Despite growing recognition that countries around the world must transition to a low-carbon economy, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. One way that decarbonization has been obstructed, we argue, is by fossil fuel firms intentionally conflating their agenda with 'the people', evoking notions of national identity, security and prosperity. We develop the concept of carbon populism to explain why big oil, coal and gas firms make representative claims typically associated with democratically elected governments. This adds a significant layer of difficulty for stakeholders endeavouring to enact decarbonization. Drawing on an in-depth study of fossil fuel industries in Australia (mainly coal and gas), we demonstrate how different forms of political representation in the public and political spheres influence national identity, expert knowledge and public policy. These artificial forms of representation legitimize fossil fuel industries' political activities, authorize public policies that benefit it, and enable the industry to enjoy national dominance. We conclude by arguing that decarbonization can be achieved by rejecting carbon populism in favour of inclusive and participatory democratic representation.

In spite of national and corporate commitments to carbon neutrality, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase worsening climate change impacts. Within this context, climate protesters around the world are demanding a different future. In this paper, we are interested in how the fossil fuel industry and its political supporters have responded to these challenges and maintained fossil fuel hegemony. Based on interviews with influential informants from the political, lobbying and fossil fuel sectors as well as texts from media, speeches and press releases, our analysis shows how hegemony is defended by critiquing protesters' imaginaries as utopian (impossible) or dystopian (undesirable) and by constructing a conservative counter-utopia that is linked to the status quo of fossil fuel dominance. The findings explain how utopian politics is employed to defend hegemony by (i) spatially fragmenting opponents and incorporating protesters' future imaginaries within a conservative counter-utopia, and (ii) temporally constructing a pathway from the status quo to this conservative counter-utopia. Our discussion of utopian politics contributes to the literature on imaginaries by understanding how constructed futures are politically navigated, and to discussions on hegemony by explaining the expansive (spatially and temporally) discursive strategies of maintaining hegemony. We conclude by arguing for the importance of utopian thinking in addressing climate change.

Despite widespread public concern and mounting climate impacts, Australia's climate policy remains stalled. This paper investigates how political, industrial, and environmental actors narrate climate change and each other, contributing to persistent inaction. Drawing on 62 interviews with key stakeholders, we identify three mechanisms - division, paralysis, and displacement - that sustain political inertia. These mechanisms operate through competing problem framings, strategic blame-shifting, and economic narratives that obscure the need for structural change. While existing literature has traced obstructionist tactics, our actor-centred analysis adds depth by showing how discursive interactions across stakeholder groups reproduce inertia, even in the absence of overt denial. Importantly, we argue that inertia is not merely passive but actively maintained by those with institutional power. By foregrounding the role of narrative in shaping climate politics, this study offers insight into the endurance of obstruction and the challenges of building coalitions for transformative climate action in Australia.

As demand for climate action continues to grow, the fossil fuel sector is increasingly under pressure to justify its continuation. In this paper, we argue that there has been a shift in some parts of the sector from outright denial, or even delay, to claims of being an active part of a clean and green future. Using qualitative interviews conducted by the research team, alongside publicly accessible documentation from the Australian gas industry, our analysis shows how the industry employs a threefold strategy to navigate the tension between the necessity of climate action and its continued expansion. First, there is a shift away from substantive climate debates to discrediting activist’s moral and intellectual credibility. Second, the industry presents itself as the rational and pragmatic actor, advocating for a “technologically neutral” approach that prioritizes economic stability. Finally, it constructs a vision of the future in which gas remains central to the economy, technological progress, and global development. Drawing on Mark Fisher’s (2009) notion of “capitalist realism,” we develop the concept of corporate realism to draw together these responses. We suggest that corporate realism contributes to management and organization studies by illustrating the political and ideological maneuvering within the process of future-making. We also develop countermeasures to resist the corporate colonization of the future and support meaningful action on climate change.

With worsening climate impacts, traditional forms of environmental protest are being replaced with more spectacular interventions seeking dramatic decarbonization. In this paper, we explore the case study of the Stop Adani campaign in Australia, which sought to prevent the construction of the Adani Carmichael coal mine; the first of several “mega-mines” in the previously untapped Galilee coal basin. We show how climate activists engaged in performing agonism to create a political frontier opposing the mine, building solidarity to create an equivalence of interest with other communities, and ritualizing active participation, through large mass gatherings to signal the political power of the cause. While such strategies may not be sufficient to stop the extraction and use of fossil fuels, worsening climate impacts suggest that climate protests are likely to grow and intensify. The question is how these spectacular protests can challenge dominant institutions maintaining the use of fossil fuels.

