What factors determine whether or not American public universities take advantage of opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially when doing so is likely to save them money?  
A theoretical case study of the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

Adequately addressing climate change requires major behavioral changes at all organizational levels, including universities.  But, curiously, we cannot count on organizational change to occur just because it benefits society and saves the organization money.  Our objective is to reveal the factors that determine whether universities take advantage of opportunities for reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs).  To uncover these factors, we analyzed three different decisions involving GHGs at UCSB by conducting interviews and reviewing campus documents.  We then viewed the three decisions through three theoretical lenses: pluralism, bureaucratic politics, and external pressures.  Each lens calls attention to influential factors in the university decision-making process; together these factors help explain whether and why a university is addressing its GHG emissions.  Although decision making at universities is often labyrinthine and sluggish due to the emphasis placed on process, consensus building, and layered rules and regulations, this complexity doesn’t prevent policy change—although universities, by design, are not nimble, they are not entirely opposed to change either.  We conclude that the presence of a champion, the champion’s level of power, coalition building, and the framing of the issue are the most critical factors in determining the success of GHG policies.

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