Going Beyond Climate Change Risk Management: Insights from the World’s Largest Most Sustainable Corporations

Evangeline Elijido-Ten and Peter Clarkson ()
Additional contact information
Peter Clarkson: The University of Queensland

Journal of Business Ethics, 2019, vol. 157, issue 4, No 10, 1067-1089

Abstract: Abstract In this study, we investigate whether firms recognised as superior sustainability performers respond differently to climate change regulatory, physical and other risks/opportunities and examine whether such differences predict sustainability performance in subsequent years. Further, we seek to gain insights from climate change programs and strategies of both superior and inferior sustainability performers. Adopting mixed methods, we use a merged sample from the Top500 world’s largest firms and the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations. Our quantitative analyses show that greater awareness of physical and other climate change opportunities is what sets superior performers apart, and that superior future sustainability performance is related to a firm’s stated awareness of these two types of opportunities. Qualitative content analysis of narrative disclosures confirm that superior performers provide more detailed description of climate change strategies that go beyond managing climate change risks. Our study contributes to the limited amount of research highlighting the value of proactively seeking opportunities rather than merely focussing on risk management.

Keywords: Climate change risks and opportunities; World’s largest firms; Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations; Carbon Disclosure Project; Mixed methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G14 Q51 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-017-3611-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:157:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-017-3611-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3611-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().