Despite growing public concern over the worsening climate crisis, global carbon emissions continue to increase due to the expansion of fossil fuel use. This chapter applies the concept of hegemony to explain the dominance of fossil fuel energy in driving economic activity. Hegemony refers to the construction of what is seen as evident or common sense. This also entails viewing other positions as unrealistic, naïve, or even dangerous. By attending to different disorganizing strategies, it demonstrates how organizing efforts are undermined, which partly explains the failure in limiting fossil fuel use and addressing climate change. This contributes to current processual studies of grand challenges by attending to the fragmentation of the social field. More specifically, the development of three disorganization strategies—isolation, separation, and polarization—extends current discussion of the individualization of common goods and the demonization of environmental movements. This discussion also contributes to processual studies by showing the organizational dynamics underlying activities that appear to be spontaneous and local. Finally, and more practically, this contributes to the broader discussion on the failure to act on climate change.

Climate change is often described as an existential crisis calling for urgent action, yet there appears to have been relatively low levels of engagement on this issue within management scholarship. Contributors to this article, all of whom have engaged in climate action research, consider why it is that management scholars are generally choosing not to tackle this critically important challenge and argue what might be done to address this. In doing so, we provide new and alternative agendas for developing management research that will positively contribute to climate action.

In this Counterpoint, we argue for the importance of social movements in responding to the climate crisis by challenging the taken‐for‐granted practices and policies of corporate capitalism. These challenges politicize what is seen as ‘common sense’ and show that there are alternatives to the dominant social order of fossil‐fuelled economic growth. More specifically, we set out three ways to minimise future harm and suffering by discussing (i) the required decarbonisation of the economic system, (ii) the eventual degrowth needed to address the existing crisis and avoiding the creation of another, and (iii) the strengthening of democracy essential to breaking fossil fuel dependence. Challenges to corporate capitalism are often accused of being naïve and unrealistic, but responding to climate change demands an epochal rethink of what should be seen as ‘sensible’.

Abstract Corporations play a central role in the political economy of climate change. Since the Industrial Revolution, corporations have been the major producers of carbon emissions. More specifically, companies within the fossil-fuel sector have over time hampered action and legislation to mitigate climate change. Through public relations and corporate political activities, the fossil-fuel sector has implemented strategies to deny the science of climate change and delay urgent action to mitigate its worst effects. However, national governments and international organizations also turn to corporations for innovative solutions to address a worsening climate crisis, and in recent years many corporations have engaged with this issue to a greater degree, emphasizing strategic concern for climate change in terms of risk and opportunity. Key examples include companies developing “green” technologies and products, eco-efficiency initiatives, the uptake of renewable energy, and an increased awareness of the physical risk of climate-induced extreme weather events threatening operations and infrastructure. This has included corporate commitments to “net-zero” emissions by, for example, 2050. However, the long-term timeframes and lack of detail of these commitments indicate that this strategy is foremost geared toward delaying a transition to alternative economic organizations that are better equipped to deal with decarbonization. These corporate commitments to future change constitute a form of “predatory delay” in defending current practice and appealing to the idea that systemic government intervention is not needed. Overall, corporations have promoted the idea that climate change as a problem of excessive consumption can be solved by further consumption, albeit framed within the innovative capacities of “greener” business and technological innovation.

This article extends the entrepreneurship literature by presenting a multispecies lens that attends to the rights, agency, and welfare of nonhumans in the ecological and climate change crises. It responds to calls for rethinking entrepreneurship beyond anthropocentrism, integrating insights from multispecies studies and philosophical ethology. The multispecies lens framework amalgamates humans and nonhumans as equal partners in entrepreneurial endeavors. Based on seven years of field research, including over 200 interviews, participant observation, and archival data, the article uses meta-ethnographic analysis to synthesize findings from four related multispecies studies and develop a line-of-argument analysis. Three themes showcase how multispecies relations can be reconciled in theory and practice: 1) community engagement and environmental education, 2) the interdependency of species through One Welfare, and 3) organizing for intrinsic value over profit. These themes shape the multispecies lens in entrepreneurship framework, offering a foundation for scholars and practitioners to consider nonhumans as equal partners within capitalist endeavors. The article concludes with recommendations for fostering equitable multispecies partnerships in entrepreneurship, if it's not already too late given the dire circumstances of the Anthropocene.

