100 Books Like Managing Institutional Complexity

Governance is a social function centered on steering societies toward collectively desirable outcomes.

By contrast, a government is an organization (or collection of organizations) authorized to deal with issues of governance in a particular society.

While governments are responsible for addressing needs for governance in many settings, this distinction allows us to explore situations featuring efforts to respond to needs for governance in the absence of a government.

This is a critical observation at the global level where there are many needs for governance but no world government.

It has freed the community to analyze a range of governance systems (often called regimes) dealing with matters of security, economics, and the environment, while setting aside unproductive debates about the pros and cons of efforts to create a world government.

In recent times, international regimes have arisen to address a wide range of specific needs for governance.

With regard to environmental concerns, specific regimes deal with marine issues like fishing and shipping, atmospheric issues like transboundary air pollution and ozone depletion, and global concerns like the loss of biological diversity and climate change.

Some regimes are effective (e.g. the regime to protect the stratospheric ozone layer). But others are much less effective (e.g. the regime to protect biological diversity). This makes it critical to focus on regime effectiveness.

What is the proper way to think about effectiveness? What are the determinants of effectiveness? Adopting a problem-solving perspective, this book initiates a process of addressing this subject systematically.

Some problems are more difficult to solve than others. Some regimes have a greater capacity to solve problems than others. Some issue-specific regimes are located within broader political settings that are more conducive… show more.

In Western thinking based on the ideal of the rule of law, there is a distinct preference for regimes or governance systems that are articulated in legally binding instruments negotiated by states (e.g. treaties or conventions) and that emphasize the central role of rules in the form of mandatory requirements and prohibitions.

But the key to effective governance treated as a matter of social steering is to find ways to guide or channel the behavior of those states and nonstate actors whose actions are relevant to any given need for governance. 

One alternative to rule-based governance is goal-based governance or, in other words, a strategy that emphasizes setting collective goals (e.g. keeping temperature increases at the Earth’s surface to less than 1.5° C) and then launching a vigorous and coordinated effort to meet these goals within a specified period of time.

Goal-based governance is familiar at the domestic level… show more.

The dramatic growth in human populations and the extraordinary increase in human capacities to affect the environment has led to a transformation of the setting in which issues of environmental governance arise.

The result is the onset of a new era commonly described as the Anthropocene and the rise of the idea of Earth system governance. The biophysical conditions that control the Earth’s climate system or the diversity of life on the planet play critical roles as determinants of human well-being.

But human actions also are now critical forces in determining the character of the climate system and the future of biological diversity on the planet. There is still a need for regimes dealing with specific environmental concerns, such as transboundary air pollution, persistent organic pollutants, or the spread of plastic debris.

At the same time, there is a critical need to focus on arrangements designed to sustain key planetary… show more.

This book appears heavy reading and complex but it can be considered in individual sections. That makes a complex subject easier to understand. It looks specifically at the fiscal impacts of climate change and countermeasures.

The economic perspective is critical, but it is not the only consideration of the impacts of climate change, and this book reveals how social and environmental factors can relate to economic costs and benefits from a fiscal perspective.

I’m not a fan of either Doomsday or Pollyanna-ish books, especially in relation to climate change. I’ve read lots of books on this subject, and this is my favorite.

It doesn’t shy away from explaining what’s at stake and what is likely to happen if we don’t stop the escalation of climate-heating gases in our atmosphere, but it offers us a path toward solving this potential catastrophe that we can and must take together.  

We've all heard about climate change by now—but does constantly talking about it make a difference? Or does it matter more how you talk about it? Stoknes gives comprehensive explanations about the messaging that's most effective to get through to people about climate change from a psychological and marketing point of view.

A must-read for anyone who wants to talk about global warming, whether you're creating large-scale marketing plans or just trying to talk to family and friends.

For people who are into the nitty-gritty, a book of climate-related trivia collected and edited by best-selling author Seth Godin. Where this book shines is in being a springboard for further ideas—from what you can do in your own life, to how you can contact and connect with others.

For instance, did you know: a] sheep's wool can be used for insulation? b] concrete is a huge producer of greenhouse gases, but there are new methods of concrete production that are greener? c] it takes 9 gallons of water to produce 1 cup of tea, and 39 gallons to produce 1 cup of coffee? d] electric bikes were invented in the 1890s?

This book pairs particularly well with Stephen Schneider’s book, as it picks up where that book ends. When I met Michael and heard him talk about his experiences, I didn’t think this book would surprise me, but I still found it shocking. Michael is one of the world’s leading climate scientists, and his work was fundamental in identifying the early signs of rising global temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s.

But in this book, it’s not the science that is shocking, but the behavior of politicians, lobbyists, and conspiracy theorists, who have turned their attacks on the science into personal and vindictive attacks on the scientists themselves. Michael’s accounts of his battles against misinformation make for important reading for anyone who wants to understand why we’ve been so slow to act on climate change.

Dahr Jamail’s End of Ice threads his life experiences as a prized reporter, mountaineer, and climate activist, sharing personal human stories and experiences that reveal the difficult, cold, and hard evidence showing us that our cryosphere is irreversibly changing before our eyes. His easy-to-read prose, supported by well-researched and irrefutable science, gives us a unique introspection into the Anthropocene, chronicling the profound changes we are witnessing to Mother Nature and the demise of our frozen resources. I was enthralled by Jamail’s reflections on the end of ice.