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This study aims to evaluate the adequacy of climate risk disclosure by providing empirical evidence on whether corporate disclosure meets rising stakeholders’ demand for risk disclosure concerning climate change.

Drawing on a triangulated approach for collecting data from multiple sources in a longitudinal study, we perform a panel regression analysis on a sample of multinational firms between 2007 and 2021. Inspired by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) principles, our innovative and inclusive model of measuring firm-level climate risks underscores the urgent need to redefine materiality from a broader value creation (rather than only financial) perspective, including the impact on sustainable development.

The findings of this study provide evidence of limited corporate climate risk disclosure, indicating that organisations have yet to accept the reality of climate-related risks. An additional finding supports the existence of a nexus between higher corporate environmental disclosure and higher corporate resilience to material financial and environmental risks, rather than pervasive sustainability risk disclosure.

We argue that a mechanical process for climate-related risk disclosure can limit related disclosure variability, risk reporting priority selection, thereby broadening the short-term perspective on financial materiality assessment for disclosure.

This study extends recent literature on the adequacy of corporate risk disclosure, highlighting the importance of disclosing material sustainability risks from the perspectives of different stakeholder groups for long-term success. Corporate management should place climate-related risks at the centre of their disclosure strategies. We argue that reducing the systematic underestimation of climate-related risks and variations in their disclosure practices may require regulations that enhance corporate perceptions and responses to these risks.

This study emphasises the importance of reconceptualising materiality from a multidimensional value creation standpoint, encapsulating financial and sustainable development considerations. This novel model of assessing firm-level climate risk, based on the GRI principles, underscores the necessity of developing a more comprehensive approach to evaluating materiality.

This paper aims to examine the effect of critical mass of women managers on corporate boards on the voluntary disclosure of climate change in a developing country in which the regulations on climate change disclosure is an area of growing research interest.

This study uses logistic panel regression models with a sample of 1,001 firm-years for companies in the Borsa Istanbul 100 Index that were asked to disclose voluntary climate change indicators over the seven-year period from 2014 to 2020 through the Carbon Disclosure Project.

This paper provides evidence from an emerging country that the critical mass of women on the board has no impact on voluntary climate change disclosure. In addition, the presence of independent managers on the board was found to have a significant impact on climate change disclosure. In addition, the results show that larger companies are more likely to report their climate change activities. Large companies are more visible due to their size, are perceived by stakeholders as more polluting and are, therefore, more likely to report on the environment.

The results show that the critical mass of women on the board has no effect on voluntary disclosure of climate change. Empirical tests are still needed to strengthen the overall validity of the critical mass of at least three women on boards in Türkiye.

Despite many valuable insights provided by critical mass theory, very few studies directly address critical mass and voluntary disclosure of climate change. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical and comprehensive paper in the Turkish context evaluating critical masses and voluntary corporate climate change giving a comparison between firms listed on financial industry and nonfinancial industry.

This study aims to examine the impact of board characteristics on climate change disclosures (CCDs) in the context of an emerging economy, with a unique focus on regulatory influences.

This study analyzes longitudinal data (2014–2021) from environmentally sensitive firms listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange, using a disclosure index developed within the Global Reporting Initiative framework. The authors use a neo-institutional theoretical lens to explore regulatory influences on CCD through board characteristics. This study uses hand-collected data from annual reports owing to the absence of an established database.

The results indicate that a larger board size, the presence of foreign directors and the existence of an audit committee correlate with higher levels of CCD disclosure. Conversely, a higher frequency of board meetings is associated with lower CCD disclosure levels. This study also observed an increase in CCD following the implementation of corporate governance guidelines by the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission, albeit with a relatively low number of firms making these disclosures.

This study contributes to the climate change reporting literature by providing empirical evidence of regulatory influences on CCD through board characteristics in an emerging economy. However, the findings may not be universally applicable, considering the study’s focus on Bangladeshi listed firms.

This study suggests growing pressures for diverse stakeholders, including researchers and regulatory bodies, to integrate climate change disclosure into routine activities. This study offers a valuable framework and insights for various stakeholders.

By emphasizing the influence of good governance and sustainability practices, this study contributes to stakeholders’ understanding, aiming to contribute to a better world.

This study stands out by uniquely positioning itself in the climate change reporting literature, shedding light on regulatory influences on CCD through board characteristics in the context of an emerging economy.

The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to address this threat. However, communication about social change in response to the climate crisis comes with challenges. These challenges manifest, among others, in public accusations of inconsistency in terms of hypocrisy and incapability against self-declared change agents in different arenas. This increasingly turns public climate communication into a “blame game”.

