Abstract
The research question of the paper is: How can financial firms go green? Change in banks, fund managers, and other financial firms is at the heart of green finance, its role in green economy changes, and rapid responses to significant risks of climate change. This involves change in complex organisational systems in firms and comprises significant problems of understanding and action. Complexity must be addressed to manage change and problems. Field and archival research are used to reveal the main elements, connections, and interactions, in the case financial firms as complex socio-technical systems (Mitleton-Kelly (2003), and in their green change process. The focus is on change in nonfinancial aspects and how this changes financial activities. An interdisciplinary approach ( de Bakker et al, 2019) is adopted to interpret the resulting empirical change narrative and develop an equivalent theoretical narrative. These narratives constitute a conceptual framework in the form of a Green ‘Behavioural theory of the financial firm’. Managers and stakeholders can never fully understand and be ‘in control’, but they can develop agile and resilient organisations. This enhanced understanding is a means to ‘steer’ the financial firm complex system and its green change process through a ‘complex, tangled web of interactions’ (Holland J H, 2014) to achieve sustainability aims. These are part of the evolving means to realign value in financial markets with values of wider society (Carney, 2020).
Presenters
John HollandProfessor Emeritus, Adam Smith Business School, Glasgow University, East Dunbartonshire, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2022 Special Focus—Rethinking Organizational Resilience: Shared Meanings in Turbulent Times
KEYWORDS
Financial firm organisations, Climate change, Complexity, Conceptual frame, Intangibles, Resilience
