Engaging with Grand Challenges: An Institutional Logics Perspective

Macro-level positioning

As has been well noted, the origin of much institutional logics work refers to Friedland and Alford’s book chapter in 1991. They locate logics in a societal context as central ‘organizing principles’ that entail ‘a set of material practices and symbolic constructions’ (Friedland & Alford, 1991, p. 248). Logics, then, constitute the ‘rules of the game’ (Thornton & Ocasio, 1999, p. 802). Particularly, with the advent of modernity and its societal division of labour (Durkheim, 1964), such an ordering concept has helped us to explain the functioning of modern societies and its organizing institutions. As the concept has been increasingly employed, institutional logics has become something of a ‘buzz word’ in institutional theory and beyond (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008, p. 99). This is reflected in the increasing variety of slightly differing definitions (Kirchner, 2012) including logics as structuring axioms (Thornton et al., 2012) and logics as reasoning (McPherson & Sauder, 2013).

While for Friedland and Alford (1991) logics were bases for understanding macro-level societal ordering and organizing, the term institutional logic has also sometimes become applied when a coherent set of organizing practices and principles is observed. McPherson and Sauder (2013), for example, identify what they depict as four ideal types of institutional logics in a court: criminal punishment, rehabilitation, community accountability and efficiency. These are not linked to underlying macro-level institutional orders and are ‘focused less directly on the constitutive aspects of logics’ (Lounsbury & Wang, 2020, p. 9). This makes it a complementary perspective to Friedland and Alford (1991), as McPherson and Sauder (2013) conceptualize institutional logics as logics of reasoning. However, to align with how institutional logics were originally conceived, we note that logics of reasoning would need to be connected to the macro level. For example, in the case of McPherson and Sauder’s work, the sub-logic of criminal punishment could be linked to the state, rehabilitation to professions, community accountability to community, and efficiency to the market logic.

Many influential and highly cited articles have, in fact, linked their observations back to macro-level logics (e.g. Goodrick & Reay, 2011; Greenwood et al., 2010; Smets, Jarzabkowski, Burke, & Spee, 2015). This is also in line with recent work integrating the macro and micro, from inhabited institutionalism and ecosystems (DeJordy, Scully, Ventresca, & Creed, 2020) to practice-driven institutionalism (Smets, Morris, & Greenwood, 2012) as well as with calls to consider the ‘even more macro’ in what Steele, Toubiana and Greenwood (2019) call integrative institutionalism.

When we attend to this macro-level positioning and the embeddedness of a given logic within the interinstitutional system, it alerts us in the context of climate change to the importance of an environmental logic. In 1991, Friedland and Alford (p. 232) specified five institutional orders each with a distinct logic: ‘capitalist market, bureaucratic state, democracy, nuclear family, and Christian religion’. Thornton et al. (2012, p. 73) noted three further orders: community, corporation and profession, and withdrew democracy. Similar to Weber’s (2009) value spheres, Luhmann’s (1995) functional or subsystems and Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) orders of worth, these interweaving orders are understood to capture the social structures of modern societies.

Inspired by Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) green order, we assert however that there is a further central and distinct macro-level ordering principle that forms part of the interinstitutional system, namely the environment. We are not the first to claim this, as others have noted such an emerging green or environmental logic (Dahlmann & Grosvold, 2017; Grinevich, Huber, Karataş-Özkan, & Yavuz, 2019; Mitzinneck & Besharov, 2019). We contend however that this logic is central to explain contemporary societal movements and transformations, ideas and discourse. It effectively presents a pervasive domain with material and symbolic patterns that offer meaning to some social and societal phenomena. The environmental logic is about caring for the commons and future generations, connecting humans with the natural environment, a human–ecosphere symbiosis as a socio-ecological ecosystem, as well as renewability and sustainability (Ansari, Wijen, & Gray, 2013; Mitzinneck & Besharov, 2019; Weisenfeld & Hauerwaas, 2018). It resonates with arguments of breaking down ‘the age-old distinction between nature and society, between natural history and human history’ (Hoffman, 2019), making the environmental logic actually a societal one. Thereby it contributes towards a broadened perspective on society, particularly by considering ecological issues such as climate change.

