A systematic review of the use of organization and management theories in climate change studies

Climate change studies have been gaining increasing importance in the academic debate, and also in the field of organizations and management. Scholars have contributed to this field by borrowing approaches from sustainable business research. However, some authors have raised unanswered questions about the contribution of these studies to the management theories. According to them, climate change studies have failed to provide theoretical insights and too often they have adopted a descriptive and practical approach. Our review describes the theoretical contribution of the climate change papers, identifying the most often used management theories. The analysis results for 28 different management theories indicate that, while some theories such as the institutional and stakeholder theories have been widely debated, the relation between business climate change strategies and other organization theories still appears to be unexplored.