Sub-theme 69: Tackling Climate Change, Enhancing Inclusivity

Sub-theme 69: Tackling Climate Change, Enhancing Inclusivity? (Re-)Searching Common Ground of Organization, Climate, and Inclusion Studies at 37th EGOS Colloquium virtually organized by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) on July 8–10, 2021. Deadline for the submission of short papers is January 12, 2021!

Convenors: Laura Dobusch (Radboud University), Elke Schüßler (Johannes Kepler University Linz), Gail Whiteman (Lancaster University)

Short description of the sub-theme: While climate scientists and policy makers have long paid attention to the interrelationship between climate change and inclusion, this connection is rather neglected in organization studies. However, there is massive evidence that particularly vulnerable groups (e.g., women, indigenous people) are the most affected by climate change, but also that their knowledge could help develop climate-smart approaches more effectively. Against this backdrop, organizations represent a crucial bottleneck as one of the leading sources of and hopes for tackling climate change and enhancing inclusivity. Furthermore, while climate change and dynamics of inclusion and exclusion are (re)produced locally, these phenomena are exacerbated by global entanglements of actors, practices and institutions, wherein organizations take the role of powerful mediators. Therefore, the sub-theme aims at jointly looking at climate  change and inclusion/exclusion dynamics from an organization studies perspective in order to stimulate cross-pollination and raise interesting new theoretical questions.

Papers may address, but are not limited to the following topics:

• What do we empirically know about the relationship between current organizational approaches to tackle climate change and those to enhance inclusivity? How can we conceptually and theoretically understand this relationship?
• How inclusive are climate-smart organizing approaches? How climate-smart are approaches to inclusive organizing?
• When does the relationship between inclusive organizing and climate-smart organizing become mutually exclusive, when mutually stimulating?
• How inclusive are climate change movements? What are cross-field dynamics among multiple societal movements that intersect in the climate crisis?
• What are drivers and barriers for organizations in moving away from a “tradeoffs”-perspective between social, environmental, and economic goals towards alternative forms of organizing?
• What are examples of forms of organizing, working and ways of living that allow for a relationship with the nonhuman world that is not based on domination, exploitation, and objectification?
• What are suitable conceptual and institutional frameworks to address the interrelatedness among multiple social-ecological systems on different levels?

For the full Call for Papers go to:

https://www.egosnet.org/jart/prj3/egos/main.jart?rel=de&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1566433211083&subtheme_id=1574543973863

For any questions please contact (l.dobusch(at)ru(dot)nl)