Despite companies' initial efforts to tackle Scope 3 emissions, how to effectively manage emissions shared across a diverse network of actors remains unclear.
Building on Young’s (2006) social connectedness model of responsibility, our study’s objective is to analyse in which conditions boundary-spanning functions as a mechanism for constructing shared responsibility.
We used a longitudinal qualitative abductive research design based on content analysis of self-reported and tertiary data from 31 European manufacturing companies’ leaders in climate action to unravel Scope 3 emissions management practices adopted. Overall, we analysed 412 documents for 16,919 pages and two online databases.
Our findings demonstrate that boundary-spanning does not always function as a mechanism that leads to shared responsibility. Companies’ ability to utilise boundary-spanning to generate shared responsibility is influenced by structural conditions, particularly supply chain complexity, which can expand opportunities for collaboration.