Strategies for building environmental transparency and accountability

Christina Wong, Chee Yew Wong, Sakun Boon-Itt, Ailie K.Y. Tang

    Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

    14 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    How do nature-inspired enterprises be accountable to the natural environment formed? Natural environment is one of the basic elements of the business. Firms should be sensitive to envi-ronment, so they should develop environmental transparency and accountability. This paper develops a framework to understand how environmental transparency and stakeholder governance cre-ate environmental accountability, following an “action cycle” informed by four accountability cri-teria—identifiability, awareness of monitoring, expectations of evaluation, and social pressure. The paper analyzes the environmental transparency practices of 50 companies listed in the annual Best Global Green Brands report, the Global RepTrak 100, and The Climate A-List of the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project). The results show that exemplar firms improve the “what”, “how”, and “how much” factors in terms of environmental information to identify what will be dissemi-nated to whom when the information follows the criteria of accountability, which allow stakehold-ers to effectively adopt a governance role. This paper provides a 2 × 2 matrix for firms and stake-holders to better understand how accountability leadership is driven by environmental transpar-ency, stakeholder governance and accountability criteria. The practical implications of environmental transparency are highlighted, specifically in terms of strategies for building accountability to meet the growing expectations of transparency and accountability.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number9116
    JournalSustainability (Switzerland)
    Volume13
    Issue number16
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2 Aug 2021

    Keywords

    • Accountability
    • Environmental transparency
    • Governance
    • Information discloser

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Geography, Planning and Development
    • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
    • Environmental Science (miscellaneous)
    • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
    • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Strategies for building environmental transparency and accountability'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this