Contextuality

Our second dimension relates to the issue of contextuality. Logics are instantiated, that is, they are situated and contextualized. While some influential articles have engaged with settings outside the global North (e.g. Battilana & Dorado, 2010; Smith & Besharov, 2019), the literature as a whole has been Northern/Western-centric. In fact, when Friedland and Alford (1991, p. 232) wrote about ‘central institutions of the contemporary capitalist West’, they were acutely aware of their analytical exclusion, yet may have not foreseen the biased theoretical developments of the logics perspective thereafter. Ironically, their concluding thought is applicable to this concern: ‘the social sciences risk becoming ideologies of the institutions they study’ (Friedland & Alford, 1991, p. 260). Connecting to this concern, we suggest that we risk depicting, privileging and universalizing a Northern-centric institutional scaffold. Furthermore, even when they are engaged with, non-Northern contexts are often misconceived with a ‘Northern lens’ and pejoratively labelled as being devoid of institutions (Bothello, Nason, & Schnyder, 2019; Mair, Martí, & Ventresca, 2012). As a result, the field intellectually omits potential sources of contextual richness. To alleviate this concern, one suggestion would be to draw on postcolonial theories to examine the specific historicity of logics. At the same time, we might need to look into how countries such as China offer alternative global organizing paradigms (Lounsbury & Wang, 2020) and reflect upon the taken-for-grantedness of institutions in the North such as democracies. These institutions may be taken for granted in the field, but they should not be by scholars studying them.

The institutional logics perspective conceptually allows us to be more nuanced and emphasize that logics exist across contexts and are shaped by their local conditions and respective cultures. Multiple interinstitutional systems – such as ‘the West’ identified by Friedland and Alford – coexist. Each system may have a different number, type and interplay of logics. Across these systems, we can observe intra-logic plurality (Gümüsay, 2020) that needs to be captured and explicated.

Given intra-logic plurality, institutional logics look different across cultures. For instance, Tanzanians might have a different understanding of the market logic than expatriates moving into these contexts from abroad (Tsuruta, 2006). Similarly, environmental issues such as CO₂ emissions or global warming and their perceived importance and origins are influenced by local settings and contextual interpretations. This means that within an interinstitutional system, multiple orders of the same logic can coexist and collide. We can thus see the significance of different logic-related concepts and their potential intra-institutional complexity (Meyer & Höllerer, 2016) such as the diversity within the community domain, which can for example be more or less collectivist in its manifestation. The contextually induced plurality within each institutional logic category is also relevant when considering the interaction between interinstitutional systems. Hence, we need to consider the complexity not only between logics, but also within each logic.

Furthermore, when an organization introduces a logic from outside the present interinstitutional system, it not only interplays with other logics, but there is also a broader question as to how the logic ‘fits’ into the entire interinstitutional system. In fact, organizations’ institutional acceptance and establishment may be inhibited not because the constellation of logics causes complexity, but because any instantiation of a logic from outside the interinstitutional system comes with institutional baggage that challenges an integration into a wider institutional context. As a result, we do not only observe institutional pluralism, but pluralisms, particularly across globally connected concerns such as grand challenges.

Moreover, interinstitutional systems may also – as a whole – relate to and engage with each other. Not only do logics interact across interinstitutional systems, but also these systems are continuously in contact and exchange, for instance due to the global diffusion and standardization of practices (Tempel & Walgenbach, 2007). These kinds of systemic interactions are not commonly examined in organization studies (Gümüsay, 2020), but are prominent in discourses about postcolonialism (Jack, Westwood, Srinivas, & Sardar, 2011) as well as civilizations and international relations such as world systems theory (Lounsbury & Wang, 2020; Wallerstein, 1974). Overall then, context features both in the plurality within each institutional logic as well as in the interaction between interinstitutional systems: logics and systems are contextual and contextualized.

