Organizational Sets, Populations and Fields: Evolving Board Interlocks and Environmental NGOs

Abstract

In 2008, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the world’s wealthiest environmental non-governmental organization (ENGO) -- with over $3 billion in assets – hired Mark Tercek, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs to be its president and CEO. While he may not have been the first choice for many ENGOs, the move is consistent with TNC’s pursuit of non-confrontational, pragmatic, market-based solutions to the world’s conservation challenges (Wells, 2012; www.nature.org/about-us). While TNC has historically favored cooperation over confrontation with the traditional foes of environmentalists, in particular corporations, many within the ENGO community are not so inclined. Greenpeace, for example, states explicitly that it ‘does not solicit contributions from government or corporations’ (www.greenpeace.org/usa/about). The League of Conservation Voters takes yet a different approach, branding itself as the political voice of the environmental movement (http://www.lcv.org/about/mission). While organizations within the environmental movement are all challenging long standing institutions in the pursuit of environmental protection, as these examples illustrate, there are differences in what they do, who they interact with and how they understand or present themselves.