Senior staff in Government Owned Corporations (GOCs) are more aware of climate change as being important to corporate sustainability than their colleagues in private organisations.

UQ Business School PhD students Sally Russell and Nardia Haigh and their supervisor Dr Andrew Griffiths are researching how managers of GOCs, public sector, and private sector organisations understand corporate sustainability.

Ms Haigh said 80 per cent of GOC respondents in a preliminary study recognised climate change as a corporate sustainability issue, compared to 71 per cent of their public sector colleagues and 26 per cent of private sector respondents.

“We asked participants questions about corporate sustainability and found that they understood it to be the good management of environmental, social, or economic matters, or the need to manage all of these matters holistically,” she said.

“When we analysed the transcripts we also took note of the climate change-related topics raised by interviewees, such as greenhouse gas emissions, global warming, and extreme weather.

“We found a significant difference between GOC, public, and private sector participants regarding whether or not they associated climate change issues with corporate sustainability.”

Dr Griffiths said the results indicated the amount of work required to connect corporate sustainability with climate change and where it needed to be done.

Dr Andrew Griffiths www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/griffithsab.html

On this site

Go to top