Temporality

Our third dimension relates to the issue of temporality. Contemporary societies are conceived as highly differentiated and complex. They are constantly in flux, panta rhei. However, our approach when examining logics is often quite static. This cognitive simplification confines their analytical accuracy and strength.

For many studies the temporal stability of logics is analytically sufficient. Several central articles focus on the change of a logic constellation, not change in the logics themselves (e.g. Goodrick & Reay, 2011). Logics as constitutive principles are well established and taken for granted. An individual or a group of actors, particularly over short time frames, will find it hard if not impossible to change a logic. Still, logics are not static ordering concepts (Ocasio, Mauskapf, & Steele, 2015; Quattrone, 2015). Their firmness does not imply that they are immutable. This is an important ontological nuance. As logics are firm but malleable, we can use them to analyse large-scale institutional transformations. For instance, in many places the logic of the family moved over time from large and patriarchal to smaller and more equal. In more recent times, it has also incorporated more diverse relationship constellations such as single-sex couples.

Logics, as resilient social patterns, are thus time-bound. The temporality of logics means that we may observe – and need to reflect upon – meta-level change of an individual institutional logic and/or its interplay. Change can be both due to a transformation within a logic and the set-up of logics in an interinstitutional system. An example for the former would be the shift in the corporate logic in the United States in the 19^th and 20^th century (Ocasio et al., 2015). An example for the latter would be the change of the dominant logic in the global North from religion to market. The example of an environmental logic is again apt. While between the 16^th and 18^th centuries, the Scientific Revolution and ‘Age of Reason’ exalted the human ability to understand and control the environment, today, the ‘Age of the Anthropocene’ signals that the worldviews of the Enlightenment are no longer adequate and that there are limits to attempts to purely dominate and control interactions with the environment (Hoffman, 2019). Furthermore, its stronger presence in the public discourse has developed recently through environmental activist groups and rising global protests.

Both the change of individual logics and the change of their interplay can be evolutionary or revolutionary. The former was evolutionary in the slow demise of patriarchal family norms, and more disruptive in some cases of shifts from aristocratic to democratic states. Of course, oftentimes, change is both incremental and radical across time. For instance, the decline of the significance of the religious logic in most of Europe is a slow but constant change in the interinstitutional set-up. In contrast, the increase in religious diversity in Europe and its implications shapes the core of the religious logic, which in turn impacts the interinstitutional system. More recently, rising temperatures connect ecological and social developments leading to new types of large-scale, disruptive migration patterns through so-called climate change refugees. Again, these developments may impact the very core of logics and their underlying characteristics and significance.

For interinstitutional systems, this means that they transform due to three reasons: a new weighting and significance of particular logics; for example, one logic becoming more or less relevant for the interinstitutional system and its fields (Thornton & Ocasio, 1999); a change in the characteristics of a logic, such as the ontology of a logic being altered (Quattrone, 2015); or, a radically new selection of logics, such as one logic being integrated or excluded from an interinstitutional system. This has relevance in particular for longitudinal studies on logics as the conceptual set-up may be in flux, which implies a dynamization of the interinstitutional system and change over time.

Value plurality

Our final dimension is value plurality. We contend that logics not only provide meaning, they are created through meaning – and understood and enacted differently because they are differently understood and believed in. While most work examines how logics influence field constituents, we see the need to examine the constructedness of logics, their interplay and their substantive change. We believe that this helps us to bring their contested critical potential to the fore (Lok, 2019; Willmott, 2015).

