Corporate governance disclosure in Italy in the context of climate change

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Abstract

Nowadays climate change represents the most critical issue facing the global economies, and, at the same time, the most misunderstood risk that organizations face in the coming years. The necessity to cover this gap has led to the spread of alternative disclosure frameworks, such as the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), established in 2015. In our research, we focus the attention, amongst the TCFD recommendations, on the thematic area of governance, as we are interested in studying companies’ awareness of climate change and the extent to which they assess environmental issues, risks and impacts. The adherence to TCFD policies appears, amongst the major results of the analysis, limited, with a rather significant polarization of information between good and bad reporters. Our findings provide interesting insights and implications both from a theoretical and managerial point of view, displaying that, in line with mimicry studies on corporate disclosure, the conduct of companies towards climate change disclosure suggest an imitative behaviour amongst competitors.

Keywords: Governance for Climate Change, TCFD, Non-Financial Disclosure, Italy

Authors’ individual contribution: Conceptualization — L.G. and P.V.; Methodology — L.G. and P.V.; Investigation — L.G. and P.V.; Resources — L.G. and P.V.; Writing — Original Draft — L.G. and P.V.; Writing — Review & Editing — L.G. and P.V.

Declaration of conflicting interests: The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

JEL Classification: M19, Q54, G30, L21

Received: 16.12.2021
Accepted: 11.02.2022
Published online: 15.02.2022

How to cite this paper: Gelmini, L., & Vola, P. (2022). Corporate governance disclosure in Italy in the context of climate change. Corporate Ownership & Control, 19(2), 81–92. https://doi.org/10.22495/cocv19i2art7