Martina K. Linnenluecke

Beyond Adaptation: Resilience for Business in Light of Climate Change and Weather Extremes

Scientific findings forecast that one of the major consequences of human-induced climate change and global warming is a greater occurrence of extreme weather events with potentially catastrophic effects for organizations, industries, and society. Current management and adaptation approaches typically focus on economic factors of competition, such as technology and innovation. Although offering useful insights, these approaches are potentially ill equipped to deal with any increases in drastic changes in the natural environment. This article argues that discussions on organizational adaptation need to be broadened and that new conceptual and practical approaches are needed to incorporate the effects of climate change and a greater occurrence of weather extremes into corporate strategy and decision making. The authors advance the notion that a resilience framework might provide insights into dealing with new types of environmental change. They contend that by developing resilience, organizations can develop resources and capabilities to avoid or minimize organizational collapse and to reorganize in light of discontinuities associated with climate change and weather extremes. Implications for organizational practice and research are discussed.

Resilience in Business and Management Research: A Review of Influential Publications and a Research Agenda

This paper identifies the development of and gaps in knowledge in business and management research on resilience, based on a systematic review of influential publications among 339 papers, books and book chapters published between 1977 and 2014. Analyzing these records shows that resilience research has developed into five research streams, or lines of enquiry, which view resilience as (1) organizational responses to external threats, (2) organizational reliability, (3) employee strengths, (4) the adaptability of business models or (5) design principles that reduce supply chain vulnerabilities and disruptions. A review of the five streams suggests three key findings: First, resilience has been conceptualized quite differently across studies, meaning that the different research streams have developed their own definitions, theories and understandings of resilience. Second, conceptual similarities and differences among these streams have not yet been explored, nor have insights been gleaned about any possible generalizable principles for developing resilience. Third, resilience has been operationalized quite differently, with few insights into the empirics for detecting resilience to future adversity (or the absence thereof). This paper outlines emerging research trends and pathways for future research, highlighting opportunities to integrate and expand on existing knowledge, as well as avenues for further investigation of resilience in business and management studies.

Divestment from Fossil Fuel Companies: Confluence between Policy and Strategic Viewpoints

In October 2014, the Australian National University announced that it was divesting from seven fossil fuel-intensive companies. This announcement sparked an unprecedented response in the community, both positive and negative. We examine this decision, the divestment movement in general, the science behind the issue and strategic responses, both policy and organisational. We argue that a confluence between policy responses and organisational responses is beginning to emerge that will lead to greater action on climate change.

Assessing organizational resilience to climate and weather extremes: complexities and methodological pathways

This paper offers insights for assessing organizational resilience to the effects of climate change, specifically to climate and weather extremes. The assessment of organizational resilience to climate and weather extremes brings about several challenges due to (1) uncertainties about future climate change outcomes across temporal and spatial scales and (2) a lack of insight into what lead to organizational resilience, or which variables should be measured in a given study. We suggest methodological pathways for organizational managers to identify properties of future climate and weather extremes and to include them in resilience assessments. We also suggest approaches to identify factors that promote organizational resilience to selected climate and weather extremes. Findings are intended to help managers to understand how organizational resilience to climate and weather extremes can be enhanced.

Executives’ engagement with climate science and perceived need for business adaptation to climate change

The business community has been frequently criticized for its lack of engagement with climate change, not just in terms of mitigation but increasingly also in terms of adaptation. One reason why executives may not take more decisive action on adaptation is the type of information they rely on for decision-making purposes. From this perspective, executives who engage more with scientific information sources for decision-making purposes would be likely to have a more comprehensive understanding of climate change, and would consequently be more concerned about their company’s vulnerability and adaptation needs. So far, however, there is limited evidence showing that executives’ lack of engagement with scientific information influences their perception that climate change is a serious issue. In this paper, we use survey data collected from 125 executives across the top 500 companies on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX-500) to examine the links between how executives obtain information on climate change and their perceived need for adaptation action. Findings show that executives who report greater engagement with scientific information express greater concern about their company’s vulnerability, which also translates into a greater perceived need for adaptation action. Making scientific information accessible to executives is therefore important for communicating climate science to a business audience.

