce headcount, and close factories—all in service to the economic bottom line. Finally, Walt Freese had worked for other social businesses prior to entering B&J’s and had evident appeal to employees. Our aim here is not to psychoanalyze each CEO’s character or parse their career experience but rather to illustrate how these can play a role in shaping a firm’s projected identity. On the practical end, the foregoing stresses the importance of selecting and hiring CEOs who “fit” with a company’s persona (cf. Sessa, Kaiser, Taylor, & Campbell, 1998). With 20/20 hindsight, the founders of B&J’s rued their hires of both Holland and Odak.
At the same time, a different kind of CEO may be needed to handle crises or challenges beyond current leadership’s ken and the dominant business logic in a company. While current management may possess the ability to revise their dominant logic to adapt to a new environment, this is not always possible because of cognitive biases and limitations (March & Simon, 1958). As Prahalad and Bettis (1986, p. 492) explain “it is difficult for a top management group to be effective in managing a new business by learning and using a new dominant logic in a short time.” The search for an outside and different leader is a common corporate practice and what is behind the new CEO-as-savior ethos (Khurana, 2002). And, though they did not position themselves personally as saviors, each of the founders’ successors at B&J’s, proffered new business logics and identity claims based on changes in the firm’s strategic and environmental context.
For instance, Holland’s projections of B&J’s as a “consumer franchise” responded to both strategic demands (growing sales) and shifts in the commercial context (investors pressuring the company for economic returns). Then follows Odak who faced the prospects of consolidation in the ice-cream industry (a new strategic demand) and was motivated to increase the company’s valuation (and thus obtain a price premium in the case of its acquisition). Postacquisition, under Couette’s mandate, strategic demands called for achieving economies of scale and operating efficiencies to “pay back” parent company Unilever and its investors (new owners) and for preservation of the firm’s social mission based on its contribution to “brand appeal” (new context). Now attempting to change a firm’s dominant logic is not in itself a bad thing as a new situation may call for new business logics in order to ensure firm survival. However, our findings suggest that leaders who embrace a linear logic about firm performance are less able to balance and embrace sufficiently the tensions inherent to a socially responsible business, thus leading to competing and even contradictory projected identity messages. This can produce the “whipsaw” effect observed here.
The Whipsaw Effect
Listen to this long-time employee of B&Js: “. . . the worst time was when Ben & Jerry was scrubbing up to sell itself—that was a terrible time because it kept bringing in people into marketing and CEOs that were purely looking at bottom line.” And this one: “It’s become more corporate which is sad. Our quality is suffering because of the acquisition. It’s all driven by profits . . . they just keep trying to push it as far as they can.” And another:"We were bought and they came and said, We’re not going to do anything for two years.” And everybody took them at their word—maybe we were naïve. But you began to see little bits and pieces of it and then at the end of two years, you saw some really dramatic things. I remember we were losing one hundred people at a shot—it was wholesale."
These quotes (and many more) evidence the uncertainty, ambiguity, and, in pockets, dark humor and cynicism about “who we are” and “how we do business” of B&J’s employees during the tenures of CEOs Holland, Odak, and Couette. Employees socialized into the integrated triple bottom line were whipsawed by these three leaders’ inability to embrace and balance tensions among elements of the triple bottom line. These leaders instead seemed to be leading the company in unidirectional profit-oriented ways. This made corporate discourse on CSR different, discontinuous and confusing and had a negative impact on how employees perceived their leaders. It is arguable whether or not these “outside” executives could have reduced the upset and led B&J’s toward a new identity through new visions or values or other repurposing mechanisms. In cases like this, these are not apt to have as much intrinsic appeal as current practices nor are they likely to displace what employees identify with in their organization.
