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Corporate engagement with the natural environment

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 4, page 493 (2020)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Folke et al.1 provide an important perspective highlighting the outsized impact of transnational corporations (TNCs) on the biosphere. In doing so they remind us that organizations are a prominent meso-scale social phenomena, no less important for sustainability than governments and individuals.

While clear-eyed about the willingness of TNCs to actively steward the biosphere, Folke et al. nonetheless provide a cautiously optimistic narrative based on six features of emergent, systemic change. However, there is room for a more nuanced conceptualization of TNCs that does not gloss over salient features such as industry affiliation, competitive strategy and organizational complexity. Perceiving TNCs as uniform rather than heterogeneous obscures potential pathways to encouraging, incentivizing or coercing them towards stewardship. Management research on organizations and the natural environment2 can identify effective approaches, tailored to different TNC archetypes.

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Fig. 1: Diverse levels of engagement with biodiversity stewardship in the industry sectors comprising the global meat value chain.

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  1. Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Dror Etzion

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  1. Dror Etzion
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Correspondence to Dror Etzion.

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Etzion, D. Corporate engagement with the natural environment. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 493 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1142-5

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