It’s been a pleasure doing business with you: a strategic analysis and critique of university change management

Universities have been undergoing major changes in scope of activities, structures, processes and relationships since late in the 20th century. This paper critically examines some of the dimensions of these changes, reflecting on the spectrum of environmental forces and internal resource pressures that have begun to transform many aspects of university governance core activities, stakeholder relationships and academic work. This Habermasian informed analysis and critique of major changes in university operations, reveals an array of globalised environmental disturbances that have directly impacted on university design archetypes including governance, accountability, decision-making and communication. The consequent impacts on the financial, educational and research subsystems are found to be extensive and have penetrated the interpretive schemes that constitute the university lifeworld. Commercial values are found to be usurping the previously dominant knowledge focussed values in universities. A re-engagement in discourse and bottom-up strategic management and processually based change orientation are offered as potential foundations for developing a bridge between the new managerialism and academics’ re-empowerment.     

Corporate Climate Change‐Related Governance Practices and Related Disclosures: Evidence from Australia

This paper investigates the climate change‐related corporate governance disclosure practices of five major Australian energy‐intensive companies over a 16‐year period. In doing so, a content analysis instrument is developed to identify disclosures made in relation to various policies and procedures the organisations have in place for addressing the issues associated with climate change. This instrument is applied to the respective companies’ annual reports and sustainability reports. An increasing trend is found in companies’ climate change‐related corporate governance disclosures over time; however, in many instances the disclosures provide limited insights into the climate change‐related risks and opportunities confronting the sample companies.     

The two limits debates: “Limits to Growth” and climate change

In this article we compare the current debate about global warming with the earlier discourse of Limits to Growth (LtG) of the 1970s. We are especially interested in the similarities of and differences between the two cases and therefore compare the policy challenges and lessons to be drawn. While the two debates differ on important issues, they share a technocratic orientation to public policy, and susceptibility to similar pitfalls. In both debates alarming scenarios about future catastrophes play an important role. We suggest that climate change policy discourse needs to focus more closely on the social, economic, and political dimensions of climate change, as opposed to its excessive emphasis on emission reduction targets. We also argue that an excessive faith in the market mechanisms to supply global warming mitigation technologies is problematic. In this respect, we provide a reality check regarding the political implications of emission targets and timetables and suggest how policy issues can be moved forward.     

Do climate risk beliefs shape corporate social responsibility?

Global climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, potentially affecting everyone, both individuals and businesses. This paper examines whether differences in beliefs about climate change affect firms' decision-making in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) commitment. Using county-level climate change beliefs data from Yale Climate Opinion Maps, we find that firms' Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores are higher if they are located in counties where more people believe in global climate change. We then use natural disasters as exogenous shocks to the beliefs about climate risk and continue to find a positive association between CSR and perceptions of climate risks. Furthermore, we discover a stronger correlation between CSR and climate risk beliefs when firms have more local investors.     

The measurement of risk perceptions: the case of smoking

Climate change is a threat to human health and life, both now and in the future. Despite this, studies show that the public typically do not consider the issue a priority concern or a direct, personal threat. Furthermore, few are taking any preventive or protective action. Previous studies identify direct experience as a major influence on risk perception, learning and action. Drawing on such evidence, this paper focuses on the intangibility of climate change as a key impediment to personal engagement and explores whether relevant experiences of flooding and air pollution influence individuals' knowledge, attitudes, risk perception and behavioural responses to climate change. Perhaps surprisingly, interviews and a survey conducted in the south of England indicate flood victims differ very little from other participants in their understanding of and responses to climate change, but that experience of air pollution does significantly affect perceptions of and behavioural responses to climate change. Air pollution victims are no more likely to cite pollution as a cause of climate change than non‐victims; but they do have higher pro‐environmental values. Respondents with these values are significantly more likely to consider climate change a salient risk and to take action in response to it. Therefore the relationship between air pollution experience and responses to climate change may be indirect and mediated by environmental values. The paper concludes by highlighting implications of this research for developing climate change policies and strategies for public engagement.     

Institutional investors’ site visits and corporate employment decision-making

This study examines the effect of institutional investors’ site visits on corporate employment decision-making. Using a unique dataset of corporate site visits (CSVs) to the listed firms in China, we find that CSVs are associated with less labor investment inefficiency. The effect is more pronounced in firms with lower information quality, worse corporate governance, and severe financial constraints. Our results are robust to endogeneity concerns. Further analysis suggests that labor investment inefficiency leads to lower future performance. Overall, our results are consistent with the view that CSVs improve information quality, corporate governance, and access to finance, which in turn, mitigates inefficient labor investment.     

