Meaning and Morality: How Tools of Business Ethics Shape Worker Subjectivities in B Corp-Certified Organizations

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/hd76s1665

Abstract

A corporate social responsibility framework, the B Corp certification, was established in the United States in 2006. Since its founding, nearly 8,000 companies globally have gone through the process to become B Corp certified. The technology of the certification serves as a tool or performative action that turns the practices of certified companies from acts into ethical facts. Through an ethnographic study and analysis of over 50 workers and executives at B Corpcertified companies in Colorado, I show how these facts shape how employees of these businesses understand their work as meaningful and themselves as moral subjects. The analysis examines how the B Corp movement's tagline, "business for good," is interpreted and enacted by workers to understand how employees reconcile the cultural formation of the B Corp movement with their personal feelings, desires, and anxieties about their work and life.

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