Bettina Wittneben

Climate Change and the Emergence of New Organizational Landscapes

There is general agreement across the world that human-made climate change is a serious global problem, although there are still some sceptics who challenge this view. Research in organization studies on the topic is relatively new. Much of this research, however, is instrumental and managerialist in its focus on ‘win-win’ opportunities for business or its treatment of climate change as just another corporate social responsibility (CSR) exercise. In this paper, we suggest that climate change is not just an environmental problem requiring technical and managerial solutions; it is a political issue where a variety of organizations – state agencies, firms, industry associations, NGOs and multilateral organizations – engage in contestation as well as collaboration over the issue. We discuss the strategic, institutional and political economy dimensions of climate change and develop a socioeconomic regimes approach as a synthesis of these different theoretical perspectives. Given the urgency of the problem and the need for a rapid transition to a low-carbon economy, there is a pressing need for organization scholars to develop a better understanding of apathy and inertia in the face of the current crisis and to identify paths toward transformative change. The seven papers in this special issue address these areas of research and examine strategies, discourses, identities and practices in relation to climate change at multiple levels.

Climate change basics for managers

Purpose – This paper sets out to tackle the issue of climate change from a business perspective. It seeks to discuss why it is important to take climate change considerations into account in business decisions, how this can be done and what further action is required from managers and business scholars.Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes ways of reducing emissions and adapting to climate change that can be implemented by any business. As an illustration, the proposed climate strategy of a large European utility company, RWE, is provided.Findings – There are numerous ways to reduce emissions within business operations, along the supply chain and surrounding product usage and disposal. Climate‐proofing operations is also becoming increasingly pertinent to businesses.Research limitations/implications – New ways have to be found yet in order to take emission reductions to a more ambitious level by altering patterns of production and consumption.Practical implications – The paper discusses how bu...

Climate Change: Challenging Business, Transforming Politics

Climate change challenges contemporary management practices and ways of organizing. While aspects of this challenge have been long recognized, many pertinent dimensions are less effectively articulated. Based on contemporary literature and insights from articles submitted to this special issue, the guest editors of this special issue highlight some of the challenges posed by climate change to government and business, and indicate the range of options and approaches being adopted to address these challenges.

Carbon accounting: Negotiating accuracy, consistency and certainty across organisational fields

Purpose - A fully functioning carbon accounting system must be based on measurement that is materially accurate, consistent over space and time, and incorporates data uncertainty. However, achieving these goals is difficult because current carbon accounting efforts are spread across three distinct organisational fields, each prioritising different goals. This paper aims to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach - The authors identified three fields drawn together by the science of how carbon emissions can be measured, the social practices of carbon accounting, and accountability within the global carbon governance system. The authors hosted a workshop, and invited representatives participating in each of the organisational fields to highlight the contentious conversations within their field. The authors facilitated an across-field exploration of whether and how to achieve accuracy, consistency and certainty in carbon accounting. Findings - It was found that there are tensions between accuracy, consistency and certainty in carbon accounting both within and across organisational fields. Framing the evolution of carbon accounting as negotiation between these goals across fields yields powerful implications for addressing current challenges in carbon accounting. Practical implications - The authors provide guidance to policymakers on how to recognise legitimate uncertainty in carbon management science, manage the cost-benefits of policy and reporting mechanisms, and ensure actual greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Originality/value - This paper exploits the unusual approach of integrating carbon accounting across levels of analysis, from the molecular level through processes, organisations, industries and nations. This approach should help scientific, corporate and policy decision-makers move towards a more fully functioning carbon accounting system.

Integrating Sustainable Transport Measures into the Clean Development Mechanism

Abstract While the number of projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is expanding rapidly, there currently are relatively few transport projects in the global CDM portfolio. This article examines existing CDM transport projects and explores whether sectoral approaches to the CDM may provide a better framework for transport than the current project‐based CDM. We ask: Would a sectoral approach to the CDM promote the structural change and integrated policymaking needed to achieve sustainable transport policy, making it hence more desirable than the framework of the current project‐based CDM? We conclude that it is possible to design sectoral transport activities within clear project boundaries that fit into a framework of a programmatic or policy‐based CDM. Although we are able to ascertain that transport policy research yields several modelling tools to address the methodological requirements of the CDM, it becomes apparent that sectoral approaches will accentuate transport projects’ problems regarding high complexity and related uncertainties. The CDM may need new rules to manage these risks. Nonetheless, sectoral approaches allow the scaling up of activities to a level that affects long‐term structural change.

Sustainable development, the Clean Development Mechanism, and business accounting

With the institution of international responses to the imperatives of sustainable development and climate change mitigation, such as the UN-based Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as part of the Kyoto Protocol, practical concerns such as how to value, measure, quantify and account for such issues have come to the fore. This paper argues that if such institutional mechanisms are to adequately respond to these imperatives, they will have to address their political as well as technical dimensions. There is an ongoing political struggle over the meaning of Sustainable development between business and other stakeholders and this has influenced how institutional mechanisms such as the CDM have come to be structured. This paper examines some of the structural limitations of the CDM and the extent to which accounting techniques and processes are able to address and overcome them.

