Submission Deadline: 31 May 2025
Special Issue Editors:
Lukas Falcke, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Ann-Kristin Zobel, University of St. Gallen
Youngjin Yoo, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University
Christopher Tucci, Imperial College Business School & College of Business and Innovation, NEOM University
Marleen Huysman, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
JMS Editor: Mirko Benischke, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
BACKGROUND
In 2023, the earth’s surface temperature was 1.18 degrees above the 20th-century average (NCEI, 2024). We are experiencing anthropogenic climate change with a quickly diminishing difference to the 1.5-degree target agreed upon in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Almost a decade after the agreement, climate ambitions have not yet sufficiently translated into action (IPCC, 2023). While prior research has begun to shed light on how individuals, organizations, stakeholders, and institutions respond to climate change (e.g., Howard-Grenville et al., 2014; Ansari et al., 2013; Wright & Nyberg, 2017), this research is now fueled by a new urgency and a set of novel issues (e.g., Howard-Grenville, 2021; Hanisch, 2024; Wickert and Muzio, 2024).
Given accelerated global warming and its consequences, management research must double down on explaining organizations’ efforts for climate change mitigation and adaptation (e.g., Zobel et al., 2023; Falcke et al., 2024; McGahan & Pongeluppe, 2023). First, mitigation involves drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible and permanently removing historic and unavoidable emissions from the atmosphere to stabilize global temperatures (IPCC, 2023). Second, adaptation refers to how organizations develop resilience to the consequences of climate change and the capabilities to recover, rebuild, and regenerate after climate disruptions (IPCC, 2023).
Given the required scale and speed for mitigation and adaptation, “business-as-usual” will be insufficient for addressing climate change (Wright & Nyberg, 2017). Yet, changing this “business-as-usual” logic is extremely difficult because of the legacy and path dependencies of organizations’ business models, processes, technologies, and behaviors that traditionally rely on a tight coupling between increasing emissions and economic performance (Nyberg & Wright, 2022; Falcke et al., 2024). Considering the urgency of the climate crisis, effective mitigation and adaptation thus require unprecedented innovations in organizational processes, technologies, business models, and behaviors (Pinkse et al., 2024). Innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation needs to deal with systemic technological challenges (Falcke et al., 2024), unpredictable interdependencies (Howard-Grenville et al., 2014), complex stakeholder relationships (McGahan & Pongeluppe, 2023), emotions (Bleda and Pinkse, 2024; Boe-Lillegraven et al., 2024), transdisciplinary knowledge (Zobel et al., 2024), existential risks (Nyberg & Wright, 2022), and issues of evaluativity (Ferraro et al., 2015). Thus, climate change is challenging current assumptions in innovation management (e.g., Bansal et al., 2024) and requires new and alternative approaches for generating innovations and putting them to use (Falcke et al., 2024; Zobel et al., 2023). While research on innovation management increasingly investigates how more collaborative and digital forms of innovation challenge the business-as-usual of firms across industries (e.g., Afuah and Tucci, 2012; Hagedoorn, Lokshin, Zobel, 2020; Yoo et al., 2012), we lack insights into how such new forms of innovation could facilitate or hinder climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Given the urgency of accelerated climate change and its drastic consequences, this special issue aims to curate scholarship on (1) innovation for climate change mitigation and (2) innovation for climate change adaptation.
AIMS AND SCOPE
Although significant research has begun to explore the relationship between innovation and climate change (e.g., Nambisan & George, 2024; Falcke et al., 2024; Porter et al., 2020), we currently still lack adequate theoretical and empirical insights needed to fully understand the role of innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Further research in these areas could facilitate a better understanding of the role of innovation in facilitating climate change mitigation and adaptation. It also provides avenues for expanding existing theories on organizational mechanisms and behaviors of innovation in times of the pervasive climate crisis. We are open to scholarly work on various technological and organizational innovations for climate change mitigation and adaptation and propose the following four focus areas to charter new research avenues.
Collaborative Innovation for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
Distributed and collaborative innovation processes are important in tackling climate change (Doh et al., 2019; McGahan et al., 2021). Various new forms of collaborative innovation, such as collective entrepreneurship, public-private partnerships, innovation ecosystems, or crowdsourcing, enable new ways of organizing innovation. However, we need to better understand how they can facilitate or hinder climate change mitigation and adaptation (Zobel et al., 2024). Thus, we call for research that tackles the following or related research questions:
- How and why can different forms of collaboration facilitate or hinder innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation?
- Via which collaborative mechanisms can organizations measure, mitigate, and reduce emissions across their entire value chain?
- How and why may collaborative mechanisms facilitate organizations’ ability to better anticipate and adapt to the consequences of climate change?
- In what ways do internal and external stakeholder pressures catalyze or constrain innovation in organizational responses to climate change?
- How can diverse teams (within and across organizations) drive innovation in climate change mitigation and adaptation?
- Which collaborative innovation mechanisms bridge emission-intensive organizations and regions contributing to climate change with organizations, communities, and regions heavily affected by climate change?
- What can we learn from theoretical advances in collaborative innovation (e.g., boundary spanning, extended knowledge-based view, innovation ecosystems) to better understand climate change mitigation and adaptation, and how can we advance theories on collaborative innovation through insights from studies in the context of climate change?
