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1 – 10 of 50Binh Bui, Zichao (Alex) Wang and Matthäus Tekathen
This study examines how carbon tools, including carbon accounting and management tools, can be created, used, modified and linked with other traditional management controls to…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines how carbon tools, including carbon accounting and management tools, can be created, used, modified and linked with other traditional management controls to materialise and effectuate organisations’ response strategies to multiple interacting logics in carbon management and the role of sustainability managers in these processes.
Design/methodology/approach
This study utilises the construct of accounting toolmaking, which refers to practices of adopting, adjusting and reconfiguring accounting tools to unfold how carbon tools are used as means to materialise responses to multiple interacting carbon management logics. It embraces a field study approach, whereby 38 sustainability managers and staff from 30 organisations in New Zealand were interviewed.
Findings
This study finds that carbon toolmaking is an important means to materialise and effectuate organisations’ response strategies to multiple interacting carbon management logics. Four response strategies are identified: separation, selective coupling, combination and hybridisation. Adopting activity involves considering the additionality, detailing, localising and cascading of carbon measures and targets and their linkage to the broader carbon management programme. In adjusting carbon tools, organisations adapt the frequency and orientation of carbon reporting, intensity of carbon monitoring and breadth of carbon information sharing. Through focusing on either procedural sequencing, assimilating, equating or integrating, toolmaking reconfigures the relationship between carbon tools and traditional management control systems. Together, these three toolmaking activities can be configured differently to construct carbon tools that are fit for purpose for each response strategy. These activities also enact certain roles on sustainability managers in the process of representing, communicating and/or transferring carbon information knowledge, which also facilitate different response strategies.
Practical implications
The study demonstrates the various carbon toolmaking practices that allow organisations to handle the multiple interacting logics in carbon management. The findings provide suggestions for organisations on how to adopt, adjust and reconfigure carbon tools to better embed the ecological logic in organisations’ strategies and operations.
Originality/value
The authors identify how carbon toolmaking materialises and effectuates organisations’ responses to multiple interacting logics in carbon management.
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Binh Bui, Thu Phuong Truong and Ellie J. Chapple
This study aims to understand the organisational benefits of carbon-focussed management control systems (carbon MCS) under a regulatory context.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand the organisational benefits of carbon-focussed management control systems (carbon MCS) under a regulatory context.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conduct a survey of 85 New Zealand (NZ) organisations covering different industries, sizes and compliance obligations.
Findings
The results suggest a significant direct positive impact of carbon MCS on organisations’ non-financial benefits and an indirect impact on financial benefits via non-financial benefits. The impact on non-financial benefits is strongest when a whole carbon MCS package is used rather than individual carbon controls. However, the highest impact on financial benefits are attained when only diagnostic controls are used rather than other controls or the whole MCS package. Firms in primary, manufacturing and energy sectors and those with export activities are less likely to achieve organisational benefits, while those with a compliance obligation under the emissions trading scheme are more likely to perceive such benefits.
Research limitations/implications
The study has a limited sample size (85 firms), a unique context (NZ) and coves only large firms. Further, there are no objective performance measures to validate survey responses regarding organisational benefits.
Practical implications
The findings provide a business case for managers and practitioners in formulating their strategic and MCS responses to climate change issues.
Originality/value
The authors focus on carbon MCS and adopt a wider range of carbon MCS levers than previous research. The authors discern not only non-financial benefits but also financial benefits from MCS use.
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Binh Bui, Olayinka Moses and John Dumay
The authors unpack the critical role of rhetoric in developing and justifying the New Zealand (NZ) government's coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown strategy.
Abstract
Purpose
The authors unpack the critical role of rhetoric in developing and justifying the New Zealand (NZ) government's coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown strategy.
Design/methodology/approach
Using Green's (2004) theory of rhetorical diffusion, the authors analysed government documents and media releases before, during and after the lockdown to reconstruct the government's rationale.
Findings
The blending of kairos (sense of urgency and “right” time to act), ethos (emphasis on “saving lives”), pathos (fear of disruption and death) and selective use of health-based logos (shrinking infection rates), prompted fast initial adoption of the lockdown. However, support for the rhetoric wavered post-lockdown as absence of robust logos became apparent to the public.
Research limitations/implications
The authors implicate the role of rhetoric in decision-makers’ ability to successfully elicit support for a new practice under urgency and the right moment to act using emotionalisation and moralisation. The assessment of the NZ government's response strategy provides insights decision-makers could glean in developing policies to tame the virus.
Practical implications
This study’s analysis demonstrates the unsustainability of rhetoric in the absence of reliable information.
Originality/value
The authors demonstrate the consequences of limited (intermittent) evidence and disregard for accounting/accountability data in public policy decisions under a rhetorical strategy.
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Binh Bui, Mohamed Chelli and Muhammad Nurul Houqe
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of climate change rating organisations on rated firms, to understand whether disclosure ratings can facilitate enhanced…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of climate change rating organisations on rated firms, to understand whether disclosure ratings can facilitate enhanced emissions performance.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses 1,848 cross-country firm-year observations from organisations that responded to the carbon disclosure project (the rater) between 2011 and 2015 and, hence, were rated for their disclosure. Drawing on the ideology of numbers, this paper hypothesises that the disciplinary power of ratings will result in rated firms improving their subsequent disclosure scores. Following the environmentally-friendly ideology, this study hypothesises that poorly-rated firms will adopt decoupling behaviour, by improving their climate change disclosure scores without reducing the intensity of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Findings
The results indicate that climate change disclosure ratings pressure poorly-rated firms to improve their disclosure scores in subsequent years, yet these firms are not inclined to lower their GHG emissions. Further, the direct publication of firms’ GHG emissions intensity can exert some restricted disciplinary impact on rated firms, as the more polluting firms tend to improve their subsequent climate change performance compared with those having lower emissions levels.
Practical implications
This paper argues that the ability of corporate sustainability rating schemes to influence corporate behaviour comprehensively is limited and should be used with caution.
Originality/value
This paper sheds new light on the ideological dynamics at play between the rater and the rated, while highlighting new aspects of the power-rating nexus in the climate change arena.
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