Corporate Responses to Climate Change

Framing Climate Change: Economics, Ideology, and Uncertainty in American News Media Content From 1988 to 2014

“…Notwithstanding the continued reticence of the fossil fuel industry-this is no longer true. Many sectors of American industry see opportunities for profit with climate mitigation strategies-or, at least publicly recognize the need to minimize future risks posed by climate change (Sullivan, 2008;Lee, 2012;Weinhofer and Busch, 2013;Doda et al, 2015). Other companies have emerged explicitly to capitalize on the emerging green economy.…”

The Governance of Corporate Responses to Climate Change: An International Comparison

“…These processes of governance beyond government involve private or civic actors, or combinations thereof, looking to exert influence in some way (Falkner, ). They may be delivered through formalized institutional arrangements such as trade associations that regulate their members, through private standards and voluntary codes that offer different forms of certification, through NGOs and consumer groups that develop new standards and league tables (Busch, ; Falkner, ; Levy and Newell, ; Pattberg, , ), through business‐to‐business interactions such as investors seeking to influence the performance of the companies in which they invest or retailers seeking to influence the behaviour of their suppliers (Sullivan, , ) or through civic arrangements where local communities negotiate controls directly with businesses (Gouldson, ). They may also be adversarial, for example where different groups contest the extent to which some actors have a ‘social license to operate’, or where they seek to create and amplify reputational risks for actors that do not comply with social expectations (Freeman et al , ; Gunningham et al , ; Power et al , ).…”

“…The dependence of the Australian economy on the mining and minerals industries and on relatively low cost energy have been a huge influence on climate change policy in Australia and, in turn, on Australian corporate responses to climate change. The importance of not threatening or damaging Australia's international competitiveness was an explicit goal of Australia's climate change policies until the mid‐2000s, with the government relying primarily on relatively weak voluntary measures to encourage business action on climate change (Sullivan, , p. 97–131, , , pp. 100–116).…”

The Wicked Problem of Climate Change: A New Approach Based on Social Mess and Fragmentation

“…This shortfall further complicates the efforts to generate an appropriate collaborative environmental response [30,67,68]. Hepburn [54] theorizes that the fragmented and inconsistent approach to complex or wicked problems actually drives stakeholders apart, leading to further fragmentation of the relationships between industries and countries, rather than creating opportunities for collaboration.…”