Greenpeace’s identity formation: its organisational transformation and the strategic development of its anti-nuclear campaign in the 1980s and 1990s.

Abstract

This empirical study intends to explain a specific facet of the broader picture of Greenpeace’s complex identity formation process over time. The overall research objective is to show how Greenpeace should not be regarded as a singular entity, but rather as an environmental organisation with many different ideological strands. By taking the anti-nuclear campaign in the 1980s and 1990s as a case study, this research aims to investigate different identity perceptions within Greenpeace. It argues that Greenpeace’s diverging strategic approaches and consequent internal debates were constructed based on the impact of its organisational development as well as the influence of external conditions. The organisation’s transformation from a grassroots group pursuing outside actions into a professional protest organisation working from within but also continuing to conduct unconventional actions, influenced anti-nuclear campaign actions and the internal perceptions of Greenpeace’s identity. Likewise, external circumstances, such as the Cold War, had a profound impact on how the organisation was perceived, which led to different understandings of what anti-nuclear campaigning could achieve. This study aims to contribute to existing scholarship by looking at internal dynamics and the internal perception of identity in one of the largest-scale, furthest-reaching, most well-funded ENGOs in the world.