Combining backcasting and adaptive management for climate adaptation in coastal regions: A methodology and a South African case study

Developing adaptation strategies for deltaic and coastal regions is a major challenge, due to future uncertainties of climate change and complexity of the social–ecological systems to be managed. This paper investigates how desirable futures or normative scenarios approaches, in particular backcasting, can be used to develop more robust climate strategies in coastal regions. The paper develops a methodology in which participatory backcasting and adaptive management are combined, and its applicability is demonstrated for the Breede–Overberg coastal region in South Africa where a catchment management strategy has been developed. It is concluded that the methodology offers an adequate framework for developing and implementing long-term climate adaptation strategies and policies, including a transition management scheme for intermediate assessments.     

The future trajectory for environmental finance: planetary boundaries and environmental,social and governance analysis

Urgent issues such as climate change have drawn increasing attention from finance scholars. Most research has situated a corporate response within the context of the environmental, social and governance performance. However, other disciplines express concerns around environmental degradation within broader frameworks, such as the Planetary Boundaries framework. We highlight the different conceptualisations of ESG and planetary boundaries and call for further research that links finance research to the Planetary Boundaries framework. We describe how contributions in the Accounting & Finance Special Issue on Environmental Finance advance research in this area and explore implications for future research that responds to the imperatives of remaining within Planetary Boundaries.     

现代公司治理中的决策规则研究

构建科学的决策规则体系是解决公司治理问题的关键,国内外学者在决策权的配置、决策程序的划分、评价准则的取舍等方面各抒己见,但对于如何设计这一体系目前仍缺乏系统性的研究。本文通过对国内外已有研究成果加以综合分析评价,提出了今后可能的研究方向,以期对此问题的进一步研究提供线索。     

The rise of corporate governance in corporate control research

This article has two related tasks. First, we review the articles published in this Special Issue on Corporate Control, Mergers, and Acquisitions. These articles provide new evidence on several aspects of corporate control and governance including the value and performance effects of various ownership groups, the impact of internal governance structures, the effects of regulatory changes on specific industries and evidence on bidding strategies in takeovers. This analysis leads us to our second task – to examine the evolution of corporate control research, broadly defined. Our analysis shows a movement in research from mergers and acquisitions to a broader analysis of corporate governance, especially internal governance features. We suggest that there is a trend toward an increase in the relative importance of internal governance compared to discipline from the market from corporate control. This trend reflects an important change over the past several decades in the means through which the market disciplines corporate behavior.     

Governing the transition to low-carbon futures: A critical survey of energy scenarios for 2050

There is a growing scientific consensus that limiting the increase in global average temperature to around 2 °C above pre-industrial levels is necessary to avoid unacceptable impact on the climate system. This requires that the developed countries’ emissions are radically reduced during the next 40 years. Energy scenario studies provide insights on the societal transitions that might be implied by such low-carbon futures, and in this paper we discuss how a greater attention to different governance and institutional issues can complement future scenario exercises. The analysis is based on a critical review of 20 quantitative and qualitative scenario studies, all of relevance for meeting long-term climate policy objectives. The paper: (a) analyzes some key differences in energy technology mixes and primary energy use patterns across these studies; (b) briefly explores the extent and the nature of the societal challenges and policy responses implied; and (c) discusses a number of important implications for the design and scope of future scenario studies. Our review shows that in previous scenario studies the main attention is typically paid to analyzing the impact of well-defined and uniform policy instruments, while fewer studies factor in the role of institutional change in achieving different energy futures. We therefore point towards a number of strategies of integrating issues of transition governance into future scenario analyses, and argue for a closer synthesis of qualitative and quantitative scenario building.     

Peak energy and climate change: The double bind of post-normal science

Insofar as the viability of industrial society is at stake, energy supply and climate change are not normal scientific issues. Fossil fuel is the ultimate finite resource, and the atmosphere the ultimate finite sink. There is dispute about the most fundamental issues and values to be promoted or defended. The concept of post-normal science has been introduced for precisely this kind of situation, where “facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent (Ravetz [1, p. 349]).” Although this applies equally to energy supply and climate change, the related knowledge regimes offer a remarkable contrast. Mainstream energy science, on the one hand, has refused to engage in post-normal science. The accredited experts at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and elsewhere have left “peak energy” to mavericks at the fringes or outside mainstream scientific discourse. Consequently, the pressing issue of future energy scarcity has been kept from the public agenda. Official climate science, on the other hand, has embraced post-normal science. But even though the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been uniquely successful in placing climate change on the public agenda, the inherent ambiguities of post-normal science have plunged climate science into a deep legitimacy crisis. Most people prefer denial and self-deception to an unvarnished vision of the truth when intractable problems such as peak energy and climate change are at stake. In such cases, scientists are in a double bind: they are damned if they do and doomed if they do not engage in post-normal science.     

