NGO Organizing for Environmental Sustainability in Brazil: Meaningful Work,Commonality,and Contradiction

Case Study

In our case study, we utilized the processes of communicative labor to extend tensional approaches about NGO action and institutionalization in Brazil and offer pragmatic or utilitarian value (Yin, 2003). In drawing out our case, we discuss our participants, procedures, and context.

We conducted in depth, face-to-face interviews with the entire managing board of the organization as well as other members including one paid staff member, totaling 14 people. There were nine men (64%), and five women (36%) ranging in age from the late 20s through 50s. All participants were Brazilians and had a history of dedication to environmental causes. They came to their volunteer work through different backgrounds, characterizing themselves as journalists, lawyers, biologists, geologists, social scientists, administrators, and secretaries. We do not identify their quotes by gender or by organizational role and expertise. We do not do so for two reasons: (a) because of the ease with which individuals could be identified and (b) because members engaged in consistent communicative labor to depict their environmental work and interactions as strategically designed to uphold collaboration and portray a united front on behalf of environmental sustainability . This consistency (in perceived practices aligned with communicative labor and environmental sustainability work tensions) enabled the authors to report theoretical saturation.

Our interviews ranged from 1 to 2 hours each and centered on focal questions about interactions, communication, and day-to-day practices, such as “how do you do your work here at MAE?” We used a flexible semistructured approach guided by very few primary questions and dependent on probes that emerged from interviewees’ comments, as well as our observations and document analyses (Patton, 2002). Interviews were conducted in Portuguese and English, depending on the MAE member’s preferences. During translations by the first author, both authors examined linguistic choices and context together to determine appropriate English phrasing and meaning. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were verified for accuracy against the original recordings.

In addition to interviews, we also reviewed documents and websites. We engaged in observations, particularly of team decision-making meetings that took place every Tuesday during the data collection period. During these times, we observed interactions during meetings and different workplace encounters that occurred before and after meetings. During these meetings, members often discussed activities and recounted everyday decision making that occurred with all members regardless of position and stated expertise. For instance, we heard accounts of and observed times when interns (students) would make suggestions or provide input that then would be validated by the group as useful. We observed instances when members disagreed about strategies, the value of certain information, and the utility and planning of upcoming environmental events. These observations and document analyses were used to corroborate findings and check for contradictions between what was said and what members did in their communicative labor.

Through inductive thematic analyses, general to more specific categories centering on our areas of interest were developed (Patton, 2002). We worked independently then collectively to discuss and refine the themes or semantic patterns, relying on criteria of recurrence, repetition, and forcefulness (Owen, 1984). These criteria encourage attention to exact and similar linguistic choices, phrasing, and argument structures that are used by participants as well as emphases and other nonverbal aspects of their expressions. Through examination of their semantic patterns and language, we could gauge what in their perceived communicative labor was important to them as individuals and were reportedly structured within their organizational culture.

In our data analyses processes, we utilized our strengths as a bilingual Brazilian scholar who guided the research team but was not a member of the NGO and as an organizational communication researcher independent of the data gathering processes but expert in areas of case interest. Before writing this article, the first author presented findings to the organization not only for their use in strategic planning and reflection about their everyday practices but also as a member check for the validity of our results.

Because context is important in case studies not simply as background but more so as a driving force for communicative labor, we briefly describe the NGO MAE in Brazil that focuses its efforts on sustainability, preservation, and continuity of social, economic, cultural, and environmental assets from various levels of current society. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) categorizes sustainability as progress that meets current needs without compromising future capabilities. However, sustainability does not focus only on resource allocation and opportunities over time but also on egalitarian distribution between current and future generations (Milne, Kearins, & Walton, 2011). Correspondingly, MAE is intensely active in the environmental scene of the Brazilian city of Londrina, in the southern state of Parana, since it was founded in 2001 by volunteers and interns at the Londrina Environmental Public Ministry.

