Co-evolutionary organisational response development model (CORD): a case study of an Australian energy company climate change responses

The thesis reports an investigation of the effects of the complex, evolving relationships between organisations and their environments. This examination is a case study of the responses of an Australian energy company to effects of climate change, and aims to enhance understanding of how organisational responses to climate change develop and evolve over time.
   The impact of climate change on the contemporary organisational environment has multiple aspects – natural, economic, technological and competitive. A vast body of literature on organisational responses to these impacts has emerged in recent decades, in the form of normative stage models and typologies. However, most of this literature is static and descriptive, with a focus on antecedents and outcomes rather than processes. How and why organisational responses to impacts of climate change develop and change over time has rarely, if ever, been investigated. Furthermore, this literature has treated organisational climate change responses in isolation, separately from their socio-economic system, and hence failed to address the interactions between organisational and environmental (or response regime) climate change responses.
   This thesis adopts a co-evolutionary theoretical perspective to investigate the processes through which organisational responses to climate change develop and evolve over time. In so doing, it examines the systemic embeddedness of the responding organisation in its socio-economic system. The co-evolutionary perspective adopted here encompasses the interactive, interdependent and mutually constitutive nature of organisations and their environments. By exploring the dynamic nature of organisational responses to climate change in this way, the
study explores the micro-foundations, generative dynamics and organisational interactions underlying the development of organisational climate change responses.
  
   The project includes a single qualitative case study of an instrumental Australian energy company (GENTAILER). The analysis is conducted at two levels. The macro level studies
organisational and response regime interactions, while the micro level focuses on interactions within the organisation. The key findings show how organisational climate change responses co-evolved with the response regime in this case.
   The study proposes a co-evolutionary model to explain the development of organisational climate change responses. The model illustrates co-evolutionary interactions and mutual influences between organisational climate change responses and the response regime.
   Moreover, it was found that organisational climate change responses developed as a result of symbiotic, interdependent co-evolution between GENTAILER and the response regime. This co-evolutionary process represents a mutual-causal, deviation-amplifying, positive feedback
cycle between response regime and GENTAILER.
   By examining the ways in which GENTAILER and its environment were able to influence aspects of each other’s evolution, the thesis extends current co-evolutionary theoretical perspectives and explains how co-evolution takes place. Also, by exploring the dynamic nature
of organisational responses to climate change through a co-evolutionary perspective, it investigates the micro-level generative dynamics and interactions underlying organisational climate change responses. Three micro-level generative processes (risk management processes;
capacity development processes; and sense-making processes) are identified as drivers of the co-evolution taking place in this study.