Cultural resources and public trust shape attitudes toward climate change and preferred futures—A case study among the Norwegian public

Since climate change mitigation likely will affect most sectors of society, adapting to climate change essentially requires the public to envision and adjust to alternative futures. There is a need for more studies on the social basis for climate change asking why people hold the attitudes they do, rather than the dominant tendency to ask how to change attitudes and behavior. Research in different fields show that fundamental life values and worldviews are shaped through life and heavily influenced by early life socialization and culture, which in turn can shape attitudes toward specific phenomena like climate change. We surveyed a representative sample of the Norwegian public and examined how cultural resources and trust in environmental governance institutions are related to attitudes toward climate change. High levels of trust are associated with a tendency to perceive climate change as human caused, and low levels of trust correspond with stronger beliefs that climate change are natural phenomena. High levels of cultural resources are found among climate change deniers as well as believers, indicating that groups with different political, professional and intellectual orientations, as well as life histories, may not trust climate change science. We argue that improved knowledge about the social basis for climate change is an imperative part of futures-oriented expertise.     

Determinants and consequences of financial distress: review of the empirical literature

We synthesise the empirical literature on the determinants and consequences of financial distress, critique the findings and offer suggestions for future research. We categorise these indicators into (i) firm-level fundamental determinants, (ii) macroeconomic determinants and (iii) firm-level corporate governance determinants. We categorise the consequences into (i) financial reporting and auditing consequences, (ii) firm-level operational consequences, (iii) capital market consequences and (iv) corporate governance consequences. We suggest that future research can make a more meaningful contribution, by developing more comprehensive models of predicting financial distress which will entail a departure from the current partial analysis to a more holistic complex analysis.     

Futures research and the IPCC assessment study on the effects of climate change

Mainly based on a survey of the occurrence of futures research-related references in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, I have investigated the contribution of futures research to the IPCC assessments of the effects of climate change. The assumption I have made here is that, if futures research has made a contribution to the IPCC assessment work, it should also be reflected in the references quoted or cited. I have also briefly commented on the activities by the futurists themselves regarding the future challenge of climate change. As a complement to the contribution survey, I ask and discuss to what degree futures research could and should be participating in a study like that of the IPCC. The survey of the futures research contributions showed that, up to now, futures research has been only modestly represented in the IPCC climate change effect assessment studies. The contribution both could and should have been more extensive than it has been up to the present, a view to which I return in the final discussion.     

One human settlement: A transdisciplinary approach to climate change adaptation research

The threat of climate change demands that human settlements adapt to unavoidable impacts. Climate change is a complex problem that requires traditional disciplines to work together to facilitate an integrated and coordinated response to its impacts. Transdisciplinary research approaches have been recognised for being well placed to aid responses to complex problems such as climate change. This paper draws on the experience of the South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative (SEQCARI), Australia, to reflect upon the challenges involved in undertaking transdisciplinary research aimed at developing and improving a range of adaptation options for specific sectors as well as across sectors. Challenges and learning's are discussed based on the three phases of transdisciplinary research processes: problem framing and team building, co-creation of solution-oriented transferable knowledge, and (re)integration and application of created knowledge. Four key insights are then discussed to advance transdisciplinary research approaches for climate change adaptation: adoption of a dynamic learning approach such as learning-by-doing/doing-by-learning to provide sufficient flexibility and scope to navigate potential barriers and conflicts; selection of social sciences to drive integration; choice of one sector as a platform for integration; and acknowledgement of existing barriers and limitations associated with the political context in which the research takes place.     

