PhD Candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley

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Hi, I’m Janna! I am a PhD Candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. My research investigates how organizations learn to strategize within uncertain institutional contexts, especially for regulating corporate social and environmental accountability. I am also interested in how emerging institutional pressures for social and environmental performance reshape expertise and work within organizations. Broadly, my research contributes to economic sociology, organizational theory, nonmarket strategy, and climate politics. I use qualitative, computational, and survey methods.

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 6,000 global companies, over 140 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.

My work is published in Social Forces, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, and Technology in Society. I have 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.

I am on the 2026-27 academic job market.

Publications

• Huang, Janna Z. 2026. “Risky Climate: The Endogenous Institutionalization of Climate Disclosure in Global Corporate Climate Governance.” Social Forces. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soag009
• 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.)].
• 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. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.70012
• Huang, Janna Z. 2023. A Break in the Cloud: The Local Sociotechnical Affordances Underlying Global Internet Infrastructures. Technology in Society 74:102319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2023.102319

Under Review

• Huang, Janna Z. “Making Climate Count: Dynamics of Organizational Commensuration around Climate Disclosure” (revise and resubmit at Organization and Environment)
• 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)
• Huang, Janna Z., Angèle Christin, and Sanna J. Ali. “Metrics for Good? Quantification and Organizational Change in Sustainability and Responsible AI” (under review at Socio-Economic Review)
• Huang, Janna Z. and Neil Fligstein. “Cascading Climate: Institutional and Organizational Drivers of Voluntary Global Corporate Climate Disclosure” (under review at Sociological Science)