Constructing the European Green Deal : The case of Finnish corporations
Issakainen, Mari (2023)
2023
Master's Programme in Leadership for Change
Johtamisen ja talouden tiedekunta - Faculty of Management and Business
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2023-05-10
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202304183883
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202304183883
Tiivistelmä
Climate change, one of the most pressing wicked problems of our time, is becoming an increasingly visible part of people's daily lives around the world. To mitigate climate change, solutions are being sought in different sectors of society: nations, international organisations and business corporations alike are moving rapidly to take action to make their policies more sustainable.
One of the biggest climate law packages published in recent years is the European Green Deal by the European Commission in 2019. The program aims to achieve a climate-neutral EU by 2050, and to reduce emissions by 50–55% by 2030, using 1990 as a benchmark. While the EU institutions are legislating new laws to complete the package's coverage of different sectors of society, business corporations are speeding up the progress towards climate targets with their own ambitious sustainability actions. In this thesis, drawing inspiration from the literature on International Political Economy, I analyze the roles of these different societal actors. The research enables reflecting on whether the traditional nation-states still leading the changes in the global world, or whether business corporations, through their actions, have become the trendsetters.
This question is addressed in this thesis through a case study. The thesis focuses on how Finnish companies are constructing the European Green Deal. The point is to explore how companies are positioning themselves in this change. A set of Finnish companies from different sectors of society have been selected for the study, adopting the EGD's social division of companies.
The theory utilized in this thesis is social constructivism, which helps find ways in which the EGD is publicly constructed in the companies' public publications. Two different discourses, rational and moral, are eventually formed based on the publications from different sectors, which are finally divided into different subcategories.
The analysis revealed that Finnish companies construct the EGD in the public debate mainly through the rational discourse. This was the case for all companies in the selected sectors. Among the subcategories of rational discourse, factual information, opportunities and challenges/ponders were especially useful in exploring ways of constructing the EGD. Among the moral discourse’s subcategories, personal values emerged as more important than subcategories such as "the right thing to do" or social responsibility.
In general, companies in different sectors have different perceptions of the EGD: while the Forest sector is more concerned about the impact of the EGD on the future of their company's operations, in many other sectors, such as Energy, Food, and Transport and forwarding, the EGD is constructed more as an opportunity for the future. What was surprising was how in the Machinery and industrial products sector, several aspects of the EGD are seen to be at odds with the companies' means of tackling climate change. In the Construction sector, on the other hand, the EGD is hardly discussed publicly at all, and not much can be concluded about the way the sector constructs the EGD in the context of this study.
As to the question of who drives societal change, the thesis found out that it is impossible to give a straightforward answer to this question. Instead, the results of this thesis suggest that governments and firms act as drivers for the actions of each other. While the state or other public actors, for example, put forward legislation that affects the behavior of firms, firms themselves can set targets that are more ambitious than those required by laws or regulations if perceived as rational, as reflected in the dominance of the rational discourse in the research materials of this thesis.
One of the biggest climate law packages published in recent years is the European Green Deal by the European Commission in 2019. The program aims to achieve a climate-neutral EU by 2050, and to reduce emissions by 50–55% by 2030, using 1990 as a benchmark. While the EU institutions are legislating new laws to complete the package's coverage of different sectors of society, business corporations are speeding up the progress towards climate targets with their own ambitious sustainability actions. In this thesis, drawing inspiration from the literature on International Political Economy, I analyze the roles of these different societal actors. The research enables reflecting on whether the traditional nation-states still leading the changes in the global world, or whether business corporations, through their actions, have become the trendsetters.
This question is addressed in this thesis through a case study. The thesis focuses on how Finnish companies are constructing the European Green Deal. The point is to explore how companies are positioning themselves in this change. A set of Finnish companies from different sectors of society have been selected for the study, adopting the EGD's social division of companies.
The theory utilized in this thesis is social constructivism, which helps find ways in which the EGD is publicly constructed in the companies' public publications. Two different discourses, rational and moral, are eventually formed based on the publications from different sectors, which are finally divided into different subcategories.
The analysis revealed that Finnish companies construct the EGD in the public debate mainly through the rational discourse. This was the case for all companies in the selected sectors. Among the subcategories of rational discourse, factual information, opportunities and challenges/ponders were especially useful in exploring ways of constructing the EGD. Among the moral discourse’s subcategories, personal values emerged as more important than subcategories such as "the right thing to do" or social responsibility.
In general, companies in different sectors have different perceptions of the EGD: while the Forest sector is more concerned about the impact of the EGD on the future of their company's operations, in many other sectors, such as Energy, Food, and Transport and forwarding, the EGD is constructed more as an opportunity for the future. What was surprising was how in the Machinery and industrial products sector, several aspects of the EGD are seen to be at odds with the companies' means of tackling climate change. In the Construction sector, on the other hand, the EGD is hardly discussed publicly at all, and not much can be concluded about the way the sector constructs the EGD in the context of this study.
As to the question of who drives societal change, the thesis found out that it is impossible to give a straightforward answer to this question. Instead, the results of this thesis suggest that governments and firms act as drivers for the actions of each other. While the state or other public actors, for example, put forward legislation that affects the behavior of firms, firms themselves can set targets that are more ambitious than those required by laws or regulations if perceived as rational, as reflected in the dominance of the rational discourse in the research materials of this thesis.