Hi, I’m Janna! I am a PhD Candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. I am on the 2026–27 academic job market. My research investigates how emerging institutional pressures for social and environmental performance reshape evaluation and expertise within organizations. Broadly, my research contributes to organizational theory, economic sociology, the sociology of knowledge, nonmarket strategy, and climate politics. I use qualitative, computational, and survey methods. My work is published in Social Forces, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, and Technology in Society.

My dissertation uses corporate climate disclosure as a lens into how broad uncertainties at the institutional level in how to regulate corporate climate accountability become negotiated and reconciled by organizations through reporting sustainability performance metrics. 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 5,000 global companies, over 150 interviews, 15 months of participant observation, and regulatory filings. Across three 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.

Other ongoing collaborative projects include comparative studies of corporate social responsibility (with Angèle Christin and Sanna Ali); how organizations structure hiring for sustainability work (with Adair Morse and Katherine Baird); the construction of indicators to evaluate nature impacts (with Viet Phan); and how data center infrastructures are changing financial and energy markets (with Armando Lara-Millán).

My work has been supported by the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative, the Hewlett Foundation, the American Sociological Association, and the Center for Advanced Internet Studies. 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, where I was also the winner of the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

  1. Huang, Janna Z. 2026. “Risky Climate: The Endogenous Institutionalization of Climate Disclosure in Corporate Climate Governance.” Social Forces. [DOI]
    Winner, ASA Sociology of Law Graduate Student Paper Award (Honorable Mention), 2026
  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.)]. [DOI]
  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]

Revise and Resubmit

  1. Huang, Janna Z. “Making Climate Count: Dynamics of Organizational Commensuration around Climate Disclosure.” (Revise and resubmit at Organization & Environment)
  2. 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)

Under Review

  1. Huang, Janna Z. “Engines of Reactivity: Internal Mechanisms of Emissions Revisions in Corporate Sustainability Reporting.” (Under review at Administrative Science Quarterly)
  2. 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)
  3. Huang, Janna Z. and Neil Fligstein. “Cascading Climate: Institutional and Organizational Drivers of Voluntary Global Corporate Climate Disclosure.” (Under review at Sociological Science)

In Preparation

  1. Huang, Janna Z. “Down the Climate Stack: AI, Sustainability, and the Politics of Corporate Climate Governance.” (Data analysis and writing)
  2. Huang, Janna Z. and Viet Phan. “Nature Assessment in Practice: Evidence from Early Corporate Adopters of TNFD.” (Data analysis and writing)