Logics are not a priori logical. They have their own reasons and reasoning, which confer legitimacy onto them. They are ‘transrational’ systems (Friedland & Alford, 1991). Underlying the notion that logics are constructed orders is that they are socially created and performed. Drori (2020, p. 6) rightfully points out that ‘institutionalism has a very clear perspective on value judgements – namely, that value judgements too are context dependent and, as such, they too become the object of study’. This makes values a central concern. In fact, values, while central to original institutional writing (Selznick, 1957), need to be reinfused as a central component to our understanding of institutions (Amis, Slack, & Hinings, 2002; Kraatz & Flores, 2015; Kraatz, Flores, & Chandler, 2020; Suddaby, Elsbach, Greenwood, Meyer, & Zilber, 2010). Whereas important for Friedland and Alford (1991) and part of Thornton and Ocasio’s (1999, p. 804) definition of logics as patterns of ‘material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules’, the role of values has been rather neglected in work on logics. This is despite the fact that logics can ‘incorporate both the macrolevel influences, disregarded by old institutional theory, and the role of norms and values, of underlying reasons for action, neglected by new institutional theory with its focus on cognitive legitimacy’ (Gümüsay, 2020, p. 9).

Logics then are infused with values. The logic of the market, for instance, is neither value-neutral nor the only interpretation of a market (Gümüsay, 2018). It does not exist a priori, but is one interpretation of the market logic, which is based on certain values. It could be otherwise. Similarly, the state logic based on a democratic process is a decided social order and form of government. Interpretations and enactments of logics are values-driven manifestations. The normativity of, for instance, the state logic becomes particularly apparent when there is a discourse about who is part of the electorate. In history, the right to vote has been made dependent on characteristics such as disability, gender, national identity, race, religion, sexual orientation and social status. Currently, discourse about the environment concerns not only conflicts among logics, but also questions of definitional sovereignty and different ecological futures (Augustine, Soderstrom, Milner, & Weber, 2019; Slawinski & Bansal, 2012; Wenzel, Krämer, Koch, & Reckwitz, 2020). Logics in their conceptualization thus have underlying normative baggage.

Further, logics are not necessarily conceptually identical in terms of their normative implications. Some logics may have what Weber (1964) would describe as more formal rationality. For example, the market, in addition to many normative implications, focuses on utility as an outcome, such as simple means–end calculations. Other logics such as the family, religion and community can be depicted as having more ‘substantive rationality’, that is, ‘a conscious belief in the absolute value of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other form of behavior, entirely for its own sake and independently of any prospects of external success’ (Weber, 1964, p. 115).

The interplay of logics is also not one of equal social orders. Rather, we can observe how some logics take precedence over others in certain fields and situations. At an interinstitutional system level, we may conceptualize this as logic dominance. Macro-level change may thereby occur with three potential outcomes: the set-up remains unchanged in terms of the dominant logic with a potential increase in dominance; there may be a compromise among logic advocates; or, the ordering may change, and we see a switch of dominant logics.

In addition to such a logic interplay, logics may also form and transform each other. Habermas (1987) asserts that we observe a permeation of the lifeworld through the system. In particular, the market logic is pervasive and shapes other logics such as the family, religion, community and also the environment. The rationalization of society is effectively the penetration of the market logic in all spheres of life (Power, 2019; Weber, 1904). Social orders can thus claim prevalence as meta-logics as the boundaries between logics become blurred. As the social orders we draw from are transformed, so are resulting interpretations and enactments. This has key consequences with regard to individual psychology, organizational performance and purpose, and societal cohesion. For instance, a dominating market logic may alter the family logic from solidarity to efficiency considerations for families, family businesses and policies.

In terms of theoretical grounding, logics are not mutually exclusive, as they overlap in jurisdictions and are oftentimes ‘impure’ in that they are shaped by and contain attributes of other logics. However, a logic must also be somewhat incommensurable with regard to another logic as otherwise diverse beliefs, values and meanings could be reduced to one value instead of coexisting values (Berlin, 1969). On the whole, an interinstitutional system thus does not consist of fully mutually exclusive logics. This has significant consequences for the interaction of logics. For instance, when the market logic in the global North is a market logic shaped by Christian values, then it may be more difficult for another religious logic to coexist and draw upon this market logic, with more potential for an institutional struggle (Gümüsay, Smets, & Morris, 2020).

