PI: Katharina Dittrich

Funding: UK Research and Innovation Council, Future Leaders Fellowship

Date: October 2020 to September 2024

Capital allocation is a powerful way of distributing agency – both diverting and directing it. The consequences of this feature of financial markets have never been limited to only direct market participants but, of course, stretch out into virtually all spheres of societies and environments. To a large extent, the global climate crisis is one of these consequences. This research project looks at the various finance-focused programmes that are currently pursued to manage the climate crisis as leveraging this feature of financial markets to redistribute – purposefully divert and direct – agency towards more sustainable economies and societies. These programmes could be described, in other words, as attempts to ‘financially re-design’ the Anthropocene.

The research project

This four-year academic research project, funded by the UK Research and Innovation Council and launched in October 2020, aims at tracing these attempts by focusing on one core challenge: the production of actionable data and analytics for climate risks and alignment targets which enable climate risk and impact management practices in the investment industry. While a lot of different high-level policy, NGO and industry programmes have recently been initiated, we are interested in how the proposed tools, data and manuals are actually implemented, used and combined in financial every-day practices.

Through the practical integration of climate risk and impact programmes, we currently see a growing and still to-be-consolidated financial climate ‘knowledge infrastructure’, which draws on tools and data from an ecosystem of various actors. Climate-related tools, data and practices that are currently provided and applied by these actors throughout the financial markets are central in dealing with both the impact of climate risks on investments and the impact investments have on the climate, environments and societies. Four types of actors that are active in climate-related investment practices ‘on the ground’, and which we currently work with, are: institutional investors, investor networks, analytics and data providers, and NGOs.

Methodology

The project seeks to investigate the very practical concerns and challenges that the variety of actors encounter and their efforts to overcome them. It systematically traces and analyses in real-time the activities of those different stakeholders within and across these organisations. Following a qualitative research approach, we are a team of four researchers drawing on observations, interviews and documents to trace in detail how those different organisations respond to and engage with climate-related financial risks and alignment targets through deploying and employing climate tools, data and practices.

Dr Katharina Dittrich

Katharina Dittrich is Associate Professor of Organisation Studies in the Organisation and Human Resource Management (OHRM) Group at Warwick Business School. Her research interests include climate change, organizational change, organizational routines/ routine dynamics and strategy, with an emphasis on practice-theoretical approaches and qualitative research methods.

Julius Kob

Dr. Julius Kob is a Research Fellow at Warwick Business School with research interests in economic sociology, social studies of finance, science and technology studies, risk modelling, climate change and disaster studies. In his previous research at the University of Edinburgh, he has been working on natural catastrophe risk in financial services with an emphasis on socio-materiality in epistemic market practices, in particular catastrophe modelling.

Matthias Täger

Matthias Täger is a Research Fellow at Warwick Business School and a PhD candidate at LSE with research interests in the social studies of finance, science and technology studies, sustainable finance, and climate governance. His research examines how financial markets organize their relationship with the planet’s climate with a particular focus on the socio-material construction of climate risk.

Mohamed Qaddoura

Mohamed Qaddoura is a PhD researcher at Warwick Business School (WBS), with both a prior full-time MBA and MSc in Marketing & Strategy from WBS. He was awarded the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (PhD Scholarship recipient) in 2020 to work with Katharina and Julius on the project. His main theoretical area of interest is in risk management, specifically riskwork with a focus on the novel subtypes of risk. His ongoing doctoral project consists of an ethnographic study in riskwork with climate change as the focal example of novel risk.

Tina Thomas

Tina Thomas is a PhD researcher at Warwick Business School within the Strategy and International Business Group. She completed her undergraduate studies in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. She received an MBA from London Business School and a PgDip in Econometrics from the London School of Economics. Her focus area is on how businesses evolve and develop new sustainable business models, and growth strategies, in response to the risks and opportunities posed by energy transition and to the sustainability requirements of the UN SDGs, financial institutions and regulatory bodies

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad is a PhD candidate in Political Theory at the University of Edinburgh and a research assistant at Warwick Business School. In his PhD research, he investigates corporate responsibilities for climate change mitigation and adaptation. His main academic interest is at the intersection of climate justice, corporate ethics, collective agency, and responsibility. Joseph has a diverse educational background in environmental studies, philosophy, and mathematics.