Anna Dowbiggin - Climate Risk and Business: New Challenges for Organizations

Cover illustration: Melisa Hasan

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The purpose of this book is to conceptualize the transition challenges awaiting business as a result of climate risk. This is done through my tentative fivefold proposition in this book that organizations will rearrange organizational priorities and management practices to reduce risk exposures created by climate risk.

I regard this holistic academic treatment of climate risk as urgent and critical, given a fragmented literature base, low empirics on decarbonization practices, and the disappointing reported business response to reduce carbon across value chains.

Urgent, because we are running out of time to reduce global atmospheric GhG concentration levels. Critical, because an all-in view of business mitigation effort has an enormous role to play in course-correcting the climate trajectory we face.

This book is written for academic audiences primarily. My attention is given to theory as well as practice, to paint a view of empirics that may or may not be supported by theory, and to demonstrate where scholarly enlivenment opportunities are located. Readers may note some extant theoretical speculations may need refurbishments to account for current business conditions. I view this as a source of academic contribution needed in both literature and in the teaching of responsible business in business school curricula.

Furthermore, this book topic is written with a dominant risk management lens to reflect what I call the emergent ontological standardization of climate risk. Definite ideas about what climate risk is and its prescriptions (generally speaking) are promulgated by the Task Force on Climate-Related Risk and the Financial Stability Board.

This is a significant departure from prior management theory on organizational climate response and is reminiscent of conversations I have had with practitioners. In those instances, I had the privilege of lively and protracted business conversations about the difference between climate change and climate risk. Those differences, I hope, emerge as a secondary outcome of reading this bookto move past prior climate narratives, and to reconceptualize the climate emergency as a mainstream and multidimensional strategic business risk of ultimate importance to everyone.

I wish to thank my colleagues, friends, and family who contributed to the development of this book. I am grateful to Prof. Devi Jankowicz at Edinburgh Business School where I began to think about climate risk as a research agenda in 2017. The insights of colleagues at the US Academy of Management, Chatham House in the UK and the many business practitioners who are working on carbon strategies within the industry, are greatly acknowledged for their support. I am grateful for your insights, wisdomand friendships. I am also grateful for the inspiration routinely provided to me by the students I teach and mentor in business research and climate studies. I am also indebted to Ph.D. candidate William Little who assisted in the production of the manuscript, and to the editors at Palgrave Macmillan who took me on as the author for this important book topic.