Honorary doctor lecture with Anette Mikes: Climate risk and the politics of hope

Abstract

Even amongst those who acknowledge intensifying climate risk, there are diverse understandings of risk—and therefore of this risk—with varied and conflicting implications for action.

In this talk, I differentiate three perspectives on climate risk—preventable, strategic and external—and argue that societal actors selectively adopt the one best aligned with their institutional purpose and their hopes for future responses and outcomes. Those who regard climate risk as preventable demand urgent preventive action; those who regard it as a strategic risk make cost-benefit calculations to determine a mix of managerialist responses, and those who regard it as an external risk call for the development of resilience and better crisis response.

Instead of such partial understandings, I offer a synthesis, arguing that climate risk is a conflict-of-interest problem, for which selective and self-serving responses are insufficient. Drawing on an alternative perspective derived from the environmental humanities and contemporary literary works, I argue that our predicament is a planetary and species-level risk that calls for a moral reimagination of humanity’s standing in what ecologists call the web of life, which in turn calls for widespread structural reform and cultural change.

Connecting this planetary and species-level narrative with the accounting and management disciplines, I highlight some of the managerialist myths that accounting helps to maintain, chiefly due to its focus on the dominant preoccupation with shareholder value growth and a particular concept of profit. At the same time, I argue that accounting (and the related legal framework for corporations) is amenable to change and can therefore be mobilised by advocates of structural reform to reignite moral imagination and replace the dominant narratives of growth and profit with other definitions of societal and corporate progress. Some of this is already happening.

Overall, I offer reflections on accounting and a particular politics of hope that is active, oriented towards multiple values at risk, and focussed on countering prevailing despair, cynicism and dread.

About Anette Mikes

Anette Mikes is based at Saïd Business School and Hertford College, University of Oxford (formerly HEC Lusanne, Harvard Business School and London School of Economics and Political Science). Her research has greatly contributed to the development of a key area of the accounting and financial management literature, namely risk management. In this area, she is a pioneer with her in-depth case studies from the financial sector. With her focus on man-made disasters, Dr. Mikes’ research has expanded in recent years to include ethics and sustainability. She has also uniquely contributed to building bridges between academia and practice. This is evident, among other things, in her work and contribution in establishing “The Oxford Ministry for the Future”. The aim of this initiative is to create a multidisciplinary network of academics and practitioners who together influence the conversation about climate change and how society should address this problem. Dr. Mikes has received several prizes and awards for her contribution to the cutting edge of research in risk management and governance.

The conferment ceremony for new honorary doctors will be held in the University Main Building on 31 January 2025.