A Change in Social Logics for Sustainability?

By Carl Joachim Kock, Professor of Strategy at IE Business School.

In a recent article in The Atlantic on the corona crisis, one encouraging quote stuck out for me: “there is… the potential for a much better world after we get through this trauma.” The author, Ed Yong, goes on to suggest that “pandemics can also catalyze social change.”

If we apply this to environmental issues, there is indeed evidence of short-term benefits: as factories shut and traffic dwindles, pollution naturally decreases. However, these are transient effects that will be undone once the economy picks up again. But there may be other more subtle yet longer-lasting and perhaps more impactful changes that this pandemic might catalyze.

My prior research suggests that societies that are normally less inclined to prioritize social goods may change these priorities and thus generate better environmental outcomes when faced with external developments that emphasize the importance of collaboration. The draconian measures enforcing social distancing may, paradoxically, lead to precisely such a pro-social change in the countries least likely to entertain social action.

Institutional and social logics

In a recent study, my collaborator Byung Min and I looked at the effect of the Kyoto protocol on CO2 emissions across nations. In line with the general perception that the Kyoto agreement was a failure, we indeed could not find a measurable impact in many countries, notably those with relatively collaborative cultures and histories of pro-environmental policies and activities.

Surprisingly, however, we did find a significant CO2 reduction following the negotiation of the Kyoto protocol in nations with a distinctly less collaborative culture. In our study, we argued that this was the result of a change in what Thornton and Ocasio call institutional logics, which are the socially constructed practices, assumptions, and beliefs that guide the behavior of individuals or groups.

The countries with the highest pre-existing concerns for environmental issues were not much affected by the negotiations around Kyoto, as that was what they were doing all along. The Kyoto protocol, in other words, simply reaffirmed but did not challenge or change their institutional logics—or rather, their social logics—but in countries that followed a more shareholder-centric, arms-length logic of individualism, the mere fact that their governments were engaging in international discussions about these issues seems to have affected the social logics of their citizens in a direction that was positive for pro-environmental action.

By actively engaging in international negotiations regarding environmental practices, governments thus seem to have “led by example”—and, by emphasizing hitherto neglected issues, they affected the social logics of their countries.

A pro-social direction

The currently enforced social distancing measures might cause a different process of change, but with similar results. On the surface, creating “distance” reduces social interactions in the near term, yet at their core, these measures are actually an expression of social solidarity. For the better of the whole, we restrict our own freedom!

Going forward, this experience of solidarity and shared destiny is likely, I suggest, to leave a marked imprint on the overall social logics of hundreds of millions of individuals. As such, the current episode seems poised to affect the social logics of nations in a pro-social direction, and do so precisely in those countries normally least prone to do so.

Accordingly, a small positive effect of the current crisis might well be to enhance social awareness in exactly those places where that might be most needed, hopefully laying the foundation for more cooperation on sustainability.