Carbon calculation, management and reporting in logistics and sustainable supply chain management

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:This paper offers a comprehensive theoretical model of carbon reporting determinants and opens new avenues for studying learning and operational factors in disclosure.

🏢実務担当者:The integrated framework helps logistics firms align carbon strategy, targets, and reporting, and provides guidance on overcoming data and methodological challenges.

🏛政策担当者:The empirical evidence on reporting evolution suggests that policies should support capacity building and data quality, not just mandate disclosures.

In the logistics and supply chain industry, addressing fossil fuel-based greenhouse gas and CO₂e emissions is one of the central challenges of effective climate action. In this context, carbon calculation, management and reporting have gained significant relevance in current research and practice. These areas encompass all core tasks related to determining actual emissions, steering decarbonization efforts and communicating the results. To this day, companies still encounter substantial uncertainties and inconsistencies when carrying out these tasks and attempting to achieve defined carbon reduction goals. The problems are rooted in diverse factors that influence carbon calculation, management and reporting. Methodological ambiguity, missing links between carbon strategy, targets, and actions, and substantial data constraints are examples of what collectively limits accuracy and usability of carbon emissions information. Because methodological, managerial and reporting-related challenges are deeply interconnected and reinforce each other, it becomes evident that a more comprehensive and integrated understanding is needed to foster alignment and support more effective decarbonization. In response, this dissertation develops an integrated understanding of carbon calculation, management and reporting to advance the current state of knowledge, conceptually and theoretically, and to support logistics and supply chain companies in practice. It employs qualitative-conceptual and quantitative-empirical approaches to clarify how the domains interact and how prioritization, capacity building, and improved decision-making can be enabled. The dissertation consists of three complementary studies that, together, form a cumulative dissertation project. Paper A adopts a methodological lens on carbon calculation. Drawing on a systematic literature review, it identifies a more intricate set of influencing factors. It categorizes them conceptually as antecedents, moderators, and mediators and derives implications for how these factors determine subsequent activities, as well as directions for future research. Paper B adopts a managerial-operational lens on carbon management. It broadens the view from identifying the main drivers and motivations to setting carbon targets and implementing management systems and indicators. An integrative review is used to synthesize how activities can be coordinated and structured as a coherent end-to-end process to avoid isolated decarbonization measures. Paper C adopts an empirical lens on carbon reporting. The paper focuses on Scope 3 or indirect supply chain emissions and examines how reporting practices and aggregated emissions have evolved in recent years. It tests theory-grounded hypotheses using voluntary carbon disclosures from 469 global logistics companies. The findings reveal that besides largely discussed legitimization and signaling explanations, learning, adaptation, and operational factors also play a crucial role. Thus, reporting plays a more multifaceted and internally relevant role than previously recognized. From an academic theory perspective, the dissertation positions carbon calculation, management and reporting as complex multidimensional constructs. It critically reviews dominant stakeholder- and legitimization-focused explanations and extends current reporting understanding by empirically testing novel theoretical aspects. For practitioners, it provides guidance for improving the coherence and practical usability of carbon information in logistics and supply chain settings. Looking ahead, the perspective developed in this dissertation strengthens the coherence and credibility of carbon management and thereby paves the way for more effective carbon reductions in the future.

• openaire https://doi.org/10.48671/hss.2025.ac17787054first seen 2026-05-14 21:12:16