The 2009 Victorian Bushfires A Multilevel Perspective on Organizational Risk and Resilience

One of the expected consequences of climate change is an increase in the frequency and intensity of weather extremes such as heat waves, droughts, and large-scale bushfires. The possible escalation in the frequency and magnitude of resulting impacts has led to arguments that future strategies for emergency management should be based on achieving organizational and community resilience. However, relatively little is known about the limits to conventional emergency management approaches and factors leading to resilience. Drawing on the 2009 Victorian Bushfires as an analogue for a “more-severe-than-expected” event likely under a future, changed climate, this article analyzes the limits to emergency management approaches under unfamiliar conditions. Our assessment focuses on three organizations involved in the Victorian Bushfires emergency response. Results show how events that occur with unprecedented severity are well beyond the routine emergency management capacities of emergency organizations. We discuss how the long-term promotion of organizational and societal resilience could be achieved and outline implications for research and practice.

Community resilience to natural disasters: the role of disaster entrepreneurship

The paper aims to examine the conditions under which disaster entrepreneurship contributes to community-level resilience. The authors define disaster entrepreneurship as attempts by the private sector to create or maintain value during and in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster by taking advantage of business opportunities and providing goods and services required by community stakeholders.,This paper builds a typology of disaster entrepreneurial responses by drawing on the dimensions of structural expansion and role change. The authors use illustrative case examples to conceptualize how these responses improve community resilience by filling critical resource voids in the aftermath of natural disasters.,The typology identifies four different disaster entrepreneurship approaches: entrepreneurial business continuity, scaling of organizational response through activating latent structures, improvising and emergence. The authors formulate proposition regarding how each of the approaches is related to community-level resilience.,While disaster entrepreneurship can offer for-profit opportunities for engaging in community-wide disaster response and recovery efforts, firms should carefully consider the financial, legal, reputational and organizational implications of disaster entrepreneurship.,Communities should consider how best to harness disaster entrepreneurship in designing their disaster response strategies.,This research offers a novel typology to explore the role that for-profit firms play in disaster contexts and adds to prior research which has mostly focused on government agencies, non-governmental organizations and emergency personnel.

How firm responses to natural disasters strengthen community resilience: a stakeholder-based perspective

Natural disasters challenge a community’s resilience. Prior community resilience research has focused on the responses of public entities, such as emergency services and government agencies. However, for-profit firms are also engaged in responding to natural disasters. This article explores two aspects of how firms participate in building community resilience to natural disasters: First, the article synthesizes research on business continuity management, corporate philanthropy, and emerging evidence that firms engage in the business of disaster response into a coherent typology of for-profit firm responses to natural disasters. Second, the article draws on stakeholder theory to distinguish between firms adopting firm-centric postures (focused inwardly on firm outcomes) versus firms adopting community-centric postures (focused outwardly on stakeholders), with respect to responding to natural disasters. We theorize relationships between firm- versus community-centric postures and different community resilience outcomes. The article concludes by discussing contributions to stakeholder theory and outlines future research directions.

Determinants of the perceived importance of organisational adaptation to climate change in the Australian energy industry

Climate change will pose considerable risk to organisations in the 21st century. However, organisational adaptation to climate change has not yet received much attention in the management literature. Drawing on strategic choice theory, we put forward a model proposing that environmental attitudes and climate change knowledge are antecedents of how important adaptation is perceived to be by organisational decision-makers and that the perceived risk towards climate change acts as a mediator in this relationship. We tested the model with responses from 101 managers in the Australian energy industry. Findings of the study show that both environmental attitudes and climate change knowledge have a significantly positive effect on the perceived importance of climate change adaptation and that this relationship is mediated by risk perception. The study highlights the need to draw climate knowledge to the attention of executives and discusses avenues for future research, including the extension of the findings to other industries and settings.

The unpaid social cost of carbon: Introducing a framework to estimate “legal looting” in the fossil fuel industry

Purpose This paper aims to examine the complex issue of the social cost of carbon. The authors review the existing literature and the strengths and deficiencies of existing approaches. They introduce a simple methodology that estimates the amount of “legal looting” in the fossil fuel industry as an alternative approach to calculate an unpaid social cost of carbon. The “looting amount” can be defined as society’s failure to charge fossil fuel firms for the damage that their activities cause represents an implied subsidy. Design/methodology/approach The methodology used in this paper combines decisions in the form of policymakers setting carbon taxes and rational investors investing in carbon emission markets. Findings The authors show that the unpaid social cost of carbon in the fossil fuel industry was US