Climate-Proofing Management Research

Climate change is happening now, as is evident in the steady procession of record-breaking hurricanes, floods, droughts and firestorms. These emerging climate impacts represent interrelated and likely catastrophic “doomsday scenarios” for human civilization. However, acknowledgment of the severity of the climate crisis is largely absent from discussions within management research, which typically support the continuation of business as usual. Rather than a literal denial of climate change as a phenomenon, we suggest that management scholars engage in interpretative and implicatory denial by promoting a continuation of economic growth (implicatory denial), and by translating climate change into an issue that fits with the dominant paradigm of corporate capitalism (interpretative denial). If management thinking is to be relevant in coming decades (i.e., if management is to be “climate-proofed”), radical re-imagining is required. Specifically, we elaborate how scholars can climate-proof management by engaging with three aspects of climate change: adaptation, mitigation, and suffering. While it is too late to stop climate change, we as scholars can help mitigate the worst effects.