Kim Stanley Robinson—award-winning science fiction writer—has warned us that our current history is a choice between utopia or catastrophe. In this interview and in the following reflections, we explore the implications of this existential choice for the social science disciplines; in particular, economics, finance, accounting, and management. Our goals are to build a provocation and develop some propositions about the direction of capitalism and the purpose of management research in an age of climate crisis. Against the backdrop of dread and greed and the specter of plutocratic capitalism, we offer a politics of hope. We envision a green capitalism in which corporations are held accountable for environmental and social stewardship. Rather than falling back on government or the corporation as an “either/or” choice, we urge a “both/and” approach and call for the active inclusion of communities and citizens in climate response through democratic, polycentric governance structures. Within this agenda, we envision a new role for the academy as “Ministry”; namely, giving voice to future generations and the silent (or silenced) victims of the present and, by embracing pragmatic realism, inspiring a liveable future—an optopia—that we can still forge from where we are.

With companies increasingly expected to undertake potentially costly climate-response strategies, we explore the roles of management control systems (MCSs) in how companies simultaneously manage their decarbonization objectives and their financial commitments. Based on research at 19 European chemical, steel, and utility corporations, we extend the concept of “proactive/reactive” response strategies by proposing three additional decarbonization strategies: wholesale green transition, green segmentation, and engagement. Second, we highlight the recursive relationship between MCSs and these strategies. We also postulate a dynamic model of MCSs evolution in the decarbonization context, whereby engagement strategies form the foundation of green segmentation and vice versa. Third, drawing on an integrative model, we propose three antecedents to companies’ response strategies relevant in this context, namely, their framing of decarbonization as an opportunity or a threat, the different perspectives on the availability of green technologies, and the different perspectives on the policy context.