Corporate Boards & Climate Risk Governance

This study seeks to answer important questions in corporate governance about board oversight of emerging climate and sustainability risks by looking at how corporate boards of S&P 100 firms listed on the US New York Stock Exchange exercise oversight of self-identified material climate and sustainability risks at a time when doing so is completely voluntary. This study is part of a broader project with CityUHK colleagues (in CB) that will compare the US findings to board practice in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UK during the present period of transition from voluntary to mandatory corporate governance of these risks. The present study will be a first step to confirm the legal differences between the US and the other three jurisdictions so we can later test the effect of firm ownership and regulatory differences in firms' place of incorporation on the level of corporate board oversight, and the effect of board approaches This study will be based on a content analysis of corporate board committee charters and risk factor disclosures (RFDs) in the annual reports of S&P 100 companies for 2023 and 2024; if we have funding for automated analysis, we will expand to 2010 to the present