According to its president (biologist Eduardo Panachão), MAE came about as a response to a disaster that had significant environmental impacts in a northern region of the city. At that time, volunteers were investigating large oil spills in rivers in a suburb of Londrina called Ribeirão Lindóia, where warehouses stored fuel. ¹ The initial worries facing the founders centered on the lack of any legal framework for environmental issues in the city at the time. Instead, environmental issues fell under the jurisdiction of the Public Ministry. A lack of whistleblowers and little concern on the part of the local populace spurred some individuals to establish MAE. At that time, the clash between neoliberal ideologies, environmental concerns, and sustainable community development came to the forefront. Using the contradictory spaces opened by these different discourses and stakeholder interests, the MAE sought to provide unified but strategically ambiguous framings of events and of their work (see Eisenberg, 1984; Fairhurst, 2007, 2011; Fairhurst & Sarr, 1996) to achieve their aims of safeguarding the environment and educating the general population, offering leadership and expertise in Brazilian environmental issues. Today, MAE is credited with environmental quality in Londrina through partnerships with Public Ministry of Paraná and different rural and environmental entities of Londrina (Radio CBN Londrina, 2013).

Over time, as Peruzzo (2009) noted, Brazilian NGOs shifted tactics to encourage active involvement of citizenry and promote a more egalitarian Brazilian society. In its twofold environmental and societal mission, MAE and citizens worked on empowerment through discourse, interaction, and partnerships (see Peruzzo, 2009). MAE interacts with diverse stakeholders involved in environmental issues: government, community partners, and private companies. Its history as an organization and its history for confrontation, especially in the legal realm, have made MAE a regional and state-level clearinghouse and advocate for environmental concerns. As such, MAE’s discourse “occupies a political space in developing the collective cultural and societal hegemony” (Peruzzo, p. 665). The communicative labor of invested stakeholders involves the ongoing (re)production of idealized organizing processes that are homogeneous in outward display but punctuated by confrontations of interests. Reported strategic interactions both support the NGO image and provide a space for internal struggles about Brazilian environmental and business sector interests.

Communicative Labor Depicting NGO Work as Meaningful Labor

All participants framed their focus on environmental sustainability as meaningful labor, with many saying that such work was a labor of love. In using the phrase labor of love, they explained that they were saying that they would (and did) work without a “paycheck” and that the common drive in “making money” did not characterize their experience. Indeed, they were volunteers so their phrasing was not only metaphorical but also literal. They also framed their work as invoking “caring.” They did such work because, they said, they believed in its importance. They described their work as a challenge of great importance with which all could identify and celebrate (“they think it is important”; “an achievement for the NGO is an achievement for all of us”). As one member put it,

It is important to know that no one is here for a paycheck; everyone believes in the cause, they think the same, and they want it to work out right. It is not like a company where the boss and the owner want it to work out because they want profits and the rest only do their jobs to guarantee their salary, without caring if they are really doing their best. Here we believe that an achievement for the NGO is an achievement for all of us.

Like Dempsey and Sanders’s (2010; see also Dempsey, 2007) social entrepreneurs and Mitra and Buzzanell’s (2017) sustainability professionals, MAE members framed their involvement with work as benefitting a greater good than that afforded by corporate employment. Moreover, the strong identification with “everyone” who “think[s] the same” and revels in “achievement[s] for all of us” offers powerful incentives for membership and for engaging in interactions that strategically represent this form of idealized community. As another member stated, “We are here because we really believe and not just to get a paycheck at the end of the month,” which they believe others do.

All of the MAE members expressed similar statements affirming strong identification with environmental sustainability causes. They expressed the value of and an availability to serve and exchange ideas and opinions with others for environmental good, a collective pursuit. In this framing of their work as communally constructed, they perceived interaction as strategic in its function to accomplish goals: “Our function as a NGO is primarily to seek interaction between all of the elements involved in the areas we work in, which are environmental issues.” They maintained that “There is no competition here . . . people interact because they want to; because they think it is important. Not because we are forced to.” Interaction grew out of the desire to do good work; interaction required that they “are all open to each other” and follow “our ideals.” This admittedly idealistic depiction required ongoing communicative effort to uphold. It was upheld not only for external stakeholders but also as reference for the meaningfulness of their work and negotiations of everyday interaction.

