Date of Conferral

2017

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Information Systems and Technology

Advisor

David Gould

Abstract

Examination of empirical research confirmed that climate change is a complex problem of anthropological origin and revealed the need for a management framework to facilitate strategic decisions aimed at mitigating a rise in global temperatures of 2-°C linked to irresponsible and unsustainable business practices. The purpose of this simulation study was to develop a management framework of resilience, robustness, sustainability, and adaptive-capacity (RRSA) for organizations viewed as complex systems to address the current unsustainable state. As such, the evolutionary-RRSA prisoner's dilemma (PD) simulation was developed using an evolutionary game theory approach to agent based modeling and simulation, to generate data. Regression analyses tested the relationships between organizational resilience (x1), robustness (x2), and sustainability (x3) as independent variables, and the dependent variable of adaptive capacity (y) for cooperative and defective strategies. The findings were that complex nonlinear relationships exist between resilience, robustness, sustainability, and adaptive-capacity, which is sensitive to initial conditions and may emerge and evolve from combinations of cooperative and defective decisions within the evolutionary RRSA PD management tool. This study resulted in the RRSA management framework, a cyclical 4-phased approach, which may be used by climate governance leaders, negotiators, and policy-makers to facilitate strategy to move global climate change policy forward by guiding bottom-up consumption and production of GHGs, thereby improving adaptive-capacity, while mitigating an increase in global temperatures of 2-°C, which in turn would improve global socio-economic conditions.

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