Boston, MA, July 08, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- No matter your viewpoint on climate change, it is something business and organizational leaders cannot control. Everything from extreme weather, to policy changes, social movements, and droughts could affect businesses. In her book Scenario Planning for Climate Change: A Guide for Strategists, released today from Routledge (available on Amazon and major booksellers), climate change strategist Nardia Haigh provides a guide on how to adapt to what climate changemay bring.
As a University of Massachusetts Boston professor in management, Haigh has spent the better part of 15 years researching how businesses react to climate change. She delves into the hard questions that organizations face, and focuses on helping readers identify the risks and driving forces that could impact their business. She goes over how any business can then strategize based on a step-by-step approach.
“Climate change can affect your organization in many ways, but three types of impacts stand out—changes in the physical natural environment, changes in policy, and changes in shareholder and/or market sentiment,” says Haigh.
Some of the ways business has been caught off guard include drought, extreme weather, and increasing temperature. For example, rising temperature is creating new wine regions in previously cooler areas, and winemakers in warming regions are looking for cooler temperatures. But climate change isn’t just about nature. Shareholder activism and employee activism are also becoming issues for business. Recently, over 3,500 Amazon employees urged the company to cease selling cloud services to companies in the oil and gas industries. Regardless of which factors could affect your business, planning for them is necessary to mitigate losses and leverage opportunities. The key to understanding your climate risk is to identify and understand what subset of climate issues could affect you and how they could interact.
Planning for these kinds of changes can be uncomfortable and expensive, but Haigh offers leaders a stepwise formula for building climate resilience that helps them: identify trends and events that could impact their business, develop four plausible scenarios based on these factors, identify warning signals to track as time progresses, and develop strategies that allow a business to be better prepared for the variety of outcomes possible.
“The power of scenario planning is in its ability to develop strategic timing, so decision-makers can answer questions like 'What strategies make sense regardless of what the future might bring?', 'What needs to be done right now?', 'What might we need to do in the future, and when?'” shared Haigh.
The book is currently the #1 new release in business ethics on Amazon, and has already received high praise from industry professionals and policy experts alike:
"A useful step-by-step guide for all those who wish to manage climate change in their organization. Brings the daunting macro challenge down to helpful concrete steps." —Christiana Figueres, Former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Founding Partner of www.GlobalOptimism.com
"Climate change is the ultimate systems thinking challenge. We should be thinking about how climate change is going to affect our communities, businesses, operations, and missions. It’s high time we had a ‘how to’ guide for putting a strategic thinking hat on and tackling the unprecedented transformation we must undertake to ensure health, security and economic vitality in a changing world." —Daniel Kreeger, Executive Director, Association of Climate Change Officers
"The need for scenario planning has never been greater. The January 2019 PG&E bankruptcy was described by The Wall Street Journal as ‘the first major corporate casualty of climate change. The same week, David Crane, former utility CEO, said that within two decades Amazon or Google will dominate electricity provision in the U.S. Haigh provides a valuable resource for climate strategists." —Gib Hedstrom, Author, Sustainability: What It Is and How to Measure It
"Climate related risks and transitions involve large uncertainties and long timeframes that are not often addressed with conventional strategic planning. The book offers a comprehensive, step-by-step process with helpful lists and tables to plan for an uncertain future. Leading an organization through the scenario planning process will not only result in a sound plan but will increase management’s understanding of the best ways to respond to potential impacts of climate change." —David Clark, Vice President, Sustainability, Amcor
Nardia’s work has been cited in major outlets such as Ideas for Leaders, Business and Management INK, PBS Newshour, and The Guardian. You can now buy Scenario Planning for Climate Change: A Guide for Strategists from major booksellers and on Amazon. For more information about Nardia Haigh, please visit here. You can access her press kit here.
About the author:
Dr. Nardia Haigh is the author of the straight forward, step-by-step book for businesses: Scenario Planning for Climate Change. For nearly fifteen years, Nardia has been working at the intersection of climate change and strategy. She has taught hundreds of executives and business students how to strategize for climate change resilience using scenario planning. Nardia is a tenured Associate Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She earned her Ph.D. in Business Management at the University of Queensland Business School in Brisbane, Australia.
Paperback: 166 pages
Published by Routledge (June 26, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-13: 978-1138498402
ISBN-10: 1138498408
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.4 x 9.2 inches
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