Accountability and risk governance: a scenario-informed reflection on European regulation of GMOs

Regulating risks in the face of scientific uncertainty poses a particular challenge to policy-makers. Such problems are amplified when decisions are taken in a multi-level framework of supranational governance. The genetically modified organism (GMO) regulation in the European Union constitutes an especially salient issue of risk governance in a multi-lateral arena, as the topic is politically highly visible and decision-making is slow and contested. Furthermore, as authority is dispersed among multiple actors, European risk governance is in need of adequate mechanisms ensuring that decision-makers justify and account for their behavior. While legitimacy aspects of GMO governance have widely been examined, accountability relations within the field of GMO risk governance have hitherto only weakly been explored. Hence, this paper analyzes the question of who can be held accountable under the complex system of supranational risk governance. This paper claims that mere adherence by actors to the regulatory procedures during the decision-making process does not necessarily imply that overall accountability can be secured, resulting in ‘organized irresponsibility’. Although certain piecemeal accountability may exist, establishing overall accountability is complicated, precisely as a result of the complex system of interwoven rules.     

Drivers of flood and climate change risk perceptions and intention to adapt: an explorative survey in coastal and delta Vietnam

Abstract

This article contributes to current research about determinants of climate change and flood risk perception, and intentions to take adaptive measures. We propose a research model that distinguishes between vulnerability and severity components of perceived risks, and adds perceived adaptive capacity as a third factor to predict the intention to take adaptive measures. We used this combined model as a conceptual lens for an explorative survey among 1086 residents of coastal and delta communities in Vietnam. Pairwise analyses revealed a significant association of flood and climate change risk perceptions with individual’s flood experience, climate change knowledge, frequency of community participation and socio-demographic factors. However, in multivariate analysis, the influence of most socio-demographic factors became weak or patchy. Flood experience was the most influential driver of flood-related risk perceptions but weak for climate change-related risk perceptions and behavioural intentions. Knowledge strongly increased the intention to adapt to flood and climate risks and the perceived vulnerability to and severity of climate change risks, but reduced the perceived capacity to adapt to climate risks. Frequency of community participation increased the perceived vulnerability and severity of climate change risks, the intention to adapt to both climate and flood risks and the perceived capacity to adapt to flood risks, but reduced the perceived capacity to adapt to climate risks. Our research confirms earlier findings that individuals’ knowledge, place-specific experience and social-cultural influences are key predictors of both flood and climate change risk perceptions and intentions to take adaptive measures. These factors should therefore receive ample attention in climate risk communication.     

The politics of urban climate risks: theoretical and empirical lessons from Ulrich Beck’s methodological cosmopolitanism

Abstract

In the face of global climate risks, world cities increasingly figure in academic and policy discourse as strategic spaces for harnessing the expertise and governance capacity needed to steer societies toward more sustainable and low-carbon futures. This article reviews existing approaches to the study of urban climate politics, by way of asking what contribution Ulrich Beck’s theory of world risk society – and principles of methodological cosmopolitanism – make to such epochal conversations? Three main analytical frameworks stand out: low-carbon transition literature highlight generic processes of socio-technical ‘greening’ of urban infrastructures; urban policy mobility work documents growing intercity networks around climate and sustainability; and actor–network theory-informed takes on urban controversies engage the localized politics of specific city-based ‘riskscapes’. While each framework makes valuable contributions, this article suggests that all of them remain under-theorized from the point of view of the specific dynamics of local–global interdependencies in urban climate risk politics. In response, the article draws on Beck in outlining the contours of new urban–cosmopolitan risk communities. To this effect, empirical studies into large-scale East Asian and European port cities is used to illustrate how a shared transnational risk imaginary (e.g. of future sea-level rises) may help spur collective action and new forms of trans-boundary solidarity. Reflecting on such research practices, the article ends by pointing to the need for reworking methods of (multi-sited) ethnography and comparison as central parts of realizing Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology in the domain of urban climate risks.     

Climate change adaptation: Is there a role for intervention research?

While climate change will expose regions to similar impacts, the extent of those impacts and effective response at the local level will be determined not only by the location's sensitivity and vulnerability but also by local groups and individuals’ capacity, including their institutional links, social networks and motivation to action. In parallel, scientific information and research plays a critical role in informing climate change adaptation by providing both an improved understanding of the actual climate risks and response alternatives.The paper focuses on two local-scale intervention research projects undertaken in urbanised coastal areas in Brazil and in Australia concentrated on improving the dialogue between ‘those who make science’ and ‘those who use science to make decisions’ in order to make climate science more useful, and creating purposeful collective action, respectively. A conceptual model is devised to investigate how intervention research could aid adaptive capacity by generating new knowledge and facilitating change towards climate change adaptation at the local level. Drawing on the findings, a framework is proposed to advance the role of intervention research in policy development for enhancing adaptive capacity.