Corporate carbon performance metrics in academia: overcoming carbon accounting issues

Abstract The private sector plays crucial role in achieving the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. It is not surprising that in recent years, academic interest at the interface of climate change and management accelerated. Many researchers are working on understanding important relationships between corporate carbon performance and corporate governance factors, as well as linkages between carbon and financial performance. Understanding the determinants and consequences of corporate climate action is highly relevant, especially in times where corporate sustainability is increasingly under scrutiny. Reliable scientific results require robust and consistent underlying data and metrics for measurement. Corporate carbon performance data is required which is comparable, meaningful and clearly defined. Based on a comprehensive systematic literature review, this study sets out to explore the evolution and application of corporate carbon performance metrics over time used in empirical management research. The in-depth analysis discusses the current application of various metrics and their different characteristics, such as emission scopes, types of greenhouse gases covered, and the metrics themselves. Moreover, the underlying data sources from third party providers are critically examined. Based on the findings, future research avenues and recommendations for standardizing carbon performance metrics used in academia are presented, aiming to improve the comparability of study results amongst researchers when working with corporate Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission performance data.