Board level responsibility for climate change lead to reduction in carbon emission

MGT723 Research Project
Assessment Task 1: Research Proposal
Student Name:
Student Id:
Your assigned research topic*: Stakeholder theory
Research Question: Does board level responsibility for climate change lead
to reduce carbon emission?
Title: Board level responsibility for climate change lead to reduction in
carbon emission.
Submission Date:
Acknowledgement:
I certify that I have carefully reviewed the university’s academic misconduct
policy. I understand that the source of ideas must be referenced and that
quotation marks and a reference are required when directly quoting anyone
else’s words.
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Literature Review
Due to immense effect on environment nowadays it’s necessary to enhance the new
governance so that it will bring positive impact on reducing carbon. Thus, Carbon emission is
becoming the major threats recently and many stakeholders have been requesting for
incentives to the board members that may lead to the reduction of carbon emission (Ben-
Amar & Mcllkenny 2014). According to the stakeholder theory, to do a business, the shared
values between the society and business firms are crucial (Fontaine, Haarman & Schmid
2016). Additionally, since stakeholder theory is concerned with the accountability of
organisation, in a stakeholder perspective, an organisation should be able to fulfil the
expectation of all the stakeholder groups (Fernando & Steward 2014). Firms are producing
millions of carbons each day and with good board level strategy and incentives, issues in
environment can be managed.
The research here presents the detail insight on how the business strategy of disclosing the
climate change and carbon emission information helps in reducing the emission of carbon.
Practical Motivation
The issues regarding organizational environmental performance is motivating the
stakeholders to address those issues. Since, the organization are highly responsible for greater
emission of carbon, board level responsibility of an organization plays a crucial role in taking
set of actions to reduce the carbon emission. Thus, a set of target needs to be set by the
organization and to achieve those targets, stakeholders need to exercise a control mechanism,
pressures or agreements (Pinkse & Kolk 2010). The needs to address carbon emission issue is
growing and thus reduction of carbon pollutants from the organization is linked with
corporate social responsibility approach.
Theoretical Motivation
There are many previous researches done on measures to preserve the environment. One of
the research that is most often carried out in context of preserving the environment is how to
reduce the carbon emission from a firm. Regarding same, Ben-Amar & Mcllkenny (2014)
had carried out the research on relationship of board of director’s effectiveness and voluntary
climate change disclosure. Carbon Disclosure Project CDP) is the basis for that particular
research where, the information regarding the production of carbon by a firm are revealed and
the strategies to mitigate the risks developed by it are discussed. Furthermore, previous
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research has mostly focused on societal aspects, voluntarily disclosure of climate change
information and social responsibilities. But most of them lacks to address the relationship
between board level responsibility and incentives to reduce the carbon emission.
On the contrary, this research shows the responsibility of board members and the motivation
that are required to reduce the carbon emission from that particular firm. This research will
try to fill the gap in existing research by presenting the incentive of board of directors of a
firm that lead to the reduction of carbon emission. The various stakeholders of a particular
organization have their own interest linked with an organization and are capable to take a
desired action to minimise the carbon production (Thijssens, et al., 2015). The only
responsibility of board level is to motivate the stakeholders that drives them to take action
regarding reduction of carbon emission.
Conceptual Model
Figure 1: Key Theoretical constructs and the proxy relationship
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Incentive
Mediating Variable
Carbon Emission
Dependent Variable
Responsibility
Board Level
Independent Variable

Independent Variable: Board Level Responsibility
One of the key responsibilities of the board of organisation is to manage its stakeholders
effectively in order to achieve the goals (Fernando & Steward 2014). Regarding the reduction
of carbon emission, a board level management can implement the strategy to control the
emission of carbon by simply disclosing the carbon emission information. On the basis of that
particular disclosed information, stakeholders of different interest can contribute to minimise
the carbon emission. For example, a director of an organisation can formulate the plan to use
the resources that produces the less amount of carbon. Susith, Fernando & Stewart,
Lawrence 2014.
Dependent Variable: Carbon Emission
Since carbon emission is main contributor to climate change issues including global warming,
identifying the driving forces which affect carbon emission is becoming the trending topic for
many researchers (Guo & Jiang 2011). One of the key reasons for greater amount of carbon
emission is rapid economic growth which led to increase in demand for energy (Guo & Jiang
2011).
Here, carbon emission is taken as dependent variable as board level responsibility and
incentives from different stakeholders is a resulting factor for an amount of carbon emitted by
that organisation.
Mediating Variable: Incentives
Incentives of an organization is considered as the mediating variable, since it explains the
relationship between the board level responsibility (independent variable) and carbon
emission (dependent variable). In a particular organisation, incentives given to stakeholders
by board level might result in control of carbon emission.
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