David Levy
David L. Levy is Professor of Management, University of Massachusetts, Boston. David, an Aspen Institute Faculty Pioneer Award Winner, founded and is currently Director of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise and Regional Competitiveness, which engages in research, education and outreach to promote a transition to a sustainable and prosperous economy. David’s research examines corporate strategic responses to climate change and the growth of the clean energy business sector. His work explores strategic contestation over the governance of controversial issues engaging business, states, and NGOs, such as climate change, resiliency and sustainability standards. David has published widely on these topics, including articles in the Academy of Management Review, Strategic Organization, Business and Society, Organization, Organization Studies, and the Journal of Management Studies. He co-edits the blog Organizations and Social Change. David holds a DBA from Harvard University, an MBA from Tel Aviv University, Recanati School of Management, and a B.Sc. from Manchester University.
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http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0007650317701674
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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 nvironmental 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.
actors in international environmental regimes, little attention has been paid
to the role of the private sector at the science–policy interface. Because the
automobile industry plays a crucial role in mitigation of greenhouse gases,
successful policy requires not just the assent but the active cooperation of
this sector. Such cooperation, however, requires some institutional acceptance
that climate change is indeed a significant risk. In this article, the authors
look at the early stages of the automobile industry’s engagement with the
discourse on climate change. The authors focus, in particular, on the role of
corporate scientists in two U.S. automobile companies in translating this
discourse. Acting as boundary spanners and institutional entrepreneurs,
these individuals influenced both corporate perceptions of and responses
to climate change science.
of business and the natural environment (B&NE). This unfortunate outcome can be understood in the context of the larger “sociotechnical system” within which business and policymakers are operating: a complex dynamic system
comprising economic, technological, social, political, and ecological elements, generating complex interactions and unforeseen outcomes. Yet even as recriminations were fl ying at Copenhagen, some welcomed the opportunity
to move beyond a centralized, top-down model of global climate governance. Instead, they embraced the opportunity for businesses, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), and governmental agencies to experiment with a plethora of innovative approaches to reducing emissions, which off er new opportunities for learning and creative
solutions ( Hoffmann 2011 ). Complexity theory provides a grounded theoretical basis for this more optimistic perspective by explaining how networked actors can display
adaptive learning and emergent self-organization.
In this chapter we examine the contribution of complexity theory to our understanding of B&NE, with a particular focus on climate change as an illustrative and representative example. These provide insight into systemic tendencies towards patterned behavior, frozen inertia, and sometimes extreme instability. At a macro level, complexity theory explains why systems are oft en hard to comprehend and forecast, let alone manage and control. Yet complexity also offers micro-level tools and concepts to
help innovative organizations improve sustainability through local initiatives of loosely networked agents.
incentives for sustainability can be structured through taxes, subsidies, or new financial instruments such as carbon markets. Third, public pressures can lead companies to shift their norms and practices, for example, by embracing information disclosure initiatives such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). The fourth and most radical approach is to restructure the foundations of corporate governance so that productive organizations internalize the drive to serve multiple stakeholders and goals, including the workforce, the community, and the environment.
While carbon disclosure has not transformed corporate governance, it has scored important strategic gains. It has generated legitimacy for the principle of disclosure and accountability to external stakeholders, and increased the
visibility and voice of environmental advocates inside and outside corporations. It has generated considerable momentum toward the formalization of carbon accounting standards, standards currently crossing over into the regulatory apparatus of agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the
Environmental Protection Agency. Perhaps most importantly, carbon disclosure has demonstrated the feasibility of carbon management and potential corporate benefits, shifting the field of play and opening political space for further action.
of organizational fields, and by employing his discussion of the Modern Prince as the collective agent who organizes and strategizes counter-hegemonic challenges. Our framework makes three contributions. First, we characterize the interlaced material, discursive, and organizational dimensions of field structure. Second, we argue that strategy must be examined more rigorously as the mode of action by which institutional entrepreneurs engage with field structures. Third, we argue that institutional entrepreneurship, in challenging the position of incumbent actors and stable fields, reveals a ‘strategic face
of power’, particularly useful for understanding the political nature of contestation in issue-based fields.
carbon trading and disclosure, and then develops a conceptual framework using theories of global governance, institutional theory and commensuration to understand the role of carbon disclosure in the emerging climate regime. Subsequently, a closer look is taken at carbon disclosure and reporting mechanisms, with a particular focus on the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). Our analysis of responses shows that CDP has been successfully using institutional investors to urge firms to disclose extensive information about their climate change activities. However, although response rates in terms of
numbers of disclosing firms are impressive and growing, neither the level of carbon disclosure that CDP promotes nor the more detailed carbon accounting provide information that is particularly valuable for investors, NGOs or policy makers at this
stage. As a project of commensuration, carbon disclosure has achieved some progress in technical terms, but much less with regard to the cognitive and value dimensions.
intertwined. The framework highlights the contingent stability of GPNs as well as the potential for actors to engage politically in contestation and collaboration over system governance and the distribution of benefits. The framework offers a multidimensional
and multi-level approach to understanding power relations, ideology, and value appropriation in GPNs. The framework is valuable for examining the intersection of GPNs with charged political and social issues such as sweatshops and incomes for coffee growers, and the role of geography as a source of stability and tension in these networks.
difficulty ‘trading up’ to higher skilled jobs. Offshoring is a new phenomenon that entails the organizational and technological ability to relocate specific tasks and coordinate a geographically dispersed network of activities. It decouples the linkages
between economic value creation and geographic location. The result is the creation of global commodity markets for particular skills and a shift in the balance of market power among firms, workers, and countries.
impact on the Massachusetts economy, employing
almost 11,000 people in approximately 400 firms (based
on the most conservative estimates).This article reviews Massachusetts’ clean energy sector in the context of the industry nationally and worldwide. We also suggest policy options to enhance the sector’s potential for the Massachusetts economy. Clearly, Massachusetts has been able to use
its comparative advantage in being on the cutting edge
of new technologies through university and private sector
collaborations to position itself as a key exporter of clean energy materials as well as moving forward in terms of advancement of energy-efficient buildings and technologies.
company histories can create divergent pressures on strategy for MNCs based in different countries; however, the location of MNCs in global industries and their participation in 'global
issues arenas' create issue-level fields within which strategic convergence might also be expected. This paper analyzes the responses of oil MNCs to climate change and finds that local context shapes initial corporate reations, but that convergent pressures predominate as the issue matures.