Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

5-2024

Abstract

Previous research in the world-society tradition associates improvements in nation-level environmental outcomes with greater civil society integration. However, research in the world-systems tradition indicates these improvements depend on a nation’s position in the global political-economic hierarchy. To test whether these patterns are present at the organizational level, I estimate a multilevel model using corporate emissions data from the Carbon Disclosure Project and include interactions between world-system position and three measures of civil society integration: number of NGOs, proportion of corporations with climate-management incentives, and number of corporate UN Global Compact signatories. I find that the relationship between civil society pressure and corporate emissions varies with a nation’s position in the world-system. The NGO measure is associated with greater emissions in non-core nations, possibly due to means–ends decoupling or corporate greenwashing. The climate-incentives measure is associated with less corporate-level emissions in the core and more emissions in non-core nations, possibly due to successful regulation in the core leading to ecologically unequal exchange. I argue that reducing corporate emissions requires accounting for increasingly complicated macro-sociological contexts, as corporations are pressured by and incorporated into world society and participate in patterns of unequal exchange in the world-system.

Keywords

world society, world-systems, corporate emissions, climate change

Discipline

Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics | Energy Policy | Work, Economy and Organizations

Research Areas

Sociology

Publication

Sociology of Development

Identifier

10.1525/sod.2023.0047

Publisher

University of California Press

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2023.0047

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