Business and Climate Change Governance ― South Africa in Comparative Perspective

Why do business organisations contribute to climate change governance in areas of limited statehood? In many countries, governments are too weak and often also not willing to set and enforce climate change regulations. While companies have the capacities to fill the resulting governance gap, conventional wisdom expects them to take advantage by relocating their production sites in order to escape strict national regulation. Studies on South Africa, Kenya and Germany demonstrate that business contributions to the mitigation and adaptation to climate change vary significantly between countries, sectors and firms. In order to explain these variations, the contributors bring together two important literatures that rarely speak to each other – governance and business management - arguing that the threat of public regulation has an important role in motivating business efforts.

Tanja A. Borzel is Professor of Political Science and holds the Chair for European Integration at the Otto-Suhr-Institute for Political Science, Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany. She is co-coordinator of the Research College "The Transformative Power of Europe" and directs the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence 'Europe and its Citizens'. Her research focus and teaching experience lie in the field of institutional theory and Governance, European Integration, and comparative regionalism.

Ralph Hamann is Research Director and Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, South Africa. His research is on business sustainability strategy and cross-sector collaboration.