Another way to resolve such tensions in a turbulent environment is to forge and balance a “flexible” identity (cf. Gioia et al., 2000). This would have entailed a “balancing act” between expression of stable elements (each of the three-part mission in B&J’s case) and the emphasis given to each in a changing context. In the broader context of socially responsible firms, managers are left with a great responsibility in framing, interpreting, and giving meaning to a firm’s identity and direction when challenges arise. The social business paradigm recognizes the necessity of balancing both normative and instrumental objectives for the firm (Donaldson & Preston, 1995) and values responsibilities to a firm’s stakeholders as ends-in-themselves and not as means (Waddock, 2004; Yunus, Moingeon, & Lehmann-Ortega, 2010). Legitimacy will ultimately be granted to managers only if the projected identity of their firm corresponds to both internal and external stakeholders’ interpretations of what it means to be socially responsible (Balmer & Greyser, 2002; Bayle-Cordier, 2010).
Evolution of Projected Identity
This study affirms Albert and Whetten’s (1985) claims regarding the normative to utilitarian progression of organizational identity but only up to a point. Although the transition from the founders to professional managers matches an instrumental evolution of the projected identity, it takes a different turn with the arrival of Freese. Rather than continued movement to routinization, the emphasis turns to reinventing B&J’s based on its originating normative ideals and socially oriented practices.
Perhaps, then, the relationship between normative versus utilitarian aspects of an organization’s socially responsible identity is not linear but rather best conceived of as dialectical–with tension between the two conflicting forces continuously in play. The transition from founders to professionals to a parent company subsidiary all tugged B&J’s identity in utilitarian directions but then it seemed to have veered too far toward the utilitarian end and was “rebalanced” by Freese’s leadership. Thus, the projected identity of B&J’s evolved in a U-pattern with the triple bottom line driving the company in its founding and formative years, receding during the Managerial–Instrumental era, and then driving the company again under Freese.
This study highlights some of the mechanisms used by successive CEOs to communicate about the firm’s triple bottom line mission. The founders promulgated these missions and their interconnection in “linked prosperity.” Holland, in turn, de-emphasized the social and product missions and introduced new identity claims—we are “family” and a “consumer franchise.” Odak, in turn, decoupled the missions and featured the economic mission as “first” and above all. Couette reemphasized the social mission but as a means to an end and he could not, given the breakaway of operations and the resulting quality problems speak credibly to the B&J’s product mission. These leaders’ inability to balance and embrace tensions between the three missions of B&J’s caused them to lead the firm in overtly instrumental and unidirectional ways. Freese, however, spoke about and took steps to reintegrate B&J’s three-part mission and return it to its normative foundations (see Figure 1).
To understand Walt Freese’s methods, the work of S. L. Brown and Eisenhardt (1998) is relevant as they provide a detailed look at many of the “balancing acts” required of an organization over time and amidst change. Of particular relevance is their emphasis on “time pacing” and “sequencing.” Freese waited, for example, to gain his footing with Unilever before reenlisting the founders and making his case that operations should be folded back into B&J’s. Then came new product introductions and the launch of high-profile social campaigns. As one old-timer saw it, “In many ways the leadership now is among the strongest to understand the three part mission and to actively work to bring it back into balance.”
Reemergence of the Triple Bottom Line
What accounts for the reemergence of an integrated triple bottom line? Leadership is of course a factor. To an extent, the evolution of B&J’s projected identity mirrors challenges posed over its life cycle. Gray and Ariss (1985), for instance, offer three general stages to firm development: (a) birth and early growth, (b) maturity and institutionalization, and (c) decline or redevelopment. The themes expressed by leader’s letters in annual reports map neatly on to these stages as B&J’s founders provide an animating vision and socially responsible identity to the company; professional managers cum “grown-ups” stress economic performance, order, and meeting marketplace challenges; and then a new leader reengages the founders, brings back excitement and ideals, and redevelops B&J’s socially responsible identity to suit its global scale. Freese was faced with a strategic choice—let the three-part mission continue to decline as an animating force in company practices and identity or redevelop it in the context of Unilever and globalizing the business.
