From Sustainability Governance Architecture to Climate Strategy: Provider-Observed Sequence of Reporting and Internal Accountability

Corporate sustainability governance is often measured as a set of coexisting mechanisms, leaving unclear whether the order in which reporting and internal accountability first become visible is associated with later formal cross-domain assembly and climate implementation. Using Bloomberg FY2020–FY2024 data, this study defines provider-observed pathways in a focal cohort of 478 firms with no observed architecture component at the FY2020 baseline; the principal adjusted staged-adopter model uses 262 firms, while direct-climate models use 53–171 firms depending on the outcome. Reporting-first entry is associated with an 18.7 percentage-point higher probability of FY2024 formal cross-domain architecture under HC1 inference (p < 0.001). The point estimate is unchanged when uncertainty is clustered by country-of-domicile jurisdiction (p = 0.048), but finite-cluster inference is materially weaker (CR2/Satterthwaite p = 0.137; restricted Rademacher wild-cluster p = 0.303). Thus, coefficient magnitude is stable while jurisdiction-level statistical precision is not. Annual transition and two-year persistence estimates are positive, but a stricter three-year persistence check among firms with sufficient exposure shows no detectable adjusted difference. Component decomposition further shows that the precisely estimated domain contrast is driven mainly by GRI-first relative to committee-first entry; SASB-first and pay-first estimates are statistically imprecise. Reporting-first firms show no broader climate strategy advantage or lower-emissions advantage. TCFD adoption is lower after controls and remains significant after Holm adjustment, whereas the nominal positive Scope 2 result does not. The evidence therefore identifies a bounded, associational pattern in provider-observed formal governance assembly, not a causal adoption mechanism or evidence of superior climate performance. Information infrastructure remains a theoretically plausible interpretation for direct testing in future research.