ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role and effectiveness of corporate carbon targets. Corporate carbon targets are part of a growing range of sustainability announcements that are aimed at conveying plans about how companies intend to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions over time. This chapter discusses the key theoretical arguments used for understanding how and why companies might set such goals. It develops a framework for critically evaluating key characteristics of corporate carbon targets before providing an overview of key insights from a range of studies that have examined the effectiveness of these managerial approaches to climate change. This chapter helps readers understand that setting targets may well be the first and easiest part of organisational responses to climate change. Given the emergence of a diversity of related concepts and approaches such as science-based and net zero targets as well as wider sustainability concerns, critically understanding their role and relevance is more important than ever for business management and leadership in the 21st century.
