Organizing with Nature: Unfolding the Temporal, Spatial, and Material Complexities

Over the last decades, nature and the ecological environment have been primarily considered externalities, often viewed as external resources for organizations to control, manage, utilize, and manipulate. However, the pressing ecological crisis requires a shift in how organizations manage and organize their relations with nature. Organizations are challenged to transform their way of organizing and understanding themselves as part of the social-ecological systems. They need to start to organize with nature rather than remain against it. Responding to the Academy of Management Annual Meeting’s theme “Innovating for the Future,” which invites “rethinking conventional ways of leading, managing, and organizing,” this panel symposium aims to shed light on the complexities of organizing with nature from diverse scholarly fields and perspectives. With a joint conversation and discussion among the panelists and audience, the symposium intends to challenge management scholars to reflect and rethink how we could further develop management and organization theories to manage and organize with nature, both theoretically and practically. The symposium will unfold some of the complexities associated with organizing with nature, focusing on three dimensions: temporal complexities, spatial complexities, and material complexities. Situating the Academy of Management amid ecological crises that organizations find themselves in, the symposium will engage the panelists with a reflective, provocative, and prospective discussion.