Emerging Perspectives on Climate Risk: Current Business Leaders & Future Business Leaders

Abstract

Increasingly, global companies have to balance short-term objectives with longer-term opportunities in response to a changing climate. Corporations have a great deal to gain from reframing climate-related risks into opportunities for growth, innovation, and operational efficiency. In turn, business schools have an opportunity to train emerging business leaders in mitigation and response strategies to address environmental and climate-related risk. This multi-faceted research project examines how corporations view non-financial risk, particularly as it relates to climate change and in turn, how MBA students – as a proxy for emerging business leaders – perceive climate-related risks and opportunities. Results indicate that corporations are aligned in their focus on non-financial risks as a category but vary across industries on the importance and relevance of what constitutes ‘material’. MBA students place greater value on mitigating environmental and social disruption risk when primed of its importance but do not feel adequately prepared to address emergent social and environmental issues as corporate professionals.