I decided to write this book when I returned to the United Kingdom from Calgary, Alberta, in 2011. I had spent eight years living, researching and teaching in the oil and gas capital of Canada. While there, I witnessed up close the environmental challenges associated with providing our current production system with energy and other natural resources. Concerns about dirty oil, pipeline safety, water scarcity, climate change, carbon pricing, fracking, sustainable resource development, rapid urban growth and the health of First Nations communities dominated Calgary’s public conversation. Through my executive teaching, research interviews and Stampede breakfasts, I saw generous and authentic efforts by inspirational sustainability leaders to address those challenges head on. I also saw the struggles of individuals and companies that simply did not know how to address the green problems to which their industry contributed or how to talk about them.

What I observed in my time in Calgary was, for the most part, not deliberate ‘greenwashing’ – that is, positive green communication by companies without positive environmental performance – but rather something more systemic. Dismissing corporate attempts to engage with environmental issues as greenwashing is too easy. We need better tools to understand a fuller range of symbolic corporate environmentalism and its consequences for society. I am deeply grateful to the Calgary-based managers, executives, consultants, activists, regulators, colleagues and students who gave me access to the inside of Canada’s oilpatch when I was there. Although there are not many direct references to this context, I could not have written this book without the often candid and off-the-record conversations with individuals struggling with how to improve the environmental performance of Calgary companies.

Over the years, I tested the ideas in this book at many different fora, including meetings of the Organizations and the Natural Environment (ONE) Division of the Academy of Management and the Group for Research on Organizations and the Natural Environment (GRONEN). Most recently, I received excellent feedback on the overarching frameworks presented in Chapter 4 at seminars hosted at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), the University of Bath, and the University of Cambridge. Innumerable conversations with generous colleagues in seminars, vineyards and pubs encouraged me to sharpen and refine my ideas about symbolic corporate environmentalism. These colleagues may not realize how carefully I listened to them, but I can recall specific ways in which the book has benefitted from pivotal conversations with Tima Bansal, Stephanie Bertels, Kate Blackmon, Olivier Boiral, Steve Brammer, Magali Delmas, Minna Halme, Aoife Brophy Haney, Volker Hoffman, Kate Kearins, Julian Kölbel, James Meadowcroft, Andrew Millington, Jonathon Pinkse, Natalie Slawinski, Mike Toffel, Connie Van der Byl and Alain Verbeke. I know there were others, too, and I hope that they will forgive my forgetfulness and accept my thanks in the form of an appropriate beverage when I next see them.

I developed several of the chapters in collaboration with various co-authors and research assistants. I am therefore particularly indebted to Jessica Dillabough for contributing to the meta-analysis in Chapter 5, to Devin McDaniels for tracking down the carbon capture and storage (CCS) materials in Chapter 6, and to Bettina Wittneben and Chuks Okereke for initiating and shaping the carbon accounting project in Chapter 7. Lesley DiMarzo provided invaluable administrative support throughout my tenure as Director of the International Resource Industries and Sustainability Centre (IRIS) at the University of Calgary, including organising events that underpin this book and support in collating the references. Martha Prevezer, one of my new colleagues at Queen Mary, provided detailed and thoughtful comments on the entire first draft, significantly improving the manuscript and stimulating ideas for new research directions.

Various parts of the book were financially supported by the Haskayne School of Business and the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy (ISEEE) at the University of Calgary, where I worked from 2003 to 2011; the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, where I was on sabbatical in 2009; and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant Number 603-2007-0010).

It has been a pleasure to embark on the adventure of writing the first book in the Cambridge University Press and GRONEN series on Organizations and the Natural Environment. I extend my kudos to Jorge Rivera and Alberto Aragon-Correa for initiating this enterprise and for their moral support and vital developmental comments. I am looking forward to seeing how the book series evolves and to the rich conversations it no doubt will stimulate. Paula Parish and Claire Poole at Cambridge gently cajoled me through the process and kept me on track. Constance Burt’s expert copyediting significantly clarified the text.

I chose to dedicate this book to my partner, Susan Rudy, who suffered daily updates on what I had written with such grace and never let me get away with sloppy language. For giving me the idea that I could go to university in the first place, I thank my Mam and Dad, for whom this book is further proof that I may never grow up and stop being a student.