Corporations are primary emitters of greenhouse gases yet are also portrayed as key agents in responding to climate change. This overview article explains corporate responses to the climate crisis at three levels of analysis: (i) political (shaping the climate debate and influencing climate policy); (ii) organizational (enacting strategies and practices to address climate change); and (iii) individual (managers and employees caring about and acting on climate change in their personal and professional lives). Our synthesis of the burgeoning literature on corporations and climate change in the fields of management and organization studies, human geography, and political economy highlights how and why particular corporate responses have been enacted, encompassing managerial as well as more critical and radical understandings of business activities. This article is categorized under:

The catastrophic consequences of climate change are now evident with extreme weather events impacting communities and ecosystems. Against calls within civil society for dramatic decarbonisation, the continued expansion of the fossil fuel industry is constructed by governments and business as ‘common sense’. By analysing the political process surrounding the 2016 and 2017 coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, we show how a fossil fuel hegemony has been upheld against the counter-hegemonic forces of environmental critique and the catastrophic bleaching events. By distinguishing between politics (i.e. strategies, practices and discourses) and the political (i.e. the antagonism constitutive of societies), we explain what different hegemonic practices achieve in the process of establishing and defending hegemony. In our case, this resulted in downplaying emissions mitigation and emphasising local climate change adaptation. Through the political process, business solutions and self-regulation were presented as the logical response to the climate crisis.

Environmental movements play an increasingly pivotal role in societal responses to pressing issues, such as climate change. These movements are often multi-scalar, spanning locations, ideological orientations, organisational types, and tactics. We investigate how the UK's anti-fracking movement manages the tension between the necessary convergence of collective actions and this divergence of scale. Based on a frame analysis of press releases, position papers, websites, blogs and 20 semi-structured interviews, the paper shows how heterogeneous environmental movement actors, with diverse framings of fracking, utilised three convergence processes - funnelling, expanding and familiarising - making connections vertically, horizontally and contextually. These processes created a 'web' of resistance that held the environmental movement together while maintaining diversity. Our paper contributes to the environmental movement literature by explaining how movements overcome divergence without establishing homogeneity. This is important in understanding how environmental movements can expand their role within a broader constituency in opposing environmental destruction.

Climate change presents a variety of doomsday scenarios for human society, including more extreme and frequent storms, droughts, heatwaves and fires, the heating and acidification of oceans, rising sea levels, biodiversity decline, food shortages, as well as exacerbating geopolitical tensions and conflicts. While many corporations and communities are already anticipating and planning for various climate impacts, we argue that much management research is in denial of the profound consequences of a worsening climate crisis. This is evident in the relative neglect of climate change in our research and teaching and we argue reflects how management theories legitimize the continuation of business as usual. We suggest that if the management academy is to maintain relevance in a context of worsening climate change, then we need to rethink the focus of our research and engage with new and emerging literatures and concepts that will better enable societies to undertake the complex processes of climate mitigation, adaptation, and the limitation of human suffering.

Boundary spanning is a focused effort to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and information between producers (i.e., analysts, scientists, researchers, etc.) and users (i.e., decision-makers, policy makers, managers, etc.) in support of evidence-informed decision-making. Here we provide specific examples of approaches and products by a boundary spanning organization as part of a regional ecosystem-based management program. These examples illustrate a range of potential boundary spanning activities while also describing a more holistic boundary system that employs several complimentary and related approaches to improve the use of knowledge in decision-making across interfaces separating different institutions. This system is supported by, and indeed requires, a larger institutional framework that provides scaffolding upon which the boundary spanning operates. As described, the institutional framework is often not supplied solely by a single boundary spanning organization, but rather by a suite of cooperating institutions. Last, we discuss approaches to evaluating the various impacts of boundary spanning.

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity and has become an area of growing focus in Business & Society. Looking back and reviewing climate change discussion within this journal highlights the importance of time and space in addressing the climate crisis. Looking forward, we extend existing research by theorizing and politicizing the co-implication of time and space through the concept of “space-time.” To illustrate this, we employ the logical structure of “the trace” to advance business and society scholarship on climate change by shifting the focus to a place-bound emphasis on climate impacts and directing scholarship toward climate change’s temporal markers and material effects. By operationalizing “the trace,” we contribute to Business & Society debates in three ways: (a) reimagining complex stakeholder relations, (b) advancing a performative understanding of climate risk, and (c) foregrounding planetary systems and the physical environment.