Macro-level positioning and the environmental logic

We suggest two options to engage climate change based on arguments regarding the macro-level positioning of logics. First, conceiving an environmental logic as a key macro-level factor allows us to conceptualize climate change as a dispute that draws from logics such as the environment and the market. The environmental logic sets limits to expansion and thus opposes growth logics such as the market. Its inclusion in climate change discussions would widen the conceptualization of the interinstitutional system from egocentric to ecocentric or at least eco-inclusive. This connects to the performative role of scholarly work, which can offer the language, conceptual toolkit or ‘logic’ for practitioners to think and act differently.

It is important ‘to understand where activists come from’ (Lounsbury & Wang, 2020, p. 17) and to theorize accordingly. ‘Fridays for Future’, ‘Extinction Rebellion’ and other social movements highlight the significance of an environmental logic in contemporary societies; in many countries, a Green Party brings a political focus on this issue. Environmental concerns envisaged by such groups cannot be subsumed under other logics and their respective macro-level institutional orders, such as community: they warrant a distinct logic of their own. Unlike other logics, an environmental logic instantiates a sustainable ecosphere that encompasses and balances biophysical and human needs of current and future generations. In other words, in order to be able to generalize the discourse and action around climate change, we need to be able to link this to broader, macro-level institutional orders in ways not currently apparent.

Indeed, as noted above, the conceptualization of an environmental logic has already been intimated by several scholars including Bartlett, Tywoniak and Newton (2009, p. 5), who suggested that a ‘range of practices related to climate change initiatives and the environment have been constructed, legitimated and adopted by social actors’. In other words, discourse and disputes about climate change are shaped by a system of meanings and practices (Aykut, Morena, & Foyer, 2020) which can be linked to logics. These meanings and practices have, inter alia, emerged due to reputational and legitimacy pressures, and because of regulatory changes requiring compliance with certain environmental standards. Importantly and in line with our earlier arguments, Bartlett and colleagues (2009) allude to the necessity of viewing climate change as a problem that pervades different levels of analysis (individual, community, organization, field and society) and emphasize that each of these levels plays a role in defining the dominant logic underpinning climate change. Considering macro-level positioning allows us to take into account shifting social reality and deepen our understanding of how the environmental logic is societally constructed in the processes of assessing and addressing climate change. This re-emphasizes the materiality of logics as well as the relationality between humans and nature which brings a focus on the socio-material drivers and consequences of climate change.

Climate change requires engagement across macro-level orders, particularly as modern tendencies such as fragmentation, quantification, accumulation and rankings in society have aggravated the ecological challenge (Göpel, 2016; Luhmann, 2004). This opens up opportunities to examine how the market with a notion of utility (for someone) and the family with a notion of solidarity (to someone) are significant in shaping climate change discourse and action. It also brings attention to the tensions between social foundations of societies and ecological ceilings of natural resources (Raworth, 2017). The institutional logics lens thus permits us to capture conceptually the interinstitutional system as a whole, allowing us to probe more deeply into how we address grand challenges. A lower discount of future generations’ utility and increased intergenerational solidarity, for instance, would significantly impact the engagement of societies with climate change.

There are many empirical contexts and cases one could draw on to examine this interplay (e.g. Hiatt, Grandy, & Lee, 2015; Schüssler, Rüling, & Wittneben, 2014). For example, ‘Fridays for Future’ and 350.org are both young-activist groups seeking, in different ways, to address the climate crisis from the perspective of future generations. Again, such a connection to the macro level allows us to more appropriately generalize and theorize. This approach is also in line with the notion of grand challenges implying ‘multiple criteria of worth’ (Ferraro et al., 2015, p. 364), which means that climate change as a complex and multi-evaluative grand challenge needs to be examined with a focus on a constellation of logics including the environment.

