Corporate Strategies for Managing Climate Risks

Weinhofer, Georg; Busch, Timo

doi:10.1002/bse.1744

Cited by 167 publications

(167 citation statements)

References 79 publications

(111 reference statements)

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“…Environmental risk is the area which received most attention from scholars, as also confirmed by the literature [54][55][56][57]. In the survey conducted by KPMG, carbon-related risks are the most reported sustainability issues [5].…”

Section: Sustainability Risk Assessment and Disclosurementioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability and Risk Disclosure: An Exploratory Study on Sustainability Reports

2017

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Recent policy changes in sustainability reporting, such as the ones related to the new European Directive on non-financial disclosure (2014/95/EU), the standards issued by the American Sustainability Accounting Standard Board (SASB), the G4 guidelines issued by the Global Sustainability Standard Board (GSSB), and the framework of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) stress the importance of extending the disclosure of ethical, social, and environmental risks within financial and social-environmental reporting. Institutional pressure has notably increased among organizations, in setting up risk management tools to understand sustainability risks within managerial and reporting practices. Given such institutional pressure, the corporate reaction in providing additional sustainability risk disclosure calls for attention and scrutiny. Therefore, this study aims at addressing such issues from an exploratory perspective. We based our analysis on a sample of large Italian organizations that issued sustainability disclosure in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), G4 guidelines, and we tested the relationship between their level of risk disclosure and other relevant variables. Consistently with the literature, we found that "experienced" sustainable reporters provide a significant volume of disclosure, and that disclosure quality on risk is positively influenced by their international presence and reporting experience. However, when accounting for specific risk-related areas of disclosure, only a few of them seem to adopt a managerial perspective linking strategy, risk metrics, and disclosure.

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Section: Sustainability Risk Assessment and Disclosurementioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability and Risk Disclosure: An Exploratory Study on Sustainability Reports

2017

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“…• Assessing challenges and opportunities regarding regulation and consumer perceptions (Sullivan, 2010) • Integration of climate change into risk management and design of risk mitigation strategies (Weinhofer and Busch, 2013) …”

Section: Organizational Involvementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intra‐Sectoral Differences in Climate Change Strategies: Evidence from the Global Automotive Industry

Damert

Baumgartner

2017

Bus Strat Env

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Companies are increasingly challenged for action on climate change. Most studies on business responses to climate change focus on cross-sector comparisons and neglect intra-sectoral dynamics. This paper investigates the influence of supply chain position and regional affiliation on climate change strategies within a particular industry. We present a generic framework integrating both market and non-market responses to climate change. We argue that climate change strategies comprise several corporate activities that have different foci of interaction and four main objectives: governance, innovation, compensation and legitimation. Using a global sample of 116 automotive companies, we conduct a cluster analysis and identify four types of strategy. We find that the sophistication of automobile manufacturers' strategies significantly differs from that of suppliers. Regional affiliation and firm size prove to be determinants of the strategy type pursued. We cannot find evidence for a relationship between financial performance and a company's strategic approach to climate change.

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“…Most articles in the research field of "organizational adaptation to climate change" analyze private-sector adaptation strategies and measures with an almost exclusive focus on how businesses benefit from such undertakings. Accordingly, research questions focused on the allocation of responsibility for climate change adaptation in cases where adaptation is lacking, or on the effects of undertaking or ignoring adaptation measures on the rest of society, are implicitly excluded from the existing business management research on climate change adaptation (Sheffi 2005, Berkhout et al 2006, Winn et al 2010, Weinhofer and Busch 2012. By setting the research focus in such a way, the business management literature frames climate change adaptation as an exclusively private action with exclusively private beneficiaries, whereas mitigation is primarily framed as a public good characterized by joint consumption where it is infeasible to exclude consumers, given that every society in the world will benefit from reduced greenhouse gas emissions.…”

Section: Results Of Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…"Furthermore, aid or compensation in case of extreme events are not adaptation measures per se, since damage is not prevented by these measures" (Aakre and Rübbelke 2010:770). Empirical research at the organizational level (Berkhout et al 2006, Fichter and Stecher 2011, Weinhofer and Busch 2012 indicates that most companies postpone climate change adaptation or rely on reactive adaptation measures (predominantly insurance) and that efficiency objectives usually rule out proactive adaptation measures in terms of ensuring resilient long-term provision of critical infrastructure. However, although the private sector is reluctant to implement proactive adaptation measures, critical goods and services require a proactive approach.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responsibility for private sector adaptation to climate change

Schneider¹

2014

E&S

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ABSTRACT. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) indicates that vulnerable industries should adapt to the increasing likelihood of extreme weather events along with slowly shifting mean annual temperatures and precipitation patterns, to prevent major damages or periods of inoperability in the future. Most articles in the literature on business management frame organizational adaptation to climate change as a private action. This makes adaptation the sole responsibility of a company, for its sole benefit, and overlooks the fact that some companies provide critical goods and services such a food, water, electricity, and medical care, that are so vital to society that even a short-term setback in operations could put public security at risk. This raises the following questions: (1) Who is responsible for climate change adaptation by private-sector suppliers of critical infrastructure? (2) How can those who are identified to be responsible, actually be held to assume their responsibility for adapting to climate change? These questions will be addressed through a comprehensive review of the literature on business management, complemented by a review of specialized literature on public management. This review leads to several conclusions. Even though tasks that formerly belonged to the state have been taken over by private companies, the state still holds ultimate responsibility in the event of failure of private-sector owned utilities, insofar as they are "critical infrastructure." Therefore, it remains the state's responsibility to foster adaptation to climate change with appropriate action. In theory, effective ways of assuming this responsibility, while enabling critical infrastructure providers the flexibility adapt to climate change, would be to delegate adaptation to an agency, or to conduct negotiations with stakeholders. In view of this theory, Germany will be used as a case study to demonstrate how private-sector critical infrastructure providers can plan and implement climate change adaptation in practice, through the regulatory modes of "negotiations" and "enforced self-regulation."

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Corporate Strategies for Managing Climate Risks

Cited by 167 publications

References 79 publications

Sustainability and Risk Disclosure: An Exploratory Study on Sustainability Reports

Sustainability and Risk Disclosure: An Exploratory Study on Sustainability Reports

Intra‐Sectoral Differences in Climate Change Strategies: Evidence from the Global Automotive Industry

Responsibility for private sector adaptation to climate change

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