Organization and Management Theory OMT

EGOS: The role of the state in responding to climate change

  • 1.  EGOS: The role of the state in responding to climate change

    Posted 28 days ago

    We are excited to announce that we are open for submissions to our 5th EGOS Standing Working Group 15 meeting in Athens, Greece, July 3-5. Our SWG theme this year is on The Role of the State in Responding to Climate Change.

    Conveners: Paul S. Adler (USC, USA), Zlatko Bodrožić (Liverpool, UK), Elke Schüßler (Leuphana, Germany).

    States around the world have so far taken only limited steps toward addressing climate change. Indeed, they have often used their power to repress environmental activism. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine robust climate action, if and when we do see it, without the active involvement of the state. There is therefore growing interest in understanding the roles of the state in responding to the climate crisis at the national, subnational, and supranational levels (Craig, 2020; Kourula et al., 2019; Vasi & Walker, 2024; O'Neill et al., 2013). How can organization scholars contribute to this scholarship on the role of the state and the interplay of the state with social movements and counter-movements in the formation of climate policy (McAdam, 2017)? For understanding constraints to states' climate action, organization scholars can contribute to and benefit from reconceptualizing the state as more than a unitary actor, comprised not only of different actors and agencies on different levels, but also governed by different modes and logics of organizing.
     
    Our field has a range of valuable theoretical resources that help us understand the potential and limitations to national and transnational state action, such as institutionalist (e.g., Bothello & Salles-Djelic, 2018; Schüßler et al., 2014), social movements and field theories (Fligstein & Mcadam, 2012; Nelson & King, 2020), Marxist (e.g., Adler, 2015; Böhm et al., 2012), post-structuralist (e.g., Wright & Nyberg, 2015), post-colonialist (e.g., Banerjee, 2003), radical ecology (e.g., Merchant, 2005), and neo-Schumpeterian (e.g., Bodrožić & Adler, 2022; Thurbon et al., 2004). This Subtheme aims to put these different perspectives in dialogue, along with the perspectives from other contiguous fields such as sociology, public administration, public policy, environmental studies, and political theory.
     
    We invite papers from any of a wide variety of theoretical and disciplinary lenses to explore the role of the state in responding to the climate crisis and the forces shaping that role. We welcome both original empirical studies as well as conceptual contributions. Possible topics and questions include, but are not limited to:

    • How should we conceptualize and study the role of the state in the dynamic interplay among the public sector, private sector and civil society in the reponse to climate change?
    • How can organization scholars fruitfully use theoretical conceptualizations of the state and state capacity from other disciplines to understand (lack of) progress on climate action?
    • What new forms of citizenship and activism are emerging in the struggle over climate policy? How are climate movements and corporate elites mobilizing?
    • How can organizational scholarship on strategic capability and dynamic capabilities help us understand the state's climate strategizing?
    • How can local advances in climate policy "scale shift" and drive change at the higher levels of aggregation (the nation state, transnational constellations)?
    • What new imaginaries of the state and the nation are being invoked in the struggle over climate policy?
    • The response to climate change is not just a matter of national energy policy, but will require the coordination of policies across multiple domains (energy, but also transportation, buildings, infrastructure, agriculture, education and training, etc.): how should we conceptualize and study this complexity, and how can we organize across "silos" in governance processes?
    • How should we conceptualize and study the coordination across multiple levels – at the supranational level, as well as the infra-national level of regions and cities?
    • What can we learn from comparisons of the state's different role across countries in the Global North, South, East, and West? What differences do we see in the state's role vis-à-vis different actors – corporations, social movements, labour unions, financial institutions, NGOs etc. – in shaping green policies in different countries?
    • What are the dynamics of backlash that green policy changes are facing – emerging from firms/industries, political parties, and other incumbent organizations – and how are states either conceding to business pressure to delay or instead standing firm in leading green industrial transitions and related transformations?
    • How can management and organization studies contribute to measuring the impact (or lack of) of climate action guided by different types of public policy regimes on green house gases emissions?
    • How can an organizational perspective shed new light the dramatic changes needed to state budgeting and spending that will be required for climate action, and how are states balancing the at times competing pressures of adaptation and mitigation?
       

    As usual at EGOS, applicants should submit a short paper (c 3000 words) summarizing their intended contribution by Jan 7, 2025. If your paper is accepted, the full version is due by June 15. Details here. Contact me with any questions!

    Paul Adler



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    Paul Adler
    University of Southern California
    Los Angeles CA
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