Search results

The transitional challenges to delivering a green growth economy, particularly for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), presented by the twin concerns of climate and biodiversity are considerable. This chapter examines the UK case, where extensive public and private investment is required, in combination, to deliver the UK Government’s desired green growth enabled by green innovation and business transition towards environmentally positive business models. The chapter draws on a contemporary literature review and qualitative interview evidence from UK financiers, entrepreneurial innovators and policymakers. We examine how they influence the emerging UK green finance escalator that relates to providing finance for green enterprise from an initial idea through to commercialisation, scaleup expansion and maturity. The findings suggest that this green transition requires a clear SME finance roadmap to deliver coherent public policy and regulation and sufficient knowledge of the environmental risks and opportunities presented. We provide a blueprint framework that can provide the finance for net zero and, beyond this, the wider environmental changes needed for a sustainable green economy transition.

Climate change caused by an increase in greenhouse gas emissions poses a threat to species on earth. Such emissions have been caused by activities that have increased the rate at which greenhouse emissions have occurred due to the burning of fossil fuels and industrial processes in recent decades. Without urgent intervention, the ability of earth’s citizens will be irrevocably altered. Hundreds of millions of people’s lives will effectively become extremely challenging. Deaths due to starvation, lack of water, storms and flooding will increase. The magnitude of the crisis confronting humanity has resulted in means the formation of what’s known as the ‘Net Zero’ target set by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2024), a United Nations body consisting of global experts on climate change in 1994. This chapter explains why climate change has occurred, what its impact may be and how intervention by governments as well as all organisations and individuals catastrophe can be avoided. There is an overview of subsequent chapters contained in this book.

This study examines how assurors make sense of sustainability assurance (SA) work and how interactions with assurance team members and clients shape assurors’ sensemaking and their actual SA work.

To obtain detailed accounts of how SA work occurs on the ground, this study explores three SA engagements by interviewing the main actors involved, both at the client firms and at their Big Four assurance providers.

Individual assurors’ (i.e. partners and other team members) sensemaking of SA work results in the crafting of their logics of action (LoAs), that is, their meanings about the objectives of SA work and how to conduct it. Without organizational socialization, team members may not arrive at shared meanings and deviate from the team-wide assurance approach. To fulfill their objectives for SA work, assurors may engage in socialization with clients or assume a temporary role. Yet, the role negotiations taking place in the shadows of the scope negotiations determine their default role during the engagement.

Two options are available to help SA statement users gauge the relevance of SA work: either displaying the SA work performed or making it more uniform.

This study theoretically grounds how assurors make sense of SA work and documents how (the lack of) professional socialization, organizational socialization and socialization of frequent interaction partners at the client shape actual SA work. Thereby, it unravels the SA work concealed behind SA statements.