Andrew Hoffman

Natural scientists have proposed that humankind has entered a new geologic epoch. Termed the “Anthropocene,” this new reality revolves around the central role of human activity in multiple Earth ecosystems. That challenge requires a rethinking of social science explanations of organization and environment relationships. In this article, we discuss the need to politicize institutional theory as a means understanding “Anthropocene Society,” and in turn what that resultant society means for the Anthropocene in the natural environment. We modify the constitutive elements of institutional orders and a set of main change mechanisms to explore three scenarios around which future Anthropocene Societies might be built—Collapsing Systems, Market Rules, and Cultural Re-Enlightenment. Simultaneously, we use observations from the Anthropocene to expose limitations in present institutional theory and propose extensions to remedy them. Overall, this article challenges organizational scholars to consider a new paradigm under which research in environmental sustainability and social sustainability takes place.

Today, we have made climate change trivial by making its solutions easy, looking for simple answers that are palatable, generally framing it in the language of commerce. In the long run, it won’t work. There is no technological or political silver bullet to solving our environmental problems. While important in the short term, Elon Musk and the power of the market alone will not save us in the long term. In the long term, we will have to change the way we think. Without systemic changes in our culture and values, we will never recover from the destructive path on which we are embarked. This warning becomes all the more urgent as we find ourselves facing a new scale of environmental problems in what scientists are calling the Anthropocene, an era that requires a fundamental change in the intellectual, cultural and psychological conceptions of who we are as humans, what is the world around us, and how the two are intertwined. And to that end, solutions must be found in religion and philosophy. If the collective responsibility we need in the Anthropocene is connected to the teachings of the Bible, Torah, Quran, Bhagavad-gītā, Tripitaka and oral traditions of indigenous peoples, or the philosophies of Aurelius, Locke, Voltaire, Madison, Wordsworth, Thoreau, and Russell, then the world can change on its axis. It has happened before and with great upheaval, and it can happen again. But it will involve a culture shift as grand and sweeping as the Enlightenment, Reformation or Scientific Revolution.