Re-engaging with Sustainability in the Anthropocene Era
An Institutional Approach

Applies organization theory to the current period of human impact on climate change, chemical waste, habitat destruction, and despeciation.

Andrew J. Hoffman (Author), P. Devereaux Jennings (Author)

9781108727693, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 August 2018

75 pages, 2 colour illus.
23 x 15.3 x 0.7 cm, 1.7 kg

Re-engaging with Sustainability in the Anthropocene Era applies organization theory to a grand challenge: our entry into the Anthropocene era, a period marked not only by human impact on climate change, but on chemical waste, habitat destruction, and despeciation. It focuses on institutional theory, modified by political readings of organizations, as one approach that can help us navigate a new course. Besides offering mechanisms, such as institutional entrepreneurship, social movements, and policy shifts, the institutional-political variant developed here helps analysts understand the framing of scientific facts, the counter-mobilization of skeptics, and the creation of archetypes as new social orders.

1. Introduction – a grand challenge and one organization theory response
2. A modified reading of institutional elements in Anthropocene society
3. A modified reading of institutional change mechanisms in Anthropocene society
4. Resistance from counter-cultures that deny Anthropocene issues
5. Three archetypes of Anthropocene society – collapsed systems, market rules and technology fix
6. The fourth archetype of Anthropocene society: cultural re-enlightenment as flourishing
7. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Sustainability [RNU], Climate change [RNPG], Pollution & threats to the environment [RNP], Organizational theory & behaviour [KJU]