Abstract:

This paper is based on the findings of an empirical study bringing together current oil and gas employees with former employees now advocating for alternative paths away from fossil fuels via lobbying or climate activism. Through online workshops, they get to engage, using storytelling, in constructive exchange and co-creation of visions for a sustainable future, envisaging the role of the fossil fuel industry within it. This represents an innovative approach to climate change related action, by facilitating acts of co-creation between individuals adopting positions typically studied separately and considered antagonistic. We argue that this antagonistic perspective and assumption that these groups can only operate against, rather than with, one another, constitutes a missed opportunity to creatively envisage new paths towards a sustainable future. Through bringing these differing views together constructively, this paper embraces a Deleuzian immanent ethics theoretical framework, offering a shift in the current climate change debate involving the oil and gas industry. Our empirical study explores the potential for storytelling-based co-creation to challenge existing moral systems, and in doing so offers new possibilities in the context of a grand societal challenge such as climate change.

Please choose your submission type: Developmental Paper

Primary Track: Sustainable and Responsible Business

Keywords: responsible business;HRM/OB;case study;focus groups

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Dr. Ai Yu