Strategic communication scholarship has started to engage in this debate, thereby acknowledging climate communication as an arena-spanning, necessarily contested issue. Still, a systematic overview of specific inconsistency accusations in different public arenas is lacking. This conceptual article provides an overview based on a macro-focused public arena approach and decoupling scholarship.

Drawing on a systematic literature review of climate-related strategic communication scholarship and key debates from climate communication research in neighboring domains, the authors develop a framework mapping how inconsistency accusations of hypocrisy and incapacity, that is, policy–practice and means–ends decoupling, manifest in different climate communication arenas.

This framework creates awareness for the shared challenge of decoupling accusations across different climate communication arenas, underscoring the necessity of an arena-spanning strategic communication agenda. This agenda requires a communicative shift from downplaying to embracing decoupling accusations, from mutual blaming to approval of accountable ways of working through accusations and from confrontation to cooperation of agents across arenas.

This study investigates whether carbon media legitimacy is influenced by carbon performance and/or carbon disclosure using a direct measure of carbon media legitimacy in UK context.

To test this study's hypotheses, the authors employ Tobit regression analysis of 95 UK companies listed in FTSE350. The authors use balanced panel data (475 observations in total) to reduces the noise introduced by unit heterogeneity.

The authors find that while corporate carbon performance is not reflected in carbon media legitimacy, carbon media legitimacy is positively and significantly affected by voluntary carbon disclosure (irrespective of its quality). Thus, voluntary carbon disclosure is shown to be an effective tool in legitimising corporate activities.

The results show a certain degree of naivety on the part of the media in assessing corporate carbon behaviour, since it values carbon disclosure (irrespective of its quality) more than carbon performance. Such media behaviour may hinder future improvement in carbon performance of firms.

This study's results indicate that the existing UK carbon disclosure policy does not address the heart of climate change and global warming. Thus, tougher regulations should be considered by policy-makers in relation to voluntary carbon disclosure in the UK.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine whether carbon media legitimacy is associated with both carbon performance and carbon disclosure using a direct measure of carbon media legitimacy, and to use the UK context when addressing this association. It also examines the effectiveness of quality of carbon disclosure as legitimation tool.

This paper aims to explore current trends in how companies disclose climate-related risks and opportunities in their financial statements. As part of the authors’ analysis, they examine: whether forward-looking assumptions and judgements are typically considered in reporting climate-related risks/opportunities; whether there are differences in the reporting practices of firms in carbon-intensive industries versus non-carbon-intensive industries; and whether negative media reports have an influence on the levels of disclosure a firm makes.

The authors chose content analysis as their methodology and examined the financial statements published by firms listed on the UK’s FTSE 100 between 2016 and 2020. This analysis is framed by Suchman’s three dimensions of legitimacy, being pragmatic, cognitive and moral.

Climate-related disclosures in the notes and financial accounts of these firms did increase over the period. Yet, overall, the level the disclosures was inadequate and the quality was inconsistent. From this, the authors conclude that pragmatic legitimacy is not a particularly strong driving factor in compelling organisations to disclose climate-related information. The firms in carbon-intensive industries do provide greater levels of disclosure, including both qualitative and quantitative (monetary) content, which is consistent with cognitive legitimacy. However, from a moral legitimacy perspective, this study finds that firms did not adapt responsively to negative media coverage as a way of reflecting their accountability to broader public norms and values. Overall, this analysis suggests that regulatory enforcement and a systematic reporting framework with adequate guidance is going to be critical to developing transparent climate-related reporting in future.

This paper contributes to existing studies on climate-related disclosures, which have mainly examined the ‘front-half’ of annual reports. Conversely, this study aims to shed light on these practices in the “back-half” of these reports, exploring the underlying reasons for reporting climate-related risks and opportunities in financial accounts. The authors’ insights into the current disclosure practices make a theoretical contribution to the literature. Practitioners can also draw on these insights to improve how they report on climate-related risks and opportunities in their financial statements.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to shed light on the influence of stakeholder pressure on carbon disclosure in an emerging economy.

The present study is based on Bombay Stock Exchange 100 Indian firms for the period of 5 years from 2016–17 to 2020–21. The association between stakeholder pressure and carbon disclosure, along with certain control variables, has been explored through a regression model.

The results of the study suggest that stakeholders exert a significant influence on corporate carbon disclosure. Further results confirm that regulatory and customer pressure have the most significant and positive influence, while shareholders and creditors exert a significant and negative influence on carbon disclosure. The study also finds that employee pressure does not have any association with carbon disclosure.