Digital Innovation for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
In light of advances in artificial intelligence, research on digital innovation has investigated how pervasive digital technologies fundamentally transform the ways in which organizations and individuals innovate (Baskerville et al., 2020; Pentland et al., 2022; Yoo et al., 2012). Exploring the role of digital innovation might unlock novel insights to understand the mechanisms and behaviors underlying innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation (Falcke et al., 2024; Nambisan & George, 2024). Research questions include but are not limited to:
- How and why can emerging digital technologies facilitate physical innovations needed for climate change mitigation and adaptation?
- How can digitally-enabled and digital-first innovations bridge emission-intensive organizations and regions contributing to climate change with organizations, communities, and regions heavily affected by climate change?
- How and why can organizations leverage digital innovation to better predict and adapt to the consequences of climate change?
- What mechanisms support the integration of digital innovations into organizational decision-making and leadership that drives climate change mitigation and adaptation?
- How can digital innovations and platforms facilitate or hinder the development of trust between stakeholders in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation (e.g., platforms for trustworthy carbon removal markets)?
- How can we better understand the unintended consequences of leveraging digital innovation for climate action (e.g., over-dependence, privacy concerns, emissions from data centers)?
- What can we learn from theoretical advances in digital innovation research (e.g., digital-first ontology, generativity) to better understand innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation? How can we advance theories on digital innovation through insights from climate change studies?
Implementing Innovation for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
While collaborative and digital innovation is crucial, realizing climate change mitigation and adaptation requires organizations to put innovations to use. Prior research on innovation implementation reveals how organizational members initially resist innovations (e.g., Pachidi et al., 2021) but can facilitate change through symbolic actions, changing practices, and routines, which can lead to both intended and unintended consequences (e.g., Van den Broek et al., 2021). Although exponentially growing technologies and black-boxed, self-learning AI applications generally require a better understanding of innovations in use and their consequences, this understanding becomes particularly relevant in the context of climate change. Climate change mitigation and adaptation require individuals and organizations to change their behavior and practices through the use of novel sociotechnical innovations such that they can realize climate change mitigation and adaptation and avoid unintended consequences. Thus, we call for research on the development, implementation, and use of innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Exemplary questions include but are not limited to:
- How and why do individuals change their practices and routines by using innovations that contribute to climate change mitigation and/or adaptation?
- How and why do individuals and organizations shape the acceptance or resistance to using innovations for climate mitigation and/or adaptations?
- How and why can socio-technical innovations for climate change mitigation and adaptation disrupt and change existing practices and routines in organizations?
- What practices and routines connect emission-intensive organizations and regions contributing to climate change with organizations, communities, and regions heavily affected by climate change?
- How are AI technologies developed, implemented, and used with the aim to contribute to climate change, and with what (un)intended consequences?
- What can we learn from theoretical developments in organizational behavior, practices, and routines to better understand innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and how can we extend prior theories?
Theorizing the Intersection of Digital Innovation, Collaboration, and Implementation of Innovation for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
Finally, given the interrelated nature of digital, collaborative, and implementation aspects of innovation, we call for research at the intersection of these three areas to advance a comprehensive understanding of climate change mitigation and adaptation:
- How and why can collaborative practices and behaviors facilitate or hinder the implementation of digital innovations for climate change mitigation and adaptation?
- How and why can collaborative and digital innovation for climate action trigger new ways of working with innovations intended for climate action? How can they lead to unintended consequences?
- How can we combine theoretical insights on organizational mechanisms and behaviors from digital innovation, collaborative innovation, and innovation implementation to better understand innovation’s role in facilitating climate action?
We acknowledge that theoretical insights on novel phenomena, such as innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation, might require a variety of methodological approaches, including but not limited to mixed methods, AI-led induction/abduction, configurational theorizing/analysis (QCA), distributed and systematic re-analysis of qualitative data, and ethnographic work. Thus, for this special issue, we are open to different and innovative methodologies. Importantly, given our focus on generating and implementing innovations for climate change mitigation and adaptation, submissions related (1) target setting, (2) sustainability reporting, or (3) emissions accounting – without a substantial link to innovation – would not fall within the scope of the special issue.
SUBMISSION PROCESS AND DEADLINES
- Submission Deadline: 31 May 2025
- Submissions should be prepared using the JMS Manuscript Preparation Guidelines (http://www.socadms.org.uk/journal-managementstudies/submission-guidelines/)
- Manuscripts should be submitted using the JMS ScholarOne system (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jmstudies)
- Articles will be reviewed according to the JMS double-blind review process
- We welcome informal inquiries relating to the Special Issue, proposed topics, and potential fit with the Special Issue objectives. Please direct any questions on the Special Issue to the Contact Guest Editor: l.a.falcke@vu.nl
SPECIAL ISSUE EVENTS
Pre-Submission: The editorial team will host an online information session in the fall of 2024 to introduce the call for papers for the special issue. Prospective contributors can ask questions about all aspects of the call for papers.
Post-Submission: The guest editors will organize a special issue in-person revision workshop in Fall 2025 (exact dates, times, and place TBA). Authors who receive a “revise and resubmit” (R&R) decision on their manuscript will be invited to attend this workshop. Participation in the workshop does not guarantee acceptance of the paper in the Special Issue and attendance is not a prerequisite for publication.
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