Because of the collective adherence to environmental challenges and opportunities, MAE’s organizing processes were not derived from a formal structure, but rather from the processes that were constantly (re)constructed through each person’s contributions and the values to which they have agreed (see value or ideologically focused organizing processes, Buzzanell et al., 1997). ² The communicative labor involved in this identification work was omnipresent and shifted members’ perceptions of relationships from work as labor for external gratifications to work as expressed through and in friendship and family imagery. As one member put it,

We end up confusing the professional relationships, as activists, with friendship. The relationships that we develop here inside the NGO end up being so close that they can’t just be limited to the professional arena. It is worth stressing that the NGO is a family. This comes from the trust that we give to each person. In the moment in which you work with it [trust], you can’t then disconnect it.

Such strong identification can promote decision premises that encourage similar sense-making processes and common solutions among members (Tompkins & Cheney, 1985) that shape and are being shaped by locales, identities, and practices (Kuhn, 2006). Yet, paradoxically, it also can promote exclusion of those who might profess lower identification or offer non-normative decision premises, a problematic issue given great diversity in Brazil. In many ways, it seemed possible that their communicative labor regulated and constituted member identities in fairly limited ways (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002), a sacrifice with which members, by logical extension of their comments, seemed to readily accept.

Communicative Labor Producing Commonality and Difference

Members’ reported high levels of identification and communicative labor to perpetuate images that all members selflessly dedicate themselves to environmental causes and participatory practices resulted in a paradox of freedom. The assumed and discursively affirmed commonality among members about work being a labor of love enabled them to also take initiative, which meant considering an individual to be both active and proactive, in concert with and aligned against the collective, conversant with insider language and ready to introduce new ideas. In taking initiative or producing productive difference, the notion of how interaction was accomplished routinely dominated participants’ responses. In speaking about others with MAE as well as himself, this participant suggested the following process whereby members constituted their community through interaction:

I think that the initial interaction is the impulse, that first thing, the catalyst that got them to get up and come get to know the NGO. I think that this is the first interaction. When talking about interaction here inside, it is the contact that they make with the professionals from the diverse areas. They start to understand the language that is spoken here inside and starting from this is the so-called interaction process.

The interaction process with its strategic integration of similarity and difference centered around work projects, as another participant noted:

I assumed certain roles without really having had any previous experience with the people with whom I was working here. So, I had already taken up some responsibilities, and I had already started to participate more actively in the organization to an extent that, even before I had officially gone to the last board meeting, I had already participated in management meetings about the same things.

NGO participants perceived their work to be interaction—making contact with other members, meeting with and learning from people, taking initiative to grow and sustain relationships with experts, and developing capacities to engage in dissent productively (Banks, 2008; Garner, 2013; Kassing, 2011), even if it meant “swearing” at each other:

Here we have many relationships, inside and outside of work . . . The relationships are great; they aren’t just something about work, about the routine. This is a good thing because we talk about NGO issues in various places, in various situations; everything is connected to what we do here. This helps a lot, to have people know each other, to have more contact, to be able to talk about something later, to call someone, even to swear at them and them at me when we need to, this is really good.

Freedom, as part of these reported strategic interactions (see Deetz, 2010), was considered to be a necessary component for MAE members to drive interaction. Freedom meant that different individuals—experienced in their areas of knowledge—perceived boundarylessness in their abilities to take initiative to act and interact in sharing insights and to learn throughout MAE, as well as connection with others and environmental causes to which they shared dedication. We observed that their connections manifested themselves interactionally and structurally through active involvement in meetings, questioning of topics under discussion, and displaying the continuous interest in and movement toward mutually creative decisions (see Deetz, 2010). These interactions were created throughout the conduct of their work, making the pattern more identifiable than specific incidents.

