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This panel symposium is an opportunity to discuss the neglected area of grand challenges-- the intersection of social equity, justice, and climate change. The unprecedented disasters from climate change disproportionately affect marginalized communities, people of color, women, indigenous communities, the disabled, and those socioeconomically disadvantaged, particularly the global south. Further, those who contributed the least to carbon emissions will be the most affected. With the critical need to address the climate crisis and intersecting inequalities, in this symposium, we ask, how can organization and management scholars engage with climate justice? The panelists and audience will explore ideas around climate justice, engage interdisciplinary perspectives and ontological and epistemological approaches, and discuss implications for stakeholders and paths for future research and engaged scholarship. The symposium aims to deepen engagement with climate (in)justice in MOS scholarship and forge new routes for equity and climate change engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium provides an opportunity to discuss, with a distinguished panel of scholars, some of the challenges for business and management arising from the epoch of the Anthropocene, developing things we have learned about organization from the experience of COVID-19. Presentations will address three principal challenges: (a) how to 'open up' negotiations with materials and practices (meat, plastics, animals, guns, food, clothing) that have been typically neglected in the standard histories of modern business and management in an effort to explain: how did we get here? (b) how management and organization studies can develop sustainable and cooperative models of working and living together in the Anthropocene based on these negotiations; and (c) assess what the future of work and management will look like in the Anthropocene by drawing on recent studies of contemporary but non-standard and non-modern business practices. The panel presentations are followed by interactive discussions and dialogues across the panel and with audience members. Each round-table is led by a chair and supported by a discussant. The round table sessions will allow participants to share ideas and critical reflections on living together in the Anthropocene. * Man v Meat: The Hidden Anthropocene of Three Fleshly Case Studies * Presenter: Bill Cooke; U. of York * These Lips are No Longer Sealed: Restorying Non-Corporeal Connections Through Seal Hunting * Presenter: Shelley Price; Gustavson School of Business, U. of Victoria * French absolutist military technology: Fossil fuels, guns, and military Keynesianism * Presenter: Richard Marens; California State U. Sacramento * Clothing Ourselves in Hot Climates: Oulipean Experiments and Crafty Practices * Presenter: Marta Gasparin; Copenhagen Business School * Researching Ocean Plastic Pollution: A patchy road to Anthropocene knowledge-making in MOS * Presenter: Seray Ergene; U. of Rhode Island * Dee Constructing Organization: Fermenting Ethno-geomorphology and Becoming Activist * Presenter: Damian O'Doherty; Critical Management Studies [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study the intersections of racial and environmental injustices in histories of the Anthropocene -- a new geological epoch where human activity has changed the functioning of the earth system. Drawing from environmental justice and racism scholarship, we critically analyze recent management research on grand challenges and show how the proposed solutions, such as sustainable technologies, circular economy, and shared economy, exacerbate racial injustices faced by communities of color. We contend that a climate justice agenda that is grounded on racial justice is necessary for our scholarship to develop a racially just management and organization studies in the Anthropocene. To accomplish this agenda, we propose three shifts: from studying elite institutions to grassroots organizations concerned with climate and racial justice, from global technology to understanding local adaptation by communities of color, and from offering decontextualized solutions to unraveling racial histories that can address racial and climate injustices in the Anthropocene. We argue that management and organization studies cannot afford to overlook climate justice and racial justice -- they are both inextricably linked and one cannot be achieved without the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change, income inequality, and land degradation are some of the large-scale concerns that humanity is facing today. While a growing body of work looks at the relationship of organizations with the natural environment and society, most research takes the business case view, which prevents exploring the systemic roots of grand challenges and how organizations tackle them. To capture the processes and practices where the business case approach falls short, this paper develops a new analytic perspective, sustainability as relational practice, drawing from a practice theory approach informed by actor-network theory. Based on an in-depth longitudinal study of a large fashion company, this paper identifies four key interrelated processes in confronting large-scale concerns: visualizing grand challenges, creating allies through translations, transforming organization by performing sustainability, and becoming sustainable by re-visioning focus on grand challenges. The findings suggest that tackling grand challenges unfold through an overarching assembling process of social and material elements, making visible subtle but important nuances that produce larger organizational efforts beyond the business case. In illustrating how grand challenges are visualized, translated, performed, and re-visioned through various practices, this relational sustainability frame allows observing successful organizational means as well as limitations encountered when confronting systemic large-scale issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings in conversation Strategy-as-Practice and Corporate Sustainability literatures to study the interrelationships of social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability. Drawing on an analysis of a strategic change initiative at a large fashion company, and with the intellectual resources of Actor-network Theory, I develop a process model and advance intervening as a conceptual tool to help unpack the processes of how sustainability is done in organizations. Through a narrative case study, I show that the work of sustainability is carried out by four specific processes, each concerning the relations of the natural environment and human organizing: visualizing, committing, drifting-navigating, and informing. While visualizing involves intra-organizational practices, the other three processes concern macro-processes of production conditions in the industry and consumption habits of society. By illustrating how these four processes are assembled through various micro-practices, I re frame corporate sustainability as a strategy-making process for the well-being of people and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]