The Devolution of Organisational Climate Change Responses: A Case Study of Australian Electricity Sector.

Climate change has developed into one of the most pertinent issues for government, organizations and society in the 21st century (Enkvist, Naucler, & Oppenheim, 2008; Gilman, Randall, & Shwartz, 2007; Lash & Wellington, 2007; Porter & Reinhardt, 2007; Quiggin, 2012). As a source of unpredictable events, climate change has disrupted the stability of the natural system (Winn, Kirchgeorg, Griffiths, Linnenluecke, & Günther, 2011), while the reactions of governments to these disruptions have destabilised the traditional regulatory systems (Esty & Charnovitz, 2012). Because organizations are sub-systems operating within national regulatory sub-systems within the global regulatory system, climate change has been a source of increasing complexity at all three levels (Hoffmann & Sgrò, 2011; Linnenluecke, Griffiths, & Winn, 2012; Winn et al., 2011). As a result climate change response is occurring at three interconnected levels: global, national and organisational. Organisational climate change responses are drawn from global responses, which in turn are drawn from national responses. In order to study how organisational responses are devolved from global and national responses, this paper conducted a case study of the Australian electricity sector. Through an in depth analysis of the three energy gentailers, this paper presents the strategies, measures and outcomes of organisational climate change responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]