This study adds to the existing literature on climate change, carbon disclosure and stakeholder pressure.

The present study provides useful insights to corporate managers and policymakers as the study concludes that stakeholders exert a significant influence on carbon disclosure.

Previous studies examining the stakeholder pressure on carbon disclosure ignored emerging economies, while the present study has considered India, which is a developing as well as an emerging economy. Further, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first of its kind to investigate the stakeholder pressure on carbon disclosure in the Indian context. The present study develops a comprehensive index to measure corporate carbon disclosure.

This interdisciplinary study aims to analyze how service organizations communicate sustainable beliefs in their social media narratives and use them to generate brand awareness, customer recognition and ongoing demand for sustainable service.

A two-phase exploratory analysis of 10,342 tweets from 2019–2020 was conducted by sustainable global corporations to identify best practices for their social media teams operating within a service-based business model. First, the significant themes were identified using an unguided machine learning approach of three types of firms: services, goods and mixed. Next, the full set of tweets with linguistic sentiment analysis was analyzed followed by a deeper view of the services-based organizations based on their strategic focus (business-to-business [B2B] versus mixed).

The findings indicate that tweets that appear to create the highest customer engagement are characterized as having high levels of analytical language, high clout (i.e. are socially relevant), a positive tone, a high number of words and a high number of words per sentence. On the other hand, having complex language in terms of six-letter words does not seem to associate with customer engagement. The last level of analysis shows that B2B services-based corporations with positive tone and higher word count exhibit higher levels of retweets. Implications include providing rational and informational tweets to increase engagement and highlight societal relevance.

Climate change has negative consequences on human and physical capital, and ecosystems across the globe. This study provides specific recommendations for how services corporations can increase their sustainable communications and actions.

The key implication of our research is that corporations must strategically design social media narratives about climate change as part of their online branding and communications process.

This paper aims to unravel the relationship between market-driven impacts of climate change and firms’ deployment of renewable energy (RE) innovation. The purpose is to understand how market-related forces, influenced by uncertainty, shape firms’ behaviour in response to climate change challenges.

Drawing on the behavioural theory of the firm (BTOF), the paper develops a conceptual model to decode the relationship between each category of market-driven impacts and the resulting RE innovation within firms. The model takes into account the role of uncertainty and differentiates between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and domestic firms.

The analysis reveals five key sources of market-driven impacts: investor sentiment, media coverage, competitors’ adoption of ISO 14001, customer satisfaction and shareholder activism. These forces influence the adoption of RE innovation differently across firms, depending on the level of uncertainty and the discrepancy between environmental performance and aspiration level.

This paper contributes to the literature in four ways. Firstly, it emphasises the importance of uncertainty associated with market-driven impacts, which stimulates different responses from firms. Secondly, it fills a research gap by focusing on the proactivity of firms in adopting RE innovation, rather than just operational strategies to curb emissions. Thirdly, the paper extends the BTOF by incorporating the concept of uncertainty in explaining firm behaviour. Finally, it provides insights into the green strategies of MNEs in the face of climate change, offering a comprehensive model that differentiates MNEs from domestic firms.

This paper examines how manufacturing firms impacted by the nitrogen oxides (NO_x) Budget Trading Program (NBP) strategically managed working capital to release funds for increased costs and mitigate the negative impact on firm performance.

The study uses a panel data set including 11,302 manufacturing firm-year observations listed on the US exchanges during the period 2000–2008. The authors use Tobin's Q to proxy for firm performance, and cash holding, cash conversion cycle (CCC), days sales outstanding (DSO), days sales inventory (DSI) and days payable outstanding (DPO) for working capital management (WCM). The empirical analysis is conducted using both ordinary least squares (OLS) and propensity score matching (PSM) regressions.

The authors find that firms respond to the higher utility costs imposed by the NBP by decreasing CCC, DSO and DSI. This active WCM response partially mitigated the impact of increased compliance costs on performance for firms affected by the NBP. Results are robust in PSM regressions.

Climate change is a global issue that has attracted increasing attention in recent years. This study shows how firms can adjust short-term financing strategies to address the costs of compliance with climate change regulation.

The paper contributes to the emerging literature on corporate finance and climate policy actions. The authors use the unique experimental setting of the NBP to examine the regulatory impact on corporate financial management. The authors demonstrate how firms used active WCM to mitigate the negative performance impact of regulatory compliance with the NBP, providing novel insight on the implication of compliance with climate change legislation.