A second factor pertains to timing and developments within the parent company. In certain respects, B&J’s was ahead of its time developing a socially responsible business in the 1970s. Now the time has come and many firms are adapting themselves to this new context. Numerous small social responsibility pioneer firms have been acquired by large multinationals in recent years. Deals include the purchase of the Body Shop by L’Oreal, Tom’s of Maine by Colgate-Palmolive, Stonyfield Farm by Groupe Danone, confectioner Green & Black’s by Cadbury Schweppes, Honest Tea by Coca-Cola, and B&J’s by Unilever, among others. Interestingly, from 2002 to 2006, Unilever underwent a full-scale makeover of its corporate identity, involved hundreds of managers in explorations of how to embed CSR into its mission and business operations, and took a leadership role in its industry-promoting, socially progressive practices (Mirvis, 2011). A central rationale was that employees and consumers nowadays expect social-and-environmental responsibility from companies and want to see evidence of them in both product and corporate brands. This emphasis continues today in, for example, “Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan.” Reflecting on this, one B&Jer said, “Because of the acquisition, we’re getting an opportunity to do [the three part mission] on a much larger scale with a worldwide impact. Having Unilever backing us is such major help. They show strong support with what we’re doing.”
Finally, there are questions as to the persistence of idealism, even in the face of adversity. There is evidence aplenty here that B&J’s went through a “suffering” phase when its core identity was under attack and its economic mission took precedence over its social and product mission. However, birth, suffering, and then the resurrection of a culture and its originating values, albeit in a new context and configuration is a classic (and biblical) formulation of change. Anthropologist and scholar of Greek theater, Turner (1957) regards cultural change as a universal drama that takes the form of an upheaval, then conflict and reordering, and finally reintegration. Often this reintegration involves reinvoking founding values—but updating them to address challenges of current times (Mirvis, Googins, & Kinnicutt, 2010).
On this count, Gagliardi (1986) claims that “organizational cultures usually change in order to remain what they have always been” (p. 126) and “the firm must change in order to preserve its identity” (p. 127). Analyzing the changing identity of Carlsberg, the Danish brewer, Hatch and Schultz (2013) come to a similar conclusion—originating ideals, animating symbols, and foundational identity claims—have a way of working their way back into practice and a firm’s leader’s projected identity.
In sum, we propose that a socially responsible projected identity is constantly evolving and in a state of disequilibrium whereby the social/ environmental identity must be balanced with a firm’s economic identity. This disequilibrium is actually healthy for the maintenance of the firm’s socially responsible orientation as it allows the firm to be more adaptive and prone to learning. Bettis and Prahalad (1995) argue that organizations in equilibrium are actually less able to learn or unlearn and thus less adaptive while “organizational [learning]/unlearning occurs only as organizations move away from equilibrium” (p. 12).
In support of this point, an observer of B&J’s saw a ray of light even in Odak’s constant challenges to the company’s social mission during the “dark period,” noting that it opened up “debate about whether or not the social mission is worthwhile. Most people on the board said that people should live a dignified life, period. Others, including Perry, argued that spending related to the social mission should be at least as disciplined as any other kind of spending.”
That same dynamic is in the company in its rebirth; said a newcomer, “Walt definitely has a challenge to find the balance of an evolving business yet maintaining and celebrating the amazing values of this company.”
Considerations for Practice
Throughout this article, we have highlighted some practical considerations. First, CSR pioneer firms are more than a sum of core business characteristics. Indeed, to manage and lead effectively a social business, managers need to understand that their actions are rooted in a different kind of “social business” paradigm that recognizes the necessity of balancing both normative and instrumental objectives for the firm (Donaldson & Preston, 1995) and values the firms’ stakeholders as ends and not as means (Waddock, 2004).
