ABSTRACT
Climate change has long been identified as one of the most significant environmental, social and economic risks to individuals, governments, businesses and the planet. And yet immediate and deep emissions reductions across all industrial sectors have not materialised. What might be causing this corporate climate change inertia? In this chapter, we illustrate how cognitive biases prevent business leaders from accurately perceiving the importance of climate change, preventing them from paying attention to, and ultimately acting on, climate-related issues. While other institutional and organisational factors also contribute to inaction, the role of managerial cognitive biases should not be underestimated. As the research reviewed and synthesised herein suggests, the effects of framing, anchoring, availability and professional identity biases can have a profound impact on how climate change is perceived by organisational leaders. The larger goal of this chapter, however, is to go beyond purely descriptive accounts of cognitive biases by also presenting a list of mitigating interventions that could be implemented within the organisation to counter these biases. In doing so, we hope to illustrate how business leaders can better pay better attention to the strategic importance of climate change.
