Business a Cause, Victims, and Solution to the Climate Crisis

PURPOSE: The purpose of this article, and conference talk, is to discuss climate change in the context of businesses where the focus is on businesses as a cause, victims, and solution to the climate change crisis. DESIGN/METHOD: This is a conceptual paper focusing on explaining some of the key concepts relevant to the framing of businesses as a cause, victims, and solution to the climate crisis using the so-called business-poverty framework in a new setting. RESULTS/FINDINGS: The findings suggest that the business-poverty framework is useful when framing the discussion around businesses as a cause, victims, and solutions to climate change, drawing the attention to supply of and demand for fossil fuels, negative actions of industry leaders, and superficial reporting in this regard. Furthermore, various risk factors were identified, namely physical, transitional, market, and policy risks, financial and talent-related risks, liability, litigation, and systemic risks. Opportunities to address the climate crisis proactively by businesses entail low-carbon investments, cost management and access to finance, innovation, behavioural, and organizational changes, reputational enhancement, talent attraction and retention, and supply chain resilience. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The originality is to employ a framework used to evaluate business operations concerning poverty in a new context, namely, to address various aspects of climate change business implications relevant to the cause, implication for, and solution to the situation.