Explaining Public Organization Adaptation to Climate Change: Configurations of Macro- and Meso-Level Institutional Logics

Abstract

Climate change can bring about large-scale irreversible physical impacts and systemic changes in the operating environment of public organizations. Research on preconditions for organizational adaptation to climate change has produced two parallel lines of inquiry, one focusing on macro-level norms, rules and expectations and the other on meso-level culture, design and structure within the organization. Drawing on the meta-theory of institutional logics, this study proposes a configurational approach to link institutionally aware top managers with the combination and reconciliation of macro- and meso-level logics. We identify government authority, professionalism and market as macro-level institutional logics, and risk-based logic and capacity-based logic as critical meso-level institutional logics. Our theory proposes that 1) the macro- and meso-level institutional logics co-exist in systematic ways as to produce identifiable configurations, 2) the configurations are differentially associated with climate adaptation, and 3) the effects of each logic differ across the configurations. Using a 2019 national survey on approximately 1000 top managers in the largest U.S. transit agencies, we apply confirmatory factor analysis and laten profile analysis to identify three distinct clusters: forerunner, complacent and market-oriented. Only the forerunner cluster is adaptive to climate change, while the two others are maladaptive. Findings from the multigroup structural equation modeling also demonstrate varied effects of each institutional logic on adaptation across the clusters, confirming institutional work at play to reconcile and integrate co-existing and potential contradictory logics.