Call for Papers

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?
   

References

• Adler, P.S. (2015): “Book Review Essay: The Environmental Crisis and Its Capitalist Roots: Reading Naomi Klein with Karl Polanyi.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 60( 2), NP13–NP25.

• Banerjee, S.B. (2003): “Who sustains whose development? Sustainable development and the reinvention of nature.” Organization Studies, 24 (1), 143–180.
• Bodrožić, Z., & Adler, P.S. (2022): “Alternative futures for the digital transformation: A macro-level Schumpeterian perspective.” Organization Science, 33 (1), 105–125.
• Böhm, S., Misoczky, M.C., & Moog, S. (2012): “Greening capitalism? A Marxist critique of carbon markets.” Organization Studies, 33 (11), 1617–1638.
• Bothello, J., & Salles-Djelic, M.-L. (2018): “Evolving conceptualizations of organizational environmentalism: A path generation account.” Organization Studies, 39 (1), 93–119.
• Craig, M.P. (2020): “Greening the state for a sustainable political economy.” New Political Economy, 25 (1), 1–4.
• Kourula, A., Moon, J., Salles-Djelic, M. L., & Wickert, C. (2019): “New roles of government in the governance of business conduct: Implications for management and organizational research.” Organization Studies, 40 (8), 1101–1123.
• McAdam, D. (2017): “Social movement theory and the prospects for climate change activism in the United States.” Annual Review of Political Science, 20 (1), 189–208.
• Merchant, C. (2005): Radical Ecology. The Search for a Livable World. London: Routledge.
• O’Neill, K., Weinthal, E., Marion Suiseeya, K.R., Bernstein, S., Cohn, A., Stone, M. W., & Cashore, B. (2013): “Methods and global environmental governance.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 38 (1), 441–471.
• Schüßler, E., Rüling, C.-C., & Wittneben, B.B.F. (2014): “On Melting Summits: The Limitations of Field-Configuring Events as Catalysts of Change in Transnational Climate Policy.” Academy of Management Journal, 57 (1), 140–171.
• Thurbon, E., Kim, S.-Y., Tan, H., & Mathews, J. (2004): Developmental Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Vasi, I.B., & Walker, E.T. (2024): “Subnational Environmental Policy: Trends and Issues.” Annual Review of Sociology, 50, 319–339.
• Wright, C., & Nyberg, D. (2015): Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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