I am a PhD Candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. My research contributes to economic sociology, organizational theory, strategy, and climate politics. I focus on corporate sustainability as a lens into broader strategic, technical, and relational dynamics of organizational change under institutional pressures. I combine qualitative methods that yield close organizational insights with computational and survey approaches that reveal patterns across firms.

My dissertation investigates the emergence, adoption, and implementation of corporate climate disclosure. Climate disclosure—the collection and reporting of climate metrics to investors and regulators—has become a cornerstone of corporate climate governance today and is mandated across major financial markets worldwide. I analyze disclosure data from more than 6,000 global companies, over 140 interviews, 15 months of participant observation, and regulatory filings. Across four articles in the dissertation, I examine the financial interests that shape what gets measured and reported for climate accountability, how sustainability professionals inside companies coordinate across different sub-units to collect data for disclosure, how organizations navigate uncertainty in emissions measurement, and the extent to which reporting can lead to meaningful improvements in sustainability.

My work is published in Social Forces, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, and Technology in Society. Prior to graduate school, I earned a B.S. in Computer Science with honors in Science, Technology, and Society, and an M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University.

Publications

  1. Huang, Janna Z. 2026. “Risky Climate: The Endogenous Institutionalization of Climate Disclosure in Global Corporate Climate Governance.” Social Forces. [DOI]
  2. Fligstein, Neil and Janna Z. Huang. 2026. “Institutional Entrepreneurship in the Creation of Multistakeholder Governance Fields for Climate Change: The Case of the Corporate Climate Disclosure Field.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations: Organizations and Climate Change [Walker, E. and Vasi, I. (eds.)].
  3. Fligstein, Neil and Janna Z. Huang. 2025. “Finance in Sustainable Transition: A Comparative Review Across Institutional Investors, Asset Managers, Venture Capital, Insurance, and Municipal Bonds.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 16(4): e70012. [DOI]
  4. Huang, Janna Z. 2023. “A Break in the Cloud: The Local Sociotechnical Affordances Underlying Global Internet Infrastructures.” Technology in Society 74:102319. [DOI]

Under Review

  1. Huang, Janna Z. “The Realization Gap: How Potential Absorptive Capacity Drives Transformation but Not Performance.” (Under review at Strategic Management Journal)
  2. Huang, Janna Z. “Making Climate Count: Dynamics of Organizational Commensuration around Climate Disclosure.” (Revise and resubmit at Organization & Environment)
  3. Huang, Janna Z., Adair Morse, and Katherine Baird. “Jurisdictional Reinforcement in New Institutionalism: Evidence from the Integration of Sustainability in Corporations.” (Revise and resubmit at Organization Science)
  4. Huang, Janna Z., Angèle Christin, and Sanna J. Ali. “Metrics for Good? The Double-Edged Sword of Quantification in Sustainability and Responsible AI.” (Under review at Socio-Economic Review)
  5. Huang, Janna Z. and Neil Fligstein. “Cascading Climate: Institutional and Organizational Drivers of Voluntary Global Corporate Climate Disclosure.” (Under review at Sociological Science)

Manuscripts in Progress

  1. Huang, Janna Z. “Constructing Reactivity: Technical and Organizational Uncertainty in Measurement-Based Accountability.” (Preparation for journal submission)
  2. Huang, Janna Z. “Down the Climate Stack: AI, Sustainability, and the Politics of Corporate Climate Governance.” (Data analysis and writing)
  3. Huang, Janna Z. and Viet Phan. “Nature Assessment in Practice: Evidence from Early Corporate Adopters of TNFD.” (Data analysis and writing)