Thesis advisor: Sarah Babb / The years since the Paris Agreement have seen intensifying efforts to decarbonize the financial system. Disclosure frameworks, notably the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), and Net-Zero targets, are fast becoming institutionalized globally to incentivize financial institutions to divert capital into low-carbon activities and away from carbon-heavy ones. I examine the implementation of these frameworks among financial corporations (FCs) in Singapore. 15 semi-structured interviews with professionals in the industry at the forefront of TCFD and Net-Zero suggest that FCs’ “talk” often does not match with their “actions”. Organizations ceremonially comply with new global standards as well as local regulations on TCFD and Net-Zero while they continue to finance carbon-intensive economic activities. Yet this apparent “hypocrisy” may not be so much a result of coordinated efforts for organizational buffering, as it is a consequence of disorganization and discoordination. Informants suggest that different parts within FCs independently perceived and responded differently, at a different pace, to the novel challenges that climate change has brought. I contribute to the environmental sociology literature on “organized hypocrisy” by examining how commonly perceived “hypocrisy” is or is not, in fact, “organized”. In doing so, I suggest that we should not assume “hypocrisy” to be an intentional organizational project. Furthermore, rather than seeing “hypocrisy” as effort to keep an organization “stable”, I argue that hypocrisy may be indicative of slow and potentially discordant organizational change, with ongoing internal efforts by insiders to match “actions” with “talk”. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_109717 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Phan, Viet Hoang |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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