Institutional change in the transfer of climate-friendly technology

Institutional theory scholars have been successful at explaining how organizations strive to attain a stable framework for their patterns of interaction, but have, until recently, struggled to account for institutional renewal. Institutional change happens when new practices become accepted and interactions between organizations carry new meanings. This historical study of the international climate change mitigation regime (1992 - 1997) provides insight into the dynamic processes that take place during the early stage of institutionalization. More specifically, the thesis examines the following issues: How do power differentials shift during institutional change? How do institutions operate in the environmental field? How can entrepreneurs influence their institutional setting? How do certain groups of organizations bring about or support particular sets of ideological frames? The empirical study analyses the policy innovation of the Clean Development Mechanism, proposed in the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The thesis confirms that the proposed governance of climate-friendly technology transfer constitutes institutional change and the emergence of a proto-institution. It furthermore analyzes how the organizational actors brought about this innovation and how the change in meaning was introduced into the public sphere. The qualitative research methods that were employed include observation at climate negotiations, focus groups of climate policy professionals, semi-structured interviews of policy makers, and content analysis of archival data.

The Montreal Climate Summit: Starting the Kyoto Business and Preparing for post-2012

After two weeks of negotiations, climate diplomats completed the implementation of the Protocol, refined some of its instruments for implementation and agreed on processes for moving forward beyond the first Kyoto commitment period. The report by the Wuppertal Institute provides an overview and assessment of the agreements reached in Montreal.

The Nairobi climate change summit (COP 12 - MOP 2) : taking a deep breath before negotiating post-2012 targets?

Coming at the end of a year where public awareness of climate change had reached unprecedented heights, there was much hope by the general public that the United Nations climate change conference in Nairobi would be characterised by a renewed sense of urgency and seriousness. However, although a sense of urgency was present in many delegates individually, the conference proceeded with its usual diplomatic ritual at an almost surrealistic slow pace, apparently unaffected by time pressure. While it did see some progress on important issues for developing countries such as the Adaptation Fund, the Nairobi Work Programme on Impacts, Vulnerability, and Adaptation to Climate Change, and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), on questions regarding the future of the regime it proved to be at best a confidence-building session that served to hear further views. More serious work on the future of the regime can — and must — therefore be expected of the next Conferences of the Parties.

Special Issue on Climate Change and the Emergence of New Organizational Landscapes

Climate change poses unique and profound challenges to organizations of every type, prompting a variety of organizational responses. The drastic depth of cuts in emissions of greenhouse gasses proposed by many governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is likely to require radical and fundamental shifts in socio-political structures, technological and economic systems, organizational forms, and modes of organizing (Hoffman 2005; Okereke 2007; Wittneben 2007). As a result, climate change is not just an environmental problem requiring technical and managerial solutions; it is a political arena in which a variety of organizations – state agencies, firms, industry associations, NGOs, and multilateral organizations – engage in contestation as well as collaboration over evolving regimes of governance (Levy and Egan 2003; Levy and Newell 2005). There is therefore an urgent need to better comprehend and theorize the transformative impact of climate change on the organizational landscape. This special issue aims to further our theoretical and empirical understanding of organizational implications of climate change. This includes the organizational impact of disruptive climate patterns and the evolving global and local policy response to the phenomenon as well as the opportunities and limits of current modes of organising on climate stabilization. Much of the limited attention to climate change in the management literature has tended to adopt a managerialist lens based on existing environmental management and corporate social responsibility templates, pointing to ‘win-win’ opportunities for ‘pro-active’ companies (Banerjee, 2001; Banerjee, Iyer and Kashyap, 2003). More critical and theoretical approaches to understanding the societal response to climate change have emerged in other disciplines, including international relations, international political economy, postcolonialism, geography, and sociology (Banerjee, 2003; Bumpus and Liverman, 2008; Levy and Egan 2003; Levy and Newell, 2002; Boykoff, 2008). These literatures have tended to adopt a more diverse set of theoretical perspectives, including discourse analysis, global governance theory, and Gramscian hegemony. We invite papers that draw from and integrate these perspectives with more familiar scholarship from management and organization theory. Organizational responses to climate change are part of an emerging multi-level and multiactor system of governance, a system comprising formal mechanisms such as the Kyoto Protocol, as well as a vast and disparate infrastructure of institutions, rules, norms, and discursive formations. There is a need to better understand the role of private actors in the global governance of climate change and the interactions between state and non-state actors in any governance arrangement. Conflicts between corporate and societal interests involve communication, accommodation, negotiation, compromise, cooperation and cooptation leading to a variety of outcomes. More democratic governance of the global political economy would entail the Organization Studies 31(04): 505–507 ISSN 0170–8406 Copyright