Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan
Andy Hoffman is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan; a position that holds joint appointments in the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability.
Hoffman’s academic work uses organizational behavior theories to understand the cultural and institutional aspects of environmental issues for organizations. The disciplinary focus of this research is devoted to theoretical questions surrounding institutional and cultural change; the empirical focus is directed towards the topic of sustainability, the natural environment, and climate change. He has published over one-hundred articles/book chapters and nineteen books, which have been translated into six languages. This work centers on several sub-themes.
- Institutional Theory, Change and Power: He uses a sociological perspective to understand the processes by which environmental issues both emerge and evolve as social, political and managerial issues, focusing on the expansion of institutional theory, the shifting nature of organizational fields, and the role of power and politics in these dynamics.
- Market and Business Implications of Sustainability: His work explores how corporations struggle to understand the implications of climate change for their market strategy.
- Resistance to Climate Science: Another strand of Hoffman’s work has sought to understanding why a social consensus has failed to emerge on climate change, focusing on the ideological preferences, personal experience, values, worldviews and social groups that influence individual decision making.
- The Social Implications of the Anthropocene: Where physical scientists debate the scope of human activity on the natural environment, Hoffman (with P. Devereaux Jennings) has explored how that shift manifests itself in the culture and institutions of society, what is referred to as “Anthropocene Society,” and involves a change in the intellectual, cultural and psychological conceptions of who we are as humans, what the “natural environment” is and how the two are related and inter-connected.
- Academic Engagement in Public and Political Discourse: Hoffman’s work has advocated for an examination of the changing context of academia and the emergent role of the engaged scholar.
- Reinvigorating the Training of Future Business Leaders: His work has also advocated for a rejuvenation of business education pedagogy and curriculum to properly address the systemic problems of climate change and inequality.
Hoffman has served on several committees for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, including America’s Climate Choices: Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change, the Sackler Colloquia on Science Communication, Climate Change Education: Preparing Future and Current Business Leaders and Contributions of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Towards Understanding Climate Change. His work has been covered in numerous media outlets, including the New York Times, Scientific American, Time, the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, The Atlantic and National Public Radio.