Communicative Labor Transcending Contradictions

Openness, transparency, and harmony resonated in discourse and the interaction practices of MAE members. However, these processes were not without struggle at times, just as harmony does not mean that everyone is happy and gets along well continuously. Instead, these qualities operated as values that underlay everyday interaction and as interaction goals toward which MAE members worked. Although MAE members reported these values and spoke about them in interviews, we observed the “swearing” and grappling with issues that some might perceive as conflict but that MAE members considered necessary for dialogue and collaboration to happen. One professional MAE member perceived that

Management meetings are open; they don’t have an agenda, so there are various topics. We try to focus the specific research groups, but everyone is free. I think that the freedom and initiative that everyone has, they must have [it] in order to maintain this rhythm; because nothing here is required, these are the differences that let interaction happen with everyone.

The communicative labor to produce consistency in strategic interaction, work toward the common good, and collective action meant that discourse, spatio-temporal considerations, structure, and embodied practice had to match. The struggle to maintain interaction as the means of work is evidenced in attention to the seemingly smallest details through the overarching structure of MAE, according to one member:

We avoid changing dates/times, mainly to allow the people who go to the NGO to organize themselves as much as possible, but also to allow other people to also come. . . . There are things that we manage to build internally, from internal interaction, and from external [interaction], with society, with government. These are processes that we see as facilitating this type of relationship.

Another member commented that MAE strives to create a culture and structure that is “friendly and not so formal, . . . . because from the moment you bureaucratize the work environment a lot, at least here, you end up hindering this interaction between the people, the members.”

As one member said, “interaction is what makes things develop.” The work required physical presence, putting oneself out there to interact with different people in spaces that might not always be personally comfortable but that align with the NGO mission:

One of the things that people always stress heavily: Don’t just come [to be] in your group. Don’t participate just in your group’s activities, because in your group everyone speaks the same language. Now, as a biologist communicates with a law intern, as a law intern talks with a volunteer that has never studied anywhere, the message here is: exchange knowledge, get together. I say physical presence is very important. People need to be here with some constancy . . . doing that interaction.

Despite this fairly consistent depiction of discursive-material linkages to the mission and the communicative labor needed to (re)enact and embody messages, members did discuss contradictory opinions about the means, efficiency, and satisfactory fulfillment of goals through communication. As displayed in previous interview excerpts, most participants depicted MAE as intensely participative. They pointed to communication as the process capable of reaching all groups and members; formally observed (by us) through channels such as email and meetings and informally through phone calls, casual encounters, dialogues, and conversations—often conducted in close proximity. They embodied the environmental work that they promoted in their physical, intellectual, emotional, and advocacy labor. MAE members’ varied activities. These included: planting seedlings, engaging in public expositions and debates about the environment, creating briefs about and reporting environmental crimes (whistleblowing), protecting and supporting urban cityscapes and green environmental spaces (such as parks and plazas, and other green areas), and driving the kinds of research and conservation projects that could move Brazil to the forefront of proactive, as well as reactive, environmental work.

On a day-to-day basis, among the other services MAE offers to the public are books, videos, and references about the environment. They conduct information sessions about Londrina and the region, and about area tourist attractions. The MAE offers excursions, walks, hiking, and adventurous activities in the areas under their watch, which function daily between 9 AM and 12 PM. MAE members are also constant participants in local, regional, national, and international conferences. They produce and disseminate journalistic articles, scientific research, and practices that are based on globally accepted concepts. In short, there are many activities in which MAE members engage such that they are stretched in terms of ability to interact in the ways that they want and to do the work that they find so meaningful.

