Harvard Business Review recently published an article coauthored by Caroline Flammer, Dean’s Research Scholar and Associate Professor of Strategy and Innovation. Caroline and her coauthors at Harvard Business School explored what effect shareholder activism has on companies disclosing the risks of climate change on their business and how such disclosures affect markets and the companies themselves.
Our analysis shows that shareholder activism — measured by the number of environment-related shareholder proposals submitted to a company — does induce firms to voluntarily disclose climate change risks. On average, the extent of climate-risk disclosure increases by approximately 4.6% for each environment-related proposal that is submitted. We also found that environmental shareholder activism is more effective when initiated by institutional shareholders with a long-term holding horizon: The effect rises from 4.6% to 6.8%.