However, not everybody has experience or training in running a social business and some leaders may not find it inconsistent with how they see themselves. Here, we reiterate the importance of balancing acts (S. L. Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998) required of leaders of socially responsible businesses. Such balancing acts may come more naturally to some but may also be learnt over time through exposure to firms with a socially responsible organizational identity. This was certainly the case with Yves Couette who after his tenure at B&J’s went on to launch sustainable and fair trade teas at Unilever, convinced of the importance of balancing a triple bottom line when running a business. A second factor pertains to timing and developments within the parent company. The literature is replete with examples of managers and employees dealing with ambiguity, confusion, contradictions, hypocrisy, and such during post-merger integration (Chreim & Tafaghod, 2012; Jacobs et al., 2013; Vaara, 2003). Over the longer term, however, keys to success pertain to strategic, organizational, and cultural “fit” between a parent company and its subsidiaries. Here, we have seen post-acquisition executives strive to preserve aspects of the B&J’s culture (Couette) and achieve a better organizational fit (Freese). On the strategic front, it seems as though Unilever had to progress on its own CSR mission to ultimately appreciate the full value of its B&J’s acquisition. This required the parent company to understand and embrace changes in its consumer’s interests and in the wider society.
A final message here is that managers of socially responsible businesses must learn to be comfortable with and adept at managing disequilibrium when they lead their companies through chaotic periods. In our view, the whipsaw effects observed here did not need to be as protracted or disillusioning. Bettis and Prahalad (1995) and many others offer guidelines for leading people through changes in their firm’s dominant logic.
Limitations of the Study
What this study does not answer is whether B&J’s had to necessarily go through such a suffering phase in order to maintain its CSR orientation. Was it useful to have gone through a phase where leaders focused so unilaterally on economic efficiency? Did these leaders contribute to saving B&J’s bottom line and thus to ensuring its survival over the long term? We know from our findings that some B&J’s leaders took their firm in a danger zone at times, losing sight of the importance of the core values upheld by a CSR pioneer such as B&J’s. Our employee data also reveal perceptions that the founders did not always pay sufficient attention to the economic aspect of the three-part mission. This could also imply that the maintenance of a CSR firm’s triple bottom line orientation may necessitate alternating cycles of normative socially oriented ideology with cycles of economics-driven orientation. The question that is raised is whether in the long term, “leadership whipsaw” or the succession of different leaders’ dominant logics taking the firm in radically opposite directions may actually have positive effects for the preservation of a firm’s CSR orientation.
We believe that additional studies on the evolution of CSR business pioneers might help confirm whether alternating logics and mind-sets (no matter how painful and incoherent at times), might actually be beneficial for the maintenance of a firm’s CSR identity over the long term. It would be relevant to conduct other in-depth case studies—as we have done with Ben & Jerry’s—with other CSR pioneer firms such as the Body Shop or Stonyfield Farms, both also acquired by large multinationals in the past few years.
Footnotes
Appendix
Summary of Ben & Jerry’s History
| Year | Major events | |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-acquisition | 1978 | First Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop opens in Burlington, Vermont |
| 1982 | Decision to make Ben & Jerry’s a “business a vehicle for social change” | |
| 1984 | First Vermont-only public stock offering | |
| 1985 | Company goes public on NASDAQ | |
| Ben & Jerry’s Foundation created and it will receive 7.5% of annual pretax profits | ||
| 1993 | After 10 years of double-digit growth, company stalls with only +6% annual growth, resulting in stock price plunge | |
| 1995 | Robert Holland, ex-McKinsey consultant hired as CEO of Ben & Jerry’s | |
| 1997 | Perry Odak hired as CEO of Ben & Jerry’s | |
| 1999 | Ben & Jerry’s ranks number 1 in the Corporate Social Responsibility category of the New Harris Reputation Quotient Poll | |
| Acquisition | 2000 | Unilever Corporation acquires Ben & Jerry’s for $326 million |
| Post-acquisition | 2001 | Yves Couette, long-time Unilever manager named CEO of Ben & Jerry’s under the premise he will report to Unilever Ice-Cream Worldwide |
| 2001 | Unilever Ice-Cream reorganized and B&J’s must now report to North American Ice-Cream | |
| 2002-2004 | Massive layoffs and two Vermont factories are closed | |
| 2005 | Walt Freese, former CEO of Celestial Seasonings becomes CEO of Ben & Jerry’s | |
| 2007 | B&J’s begins to globalize | |
| Vermont headquarters building is renovated | ||
| Fall 2008 | B&J’s no longer reports to North American Ice-Cream Division |
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the extremely insightful comments of the Editor and two anonymous reviewers
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.