Contextuality, logic plurality and interacting interinstitutional systems

Capturing the contextuality of logics requires taking into account the diversity of macro-level ordering systems that shape perspectives on climate change. As George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi and Tihanyi (2016, p. 1889) note: ‘Societal norms or logics may influence how participants think of the goal, whether they engage, and how they act.’ In the context of climate change, for example, a Northern development organization in Indonesia may seek to combat climate change in rural regions on the island of Borneo by offering incentives to halt deforestation. To do so, the organization will have to understand, value and take into account the perceptions of local populations on climate change, the locales in which they reside, and how they may envisage the slowdown of deforestation, if indeed they believe in the reality of climate change and its links to deforestation in the first place. Otherwise, as demonstrated by another example, the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol to support emission-reduction or emission-limitation projects in developing countries, initiatives are likely to fail – at least from the perspective of some countries (Nakhooda, Caravani, Bird, & Schalatek, 2011). In the case of CDM, which were instantiated to catalyse climate-friendly projects in low-income countries by allowing developers to generate revenue by selling ‘carbon credits’ or ‘offsets’, developers did not believe (enough) or did not care (enough) about the detrimental effects of climate change in emerging economies. As a result, they not only ignored the needs and approaches of local populations but also dismissed them as unimportant (International Rivers, 2008). As such, it is important to understand how the diverse interinstitutional systems with varying understandings of climate change interact with each other (Hoffman, 2011).

In addition, climate change is a global problem that manifests locally. The issue of climate change may not only conceptually be conceived but also empirically perceived differently across cultures and contexts. Climate change refugees in the Pacific islands or Africa, for example, are likely to experience this grand challenge very differently from corporate managers in Europe or North America. They will each have different understandings of the issues, care about different aspects of it, and have different ways of approaching the issues they see as most relevant.

Thus, we contend that we need to be aware of intra-institutional logic plurality to better capture how climate change is understood and can be tackled. We think that it is important to answer research questions such as how grand challenges are institutionally contextualized and how different contextual understandings of grand challenges relate to each other. Research contexts to examine these questions are abundant across the world. An example is the work of GIZ, a German corporation for international cooperation, to implement the Climate Support Programme in countries such as South Africa. In the design of their approach, they work closely with local populations in order to find locally appropriate ways to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions resulting from extensive landfilling. There are many other organizations that seek to introduce climate change initiatives into different cultural contexts and will have to face the fact that ‘climate change’ is understood differently depending on contextual specificities including language, education and cultural belief systems.

Temporality and the resilience of interinstitutional systems

Given the temporality of institutional logics, macro-level interinstitutional system developments such as the great transformation (Polanyi, 2001) or the emergence of the Anthropocene (Crutzen, 2006) should be considered when examining grand challenges. We thus need to attend to current trends in macro-level institutional orders – as well as imagined, apocalyptic and desired future scenarios and simulations (Beckert, 2016; Hoffman & Jennings, 2018; Schneidewind, 2018). These great accelerations, boundary breaches and potential collapses encode themselves into institutions both in the present as well as the projected future.

Underlying recent developments such as populist presidential elections in the United States and Brazil or the United Kingdom’s referendum on Brexit may be fundamental institutional transformations that influence institutional logics such as state, market, community, environment and so on. Potentially permanent shifts in socio-material planetary situations for instance due to the (mis)use of natural geo-resources such as minerals and water, or gene manipulation and the reduction of crop diversity, lead to a changing nature of nature. The Covid-19 pandemic, the #BlackLivesMatter movement, civil unrest and global protests further challenge institutional structures. Furthermore, key technological trends such as digitalization need to be connected to issues of sustainability (George, Merrill, & Schillebeeckx, 2020). For example, with regard to ecological sustainability, ‘cloud’ services will intensify energy resource usage while developments in machine intelligence may codify biases (O’Neil, 2017). These varied changes of macro-level institutional orders and settings highlight the temporality of our social order and impact the engagement with grand challenges such as climate change and thus our conceptualization and theorization of the issues involved.

