The emergence of carbon disclosure: Exploring the role of governance entrepreneurs

Abstract

An innovative approach to mitigating climate change beyond the international negotiations and hardlaw approaches is governing by disclosure -the acquisition and dissemination of information to influence the behavior of particular actors. This paper analyzes the institutionalization of carbon disclosure as an organizational field, focusing in particular on the role of governance entrepreneurs in this process. The emergence of carbon disclosure is scrutinized along four distinct stages of transnational institutionalization: start-up; competition and growth; convergence and consolidation; integration into international public policy. For each phase, the role and relevance of governance entrepreneurs is analyzed. The article finds that during the first stage, entrepreneurs mainly acts as innovators and ''out-of-the-box'' thinkers; in stage 2, entrepreneurs can be characterized as flexible adaptors and opportunity seekers, while in stage 3, the role of meta-governors in dominant. Finally, the last stage, entrepreneurs acts as connectors and bridge-builder between the transnational sphere of carbon disclosure and the wider international governance arena.

Governance entrepreneurship in regional economic development: individual agency in Austria

“…A third notion that is closely linked to institutional and policy entrepreneurship, but which is still in its conceptual and empirical infancy, is governance entrepreneurship. Scholars use the term in slightly differing manners, applying different nuances in their conceptual approaches (Boasson & Huitema, 2017;Döringer, 2020a;Pattberg, 2017;Willi et al, 2018). Overall, the notion of governance entrepreneurship shares the above-mentioned characteristics of policy and institutional entrepreneurship, but focuses on the role of entrepreneurial individuals (or groups of individuals) in implementing or transforming the governance arrangements themselves.…”

“…Despite a growing body of literature dealing with individual agency in regional economic development, there is little knowledge of the ways in which individuals generate influence in governance and innovate governance arrangements. Although changes in governance might be less obvious to the public eye than changes in policies or institutions (Pattberg, 2017), the question of how influence is gained by entrepreneurial individuals in governance emerges as crucial for explaining regional development and gaining an in-depth understanding of it. The modification of governance might be of particular relevance for actors in peripheral places who struggle with demographic, economic and political downgrading processes, hereinafter designated as peripheralization.…”

Individual agency and socio‐spatial change in regional development: Conceptualizing governance entrepreneurship

“…Institutions are understood as structural preconditions, which in turn are defined as formal and informal systems of rule that guide the behaviour of actors. In this sense, formal institutions can include, for instance, laws and public regulations (e.g., planning documents, community strategies, or agreements), whereas informal institutions refer to norms, values, or beliefs (e.g., growth‐oriented development; North, ; Pattberg, ).…”

Transparency, accountability and empowerment in sustainability governance: a conceptual review

“…Broadly sharing the behaviourist assumptions of rational choice theory but drawing also on organisational theory, liberal institutionalism has, in its investigation of the transparency-accountability nexus in sustainability governance, moved beyond an early focus on environmental disclosure mechanisms enabled by public international law (e.g. treaty obligations between states to notify, consult and seek consent) to capture the complex dynamics of information disclosure associated with private and hybrid forms of governance at different scales (Bauhr & Nasiritousi, 2012;Huang & Yue, 2017;Pattberg, 2017). However, the analytical interest For critical political economy perspectives, power is grounded in the social structures and unequal relations of the global political economy (Newell, 2008).…”