Accounting for and Reporting on Supply Chain Emissions: Global and Australian Perspectives

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🔬研究者:Examines mediating mechanisms (governance, resilience, capabilities) linking carbon management to disclosure quality and performance, offering theoretical integration for future research.

🏢実務担当者:Demonstrates that supplier engagement and internal governance capabilities are key to credible Scope 3 reporting and realizing financial benefits.

🏛政策担当者:Suggests that voluntary disclosure regimes underperform compared with stronger regulatory frameworks, supporting arguments for mandatory standards.

The supply chain carbon footprint, encompassing emission scopes 1, 2, and 3, poses substantial challenges for reporting and management, with Scope 3 remaining the most difficult to measure, disclose, and verify. These challenges not only arise from the demanding task of collecting reliable data across extended supply chains but also from the difficulty of translating disclosure into substantive strategic actions that deliver financial benefits and competitive advantages while mitigating the risk of greenwashing. Building on this context, this thesis investigates how firms can enhance the credibility of carbon information, leverage carbon management strategies to build capabilities, and respond to external institutional mechanisms that shape financial and carbon-related outcomes.Based on the findings of a structured literature review (in Chapter Two), the first paper, presented in Chapter Four, examines the foundations of credible information by analysing how supplier engagement and climate governance influence the quality of Scope 3 disclosures using panel data from the Carbon Disclosure Project. The findings indicate that climate governance partially mediates the effect of supplier engagement, resulting in more credible and decision-useful disclosures. Additional analyses suggest that these mechanisms operate primarily in the short term, complementing prior research that emphasises long-term governance benefits, thus offering a more nuanced view of disclosure dynamics.The second paper, presented in Chapter Five, investigates how carbon management strategies contribute to organisational benefits by fostering supply chain resilience and innovation. Using survey data from 224 Australian firms, structural equation modelling demonstrates that resilience plays a statistically complete mediating role in this relationship, underscoring its function as a dynamic capability through which firms can translate decarbonisation pressures into opportunities for innovation. These findings highlight resilience as a crucial pathway for developing capabilities in the transition to a low-carbon economy.The third paper, presented in Chapter Six, explores how adopting external certification mechanisms influences firms’ financial benefits and carbon performance through internal governance processes. Drawing on the dynamic resource-based view, I conceptualise certification schemes not as static compliance tools but as organisational resources whose value emerges through the integration of carbon considerations into strategic decision-making and the systematic identification of climate-related risks and opportunities. Survey evidence shows that certification adoption does not directly enhance financial benefits; rather, its effects are fully mediated by governance capabilities, which jointly strengthen both financial benefits and carbon performance. A substitution effect between strategic integration and risk–opportunity identification further suggests that complementarities between governance practices may be bounded under resource constraints.The three papers provide an integrated account of how firms can manage supply chain carbon footprints, progressing from credible disclosure to capability building to institutional reinforcement. In this way, this thesis advances accounting and sustainability research by unpacking the organisational processes that link carbon information, strategy, and external certification, while offering practical insights for managers, policymakers, and investors seeking to enhance disclosure credibility, foster innovation, and achieve sustainable performance.These papers also advance accounting and sustainability scholarship by reconceptualising SCCAM as a capability-building process rather than a compliance activity. The thesis contributes theoretical insight by bridging institutional, resource-based, and dynamic capability perspectives, and it offers practical guidance for managers, regulators, and investors seeking to enhance disclosure credibility, foster resilience-driven innovation, and translate external certification into substantive performance improvements. Evidence from Australia further highlights how voluntary and fragmented regulatory approaches constrain progress when compared with the more stringent frameworks of the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Overall, the thesis demonstrates that the effectiveness of SCCAM not only depends on external pressures but also on the internal governance and capabilities that determine whether firms can credibly report, strategically adapt, and competitively perform through capability development in the transition to a low-carbon economy.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.25949/31825183first seen 2026-08-02 19:10:48 · last seen 2026-08-02 19:10:49