As a result, some participants stated that there were many problems within MAE and these were due to lack of communication. These participants perceived the MAE communication structure to be inefficient and incapable of reaching all organization members—they assessed such processes as compromising productive interaction and stifling the constitution of different kinds of knowledge and expertise. Thus, all MAE participants’ statements did not reveal a seamless utopian view of the NGO’s operations that they labored to communicate but, rather, depicted MAE as a contested site of diverse meaning-making and information-sharing with different stakeholders internally and externally.

Because of these diverse opinions, we questioned whether the formal and informal processes, as well as the organization’s overall official message, could be understood and agreed upon at all organizational levels and by all stakeholders. Clarity, coherence, and transparency internally and externally have long been considered fundamental for organizational success, especially for NGOs, although such characterizations have been challenged (e.g., Scott, 2013). Indeed, a tension-centered approach would indicate that such characterizations are not the most productive because they do not leave openings for contestations that can lead to change. To ensure that knowledge and recognition of strategic processes were shared, MAE members described the need for effective and efficient formal communication channels and “formal spaces.” Formal communication processes could be characterized as inclusionary and proactive but also as reactive, occurring as means of insuring satisfaction of day-to-day informational needs to enable overall organizing processes and organizational accomplishments:

There is always someone who doesn’t know something, and this could end up hindering them because they could get help, or give an idea. I really want the communication here–that information I know could reach everyone–to happen in an efficient manner, but even so I think that everyone here is integrated.

The NGO MAE members showed consensus concerning the necessity (“requirement”) of individual initiative to provide and seek out expertise, with proactive interactions often constituting informal communication practices. As one member asserted,

It is more natural, here the individuals are conscious of this, of the importance for us to interact, in order to acquire more information, change our way of thinking, and growing as both professionals and human beings. It is not a question of work; it is a requirement.

Individuals who took advantage of multiple formal and informal communication channels managed to stay informed about diverse questions, or at the very least, those that were of interest to their area of expertise:

Information is transmitted to all of these groups. And at least if I don’t want it and decide to block this access—the negative part of my actions—this information still reaches me. Of course there are a lot of emails that circulate here and I can read them and discard [irrelevant ones], or an issue can catch my attention and I can integrate it, and react to it. But it is very efficient and enables people’s actions. I can omit it if I desire, but it reaches me, even if I am not interested.

In short, when informal communication was insufficient for work accomplishment internally and externally, for collective knowledge generation, and for structure, then formal channels enabled reactive strategic interaction:

The idea is to always minimize reactive interaction, leaving this only for bureaucratic issues concerning NGO management and coordination. But when you refer to NGO action management, it is always proactive, in that people always have initiative.

The communicative labor involves image creation of seamless value, interaction, and embodied performance integration: “when we get together, independent of whether it is a group from a specific area or not, we develop the next steps together, in alignment with the needs.” Although not satisfactory to all members at all times and for all considerations, MAE’s interactional dynamic constituted structure, process, and relationship to produce deeply embedded practices whereby members reportedly had access to collective, formal, and informal meetings and encounters. This communicative labor to transcend contradiction and communicate constantly was intense and all consuming, as one member recounts:

Conversations are important; they are essential for our work, our actions. We are always connected, . . . communication keeps circulating among everyone, from one to another. It is truly a process. All day long things happen differently . . . you always have to seek out new ways to solve problems, to communicate to others what you want, what you need. People have to understand this, if they don’t, they never solve anything, it is impossible.

The relentless burden of doing good work, making connections, and maintaining relationships is evident in a member’s comment that “If I fail to accomplish my task I will hinder a friend of mine, … [namely] the NGO president or vice-president, or treasurer, or group director,” and in another member’s remark that everything they do in MAE is interconnected: “The people here want to know each other; they want to be friends, because they want the things to go right. They want . . . to make things change.” Without strong identification processes, communicative labor to (re)create love of labor and reported strategic interaction for accomplishing environmental and participatory goals would not be sustainable:

If we didn’t have everyone integrated like this, the organization wouldn’t make it. I think it is a differential, and I think this is why the NGO is still here after [more than] 10 years, because everyone is cooperating and everyone is helping out.