Framing Collective Moral Responsibility for Climate Change

A Longitudinal Frame Analysis of Energy Company Climate Reporting

Bibliographic Data

ID21464708
AuthorsMelanie Feeney (Maastricht University, corresponding author), Jarrod Ormiston (0000-0002-5295-0126, University of Technology Sydney), Wim Gijselaers (0000-0002-4218-2944, Maastricht University), Pim Martens (0000-0002-7489-0048, Maastricht University), Therese Grohnert (0000-0003-0578-0678, Maastricht University)
Year2025
Volume198
Issue3
Pages485-508
Publication date2025-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Business Ethics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0167-4544 • E-ISSN: 1573-0697
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10551-024-05801-0
OpenAlexW4401894364
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited88

Responding to climate change and avoiding irreversible climate tipping points requires radical and drastic action by 2030. This urgency raises serious questions for energy companies, one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs), in terms of how they frame, and reframe, their response to climate change. Despite the majority of energy companies releasing ambitious statements declaring net zero carbon ambitions, this ‘talk’ has not been matched with sufficient urgency or substantive climate action. To unpack the disconnect between talk and action, this paper draws on the literature on framing, organisational hypocrisy, and collective moral responsibility. We conduct a longitudinal qualitative content analysis of the framing of climate change used by the ten largest European investor-owned energy companies and the actions they have taken to shift their business practices. Our findings reveal three main categories of energy companies: (i) deflecting, (ii) stagnating, and (iii) evolving. We show key differences in the relationship between framing and action over time for each category, revealing how deflecting companies have larger and persistent gaps between green talk and concrete action and how stagnating companies are delaying action despite increased green talk, while evolving companies exhibit a closer link between talk and action that tends to be realised over time. Our analysis reveals how competing approaches to framing collective moral responsibility help understand the trajectories of talk and action across the different categories of energy companies. This research makes several contributions to the literature on organisational hypocrisy and collective moral responsibility in the context of climate change. Our analysis highlights the complex relationship between collective moral responsibility, organisational hypocrisy and climate action, revealing how different collective framings—diffuse, teleological, or agential—can both enable and offset substantive climate action. The study also enriches our understanding of the performative nature of collective moral responsibility by examining its temporal dimensions and showing how an agential, backward-looking focus is associated with more meaningful climate action

Business ethics · Climate change · Cognitive reframing · Collective action · Environmental ethics · Hypocrisy · Moral responsibility · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Sociology · Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting · Ethics in Business and Education · Law · Management and Organizational Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology

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