The structuration of environmental organizing: identity, power, and knowledge negotiation in an international environmental nongovernmental organization

This study is an exploration of an environmental context that is becoming increasingly prevalent: environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs). The focus of this analysis is Rare, an international ENGO that sponsors conservation and sustainability initiatives in developing nations. Rare employs a unique methodology for promoting environmental awareness and engagement that involves a focus on localized strategies that are respondent to the barriers or needs of particular communities and populations. The organization's primary initiative, known as the Pride Campaign, emphasizes a combination of local knowledge, social marketing, rhetoric, and behavior change strategies to promote community-driven environmental engagement. This analysis draws on structuration theory and structurating activity theory to make sense of how members of the organization negotiate their identity, as well as the social and structural constraints evident in organizational conflict as the organization continues to grow. Activity system contradictions emerge on several levels including the ways in which members are responding to the implementation of a new communication protocol, increasing uncertainty about program curriculum, and tensions between the organization's mission to focus on localization and upward scaling. By focusing on the tensions that exist within and across Rare as an organization, this study extends current theoretical and praxiological approaches to environmental organizing.