Researchers wishing to examine the impact of climate change face the difficulties of it being not only a complex, uncertain, multifaceted and changing phenomenon, but also an evolving construct. As grand challenges evolve, our lens may obstruct us in observing and analysing these (trans)formations if we do not take the temporality of logics into account. An example of the evolution of climate change and, as a result, the underlying environmental logic can be found in the context of Rwanda. With a focus on ‘green growth’, Rwanda has seen its environmental issues evolve, moving from deforestation to the degradation of ecosystems such as wetlands and lakes to focusing more on the rising problem of non-biodegradable plastic and packaging (Biruta, 2016). While such issues are interlinked in the present time, they are also interlinked temporally. With a commitment to restore and protect forests, wetlands and other ecosystems, forests such as Nyungwe and Mukura have been upgraded into national parks. This has led to an influx of tourists, which has been beneficial for Rwanda’s economy and yet has also heavily contributed to the rise of plastic pollution. In other words, this is an example of how climate change and the underlying logic may manifest in and be shaped by evolving issues over time.

A similar but slightly different point has been made by Ansari and colleagues (2013). Using longitudinal data, the authors tracked the evolution of the global climate change field over 40 years, showing the construction of a logic to avoid the ‘tragedy of the commons’, that is, the situation that in a shared resource system, individual actors act out of self-interest and without the common good in mind. They argue that it is the frame shifts of the different yet interdependent actors that shape and enable consensus over what they call the ‘transnational commons logic’. In other words, this logic is not static but changing through repeated interactions between actors and their changes in perception.

The important point we take from the examples of Rwanda and the tragedy of the commons is that acknowledging and weaving into one’s study the temporality of logics and the ways they come into existence and change over time are important in order to capture an issue’s intricacies and complexities. Historical and longitudinal studies should thus take into account the implication of material and social changes and the dynamic nature of both logics and grand challenges over time. Such an approach links well with the grand challenge facet of uncertainty and the difficulties of engaging with and forecasting the future.

The value plurality of logics

Finally, both logics and climate change are value-laden. For instance, we could envision a (very different) market logic that is based less on quantification, monetization and accumulation, and more on a culture of sufficiency or one that is less anthropocentric and also encompasses a protection of the natural environment. Implicit values impact the desirability and ability of climate change engagement and need to be reflected upon when actors draw from logics. Similarly, grand challenges such as climate change have an underlying set of values and beliefs that are likely to be understood and evaluated differently across audiences and jurisdictional boundaries.

Given the debate over definitions, meanings and implications, it is not surprising that both in public and scientific discourse the term climate change is often employed loosely and with ambiguity. The multiplicity of definitions and understandings is a key feature of most grand challenges and, we contend, should not be considered as an obstacle, but rather an opportunity.

Acknowledging that climate change is an issue that comes with multiple facets and factors that are of different priority is a chance to capture the complexity of the issue and relate back to one of our key points: grand challenges and the logics by which they can be captured and explored theoretically vary across systems and cultures, both in their definitions and perceptions. As expressed by Todorov (1986, p. 259):

The question of climatic change is perhaps the most complex and controversial in the entire science of meteorology. No strict criteria exist on how many dry years should occur to justify the use of the words ‘climatic change’. There is no unanimous opinion and agreement among climatologists on the definition of the term climate, let alone climatic change, climatic trend or fluctuation.

This might seem alarming to many scholars and be seen as an obstacle to engage with the grand challenge theoretically. However, we think that the existence of differing definitions also makes for interesting research endeavours. What it certainly confirms is our argument that both logics and grand challenges are value-laden: depending on the aspects one wants to highlight in the climate change debate, some definitions might be preferred over others. This should allow researchers to examine incongruences in values applied to the grand challenge of climate change. In zooming in to understand why discrepancies between empirics and theory exist, scholars can point to potentially interesting mechanisms and processes that help further our understanding of climate change. In researching grand challenges, we thus need to be aware and question the underlying values of both our theoretical constructs such as logics as well as the empirical phenomenon and the way it is perceived by different actors.