This paper examines the role of experimental spaces as a source of institutional innovation.We investigate the case of an experimental space that was instrumental in initiating the institutionalization of the European Carbon Market. Our findings highlight the key role of emotions in the simultaneous distancing from institutionalized patterns, and engagement in an alternative action model. We subsequently develop a process model of how experimental spaces initiate institutional innovation in institutionalized fields. This model comprises three forms of institutional work. As previously established, boundary work consists delineating the space from the field, hence mitigating external institutional pressures. We argue that two additional forms of institutional work are required when field conditions are unconducive to institutional innovation. Distancing work consists in designing rules and procedures that alleviate space members' deep-seated attachment to the field's dominant models. Anchoring work, refers to the design of rules and procedures that connect the experimental space and the solution developed inside it to the field, hence facilitating its broader diffusion. We conclude with a discussion of how the design of experimental spaces and the deliberate use of emotions open new doors for generating institutional innovation.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the contributions of the special issue papers while presenting four broad research avenues. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on a review of current literature on climate change and carbon accounting. Findings The authors propose four broad avenues for research: climate change as a systemic and social issue, the multi-layered transition apparatus for climate change, climate vulnerability and the future of carbon accounting. Practical implications The authors connect this study with the requested institutional changes for climate breakdown, making the paper relevant for practice and policy. The authors notably point to education and professions as institutions that will request bold and urgent makeovers. Social implications The authors urge academics to reconsider climate change as a social issue, requiring to use new theoretical lenses such as emotions, eco-feminism, material politics and “dispositifs” to tackle this grand challenge. Originality/value This paper switches the authors’ viewpoint on carbon accounting to look at it from a more systemic and social lens.

Addressing global sustainability challenges requires a mainstreaming of business models for sustainability (BMfS) in mature industries. However, the presence of an already dominant mainstream business model in an industry tends to hold back BMfS. This article investigates how new types of BMfS can become generally accepted and widely adopted in an industry. It presents a qualitative study of the mainstreaming of BMfS in the Dutch electricity industry. The findings show that this process depends on entrepreneurs’ capacity to (1) incorporate alternative institutional logics into the design of BMfS to achieve optimal distinctiveness and (2) to directly alter the dominant institutional logic of the industry to make it more conducive to BMfS. Furthermore, successful BMfS act as anomalies that indirectly alter the industry’s dominant institutional logic. Anomalies support a self-reinforcing loop that accelerates the mainstreaming process. We integrate these findings into a dynamic model of the mainstreaming of BMfS.

International audienc

There is increasing interest in organizational scholarship in the role of place. To support these developments, we offer a framework for place-sensitive research in organizational analysis. The notion of place refers to a unique location, endowed with a material from and a socially constructed set of meanings. In line with the phenomenology of place, our framework first distinguishes between two ontologies of place: place as experience—through which people develop a sense of place—and place as practice—through which people engage collectively to make places. Second, our framework distinguishes between three temporal orientations in relation to place: past, present, and future. We then draw from research in geography to reflect on two under-explored methodological toolkits to collect data on and analyze place as experience and place as practice in organization studies: walking interviews, and geographical videography.