2015/03/25 by Natalie Slawinski, Jonatan Pinkse, Timo Busch +1 · 297 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Environmental Science · #Action (physics) #Business #Climate change #Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting #Ecology #Economics #Environmental Education and Sustainability #Environmental Sustainability in Business #Environmental resource management #Epistemology #Greenhouse gas #Organizational change #Phenomenon #Political science #Positive economics #Public economics #Public relations #Sustainability
paper · doi:10.1177/0007650315576136
published in Business & Society 56(2), 253-282 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2015/03/25 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Despite increasing pressure to deal with climate change, firms have been slow to respond with effective action. This article presents a multi-level framework for a better understanding of why many firms are failing to reduce their absolute greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change. The concepts of short-termism and uncertainty avoidance from research in psychology, sociology, and organization theory can explain the phenomenon of organizational inaction on climate change. Antecedents related to short-termism and uncertainty avoidance reinforce one another at three levels—individual, organizational, and institutional—and result in organizational inaction on climate change. The article also discusses the implications of this multi-level framework for research on corporate sustainability.