Introduction: Connecting Climate Change to Sociological Research on Organizations

Sociologists have recognized that climate change affects virtually every aspect of society, and sociological scholarship on climate change has increased in recent years. This volume aims to build on insights from sociology, management, and other disciplines that employ a meso-scale perspective to understand how different types of organizations both contribute and respond to climate change. This volume brings together new empirical papers spanning various subfields within sociology and across social sciences. Our interrelated goals are (1) to highlight stimulating new research on organizational actions in response to grand challenges such as climate change and (2) to set an agenda for theorizing about organizations and climate change. This agenda considers the actions taken by different types of organizations, both individually and collectively, which can result in either climate change mitigation or climate deterioration. We preview the contributions of each paper in this volume, discuss how they illuminate unique aspects of the ways in which the sociology of organizations can be brought to bear on climate change, and conclude by sketching a brief agenda for future research.