The Rockefellers, powerful American industrialists with vast wealth built from the oil industry, are now ditching fossil fuels. According to an announcement from the Rockefeller Brother’s Fund, the organization has pledged to withdraw their investments from fossil fuels and instead invest in clean energy. Corporations and institutions respond to pressure when social norms shift and change, especially when it impacts their public image and the bottom line.

Corporations can be pressured to enact socially responsible behaviors through government policy, nonprofits, civil society groups, social movements, and internal culture and leadership.

• Hayagreeva Rao, Calvin Morrill, and Mayer N. Zald. 2000. “Power plays: how social movements and collective action create new organizational forms” Research in Organizational Behavior 22:237–81.
• Rachel Schurman, William Munro. 2009. “Targeting capital: A cultural economy approach to understanding the efficacy of two antigenetic engineering movements.” American Journal of Sociology. 115:155–202
• Wesley D. Sine and Brandon H. Lee. 2009. “Tilting at Windmills? The Environmental Movement and the Emergence of the U.S. Wind Energy Sector.” Administrative Science Quarterly 54(1):123–55.
• John L. Campbell. 2007. “Why Would Corporations Behave in Socially Responsible Ways? An Institutional Theory of Corporate Social Responsibility.” Academy of Management Review 32(3):946–67.

Yet, this announcement may also represent a corporate public relations and greenwashing campaign that fails to address the underlying causes of climate change. Either way, the direct impact on energy industries may be less important than the symbolic impact of the gesture.

• Bobby Subhabrata  Banerjee. 2008. “Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Critical Sociology 34(1):51–79.
• Eric Krieg. 2008. “The Greenwashing of America.” Contexts 7(2):58–59.
• John Roberts. 2003. “The Manufacture of Corporate Social Responsibility: Constructing Corporate Sensibility.” Organization 10(2):249–65.
• David L  Levy. 1997. “Environmental Management as Political Sustainability.” Organization & Environment 10(2):126–47.
• Frances Bowen. (2014). After Greenwashing: Symbolic corporate environmentalism and society. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.