MGT723 Research Proposal Final Report Marking Rubric

Testing government influence on industries

In this section, the effect of government on industries in line with reduction of CO2 emissions will be tested. It is normal for many governments to be majority shareholders of companies offering national services (Dahan et al., 2015). For that reason, most of the governments influence the regulations set on the operations of organizations (Yu & Choi, 2016). In such cases therefore, the government has influence on strategies such as inclusion of climate change governance measures. This study seeks to check whether government influence has an impact on reduction of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, among organizations in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. This will be through comparing carbon emissions between USA and UK. In addition a comparison of the inclusion of climate change strategies and reduction of carbon dioxide will be done. That is, the study will check whether those companies which have included climate change into their business strategies have significantly different rates of carbon dioxide emission compared to those which have not included the strategies, in the UK and USA.

First, an independent samples t-test will be used to check whether there is a difference in CO2 emissions between the USA and UK. An independent samples t-test relates the averages of two independent sets, to check if there is a statistically significant difference between them (Kim, 2015). In this case, means in CO2 emissions between the UK and USA are independent and an independent samples t-test will be used to confirm if the means are statistically different (Kumar, 2014).

A paired samples t-test will be used to check whether there is a difference in CO2 emissions between companies which have included climate change in their business strategies and those which have not, in the USA and UK (Mackey & Gass, 2015). This will in turn assist in checking whether the government’s influence on business strategies has an impact in reducing CO2 emissions in the two mentioned nations. A paired samples t-test checks whether the averages of two independent sets of data are equal (Allum, 2015). Data on companies that have incorporated climate change into their strategies and those that have not incorporated it, in both the UK and USA, is paired. The paired samples t-test will therefore be used to check whether there is a difference in CO2 emissions between the companies.

Results of an independent samples t-test done to check if there is a difference in CO2 emissions between the USA and UK companies are as given below:

Results of an independent samples t-test for USA and UK companies

Table 2: Independent Samples Test

The table above gives results of various key tests. First, the table gives the Levene’s test, which checks if variances are equal between the two sets (USA and UK). From the Levene’s test results, there are equal variances across the two groups (F = 1.445, p = 0.0232). T-test results will therefore be read from the second row of statistics in the above table.

The t-test results showed that there is no statistical significance difference in the rate of CO2 emissions between the two countries, that is, USA and UK (t = 0.997, p = 0.321). We therefore conclude that the rate of reduction in CO2 emissions is not different between UK and USA.

T- Test on USA Companies: Checking the Difference in CO2 Emissions between Companies that Have/Have Not Incorporated Climate Change to Determine Government Influence.

The tables below show the t-test results for USA organizations that have incorporated climate change into their business strategies and those that have not, to determine whether there is a difference in their rate of reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Table 3: Paired Samples Statistics for USA Companies

The table above shows summary statistics for the two main study variables on USA companies. From the results, the companies have an average of -8.477 in the rate of CO2 reductions. This shows that the emission of CO2 reduced by -8.477 from the previous year. Secondly the mean had a standard deviation of 8.567, which shows the amount of variation, in the rate of CO2 emissions from each individual company, from the mean rate. On integration of climate change in business strategies, the USA companies had a mean of 1.22. This means that majority of the companies had incorporated climate change strategies into their business operations. The standard deviation was 0.415, which shows the amount of variation from the mean level of incorporating climate change into business strategies.

Table 4: Paired Samples Test for USA Companies

The table above shows results of the paired samples t- test for USA companies. From the results, it is evident that there was a significant difference in the amount of CO2 emissions between companies that have integrated climate change in business strategy and those that have not incorporated climate change strategies in the United States of America, t = 8.815, p < 0.0001. The obtained p- value is less than the level of significance, that is, 0.05. Therefore, the 50 companies that integrated climate change had a higher rate in reduction of CO2 emissions compared to the 10 that did not integrate climate change.

T-Test on USA Companies: Checking the Difference in CO2 Emissions between Companies that Have/Have Not Incorporated Climate Change to Determine Government Influence

T- Test on UK Companies: Checking the Difference in CO2 Emissions between Companies that Have/Have Not Incorporated Climate Change to Determine Government Influence.

The tables below show the t-test results for UK organizations that have incorporated climate change into their business strategies and those that have not, to determine whether there is a difference in their rate of reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Table 5: Paired Samples Statistics for UK Companies

The table above shows summary statistics for the two main study variables on UK companies. From the results, the companies have an average of -10.268 in the rate of CO2 reductions. This shows that the emission of CO2 reduced by -10.268 from the previous year. Secondly the mean had a standard deviation of 10.961, which shows the amount of variation, in the rate of CO2 emissions from each individual company, from the mean rate. On integration of climate change in business strategies, the United Kingdom companies had a mean of 1.03. This means that majority of the companies had incorporated climate change strategies into their business operations. The standard deviation was 0.181, which shows the amount of variation from the mean level of incorporating climate change into business strategies.

Table 6: Paired Samples Test for UK Companies

The table above shows results of the paired samples t- test for UK companies. From the results, it is evident that there was a significant difference in the amount of CO2 emissions between companies that have integrated climate change in business strategy and those that have not incorporated climate change strategies in the United Kingdom, t = 7.987, p < 0.0001. The obtained p- value is less than the selected level of significance, that is, 0.05. Therefore, the 58 companies that integrated climate change had a higher rate in reduction of CO2 emissions compared to the 2 that did not integrate climate change.

In this section, the study hypotheses were checked in line with the obtained data analysis results. The hypotheses are as given below:

H₀: There is no positive relationship between government influence on industries and reduction of carbon emissions in climate.

H₁: There is a positive relationship between government influence on industries and reduction of carbon emissions in climate.

The t-test results first revealed that there was no significant difference in carbon dioxide emissions between the USA and UK companies. This therefore means that the reduction in CO2 emissions was approximately similar in both countries.

T-Test on UK Companies: Checking the Difference in CO2 Emissions between Companies that Have/Have Not Incorporated Climate Change to Determine Government Influence

Moreover, the t-test