TY - JOUR
T1 - Strategies for building environmental transparency and accountability
AU - Wong, Christina W.Y.
AU - Wong, Chee Yew
AU - Boon-Itt, Sakun
AU - Tang, Ailie K.Y.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research received funding from Thammasat University under Bualuang ASEAN Chair Professorship and Bualuang ASEAN Fellowship Program. The first author is partially funded by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (PolyU 152031/17B). We thank the valuable comments from the editor and the two anonymous re-viewers on the earlier version of this paper. Sakun Boon-itt is also a member of Center of Excellence in Operations and Information Management (CoE-OiM), Thammasat University.
Funding Information:
Author Contributions: Conceptualization, C.W.Y.W., C.Y.W., S.B.-i and A.K.Y.T.; methodology, C.W.Y.W., C.Y.W. and A.K.Y.T.; writing—original draft preparation, C.W.Y.W. and A.K.Y.T.; writing—review and editing, C.Y.W., S.B.-i and A.K.Y.T.; project administration, C.W.Y.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.” Funding: This research received funding from Thammasat University under Bualuang ASEAN Chair Professorship and Bualuang ASEAN Fellowship Program. The first author is partially funded by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (PolyU 152031/17B).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2021/8/2
Y1 - 2021/8/2
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Accountability
KW - Environmental transparency
KW - Governance
KW - Information discloser
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85113740585&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/su13169116
DO - 10.3390/su13169116
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85113740585
VL - 13
JO - Sustainability (Switzerland)
JF - Sustainability (Switzerland)
IS - 16
M1 - 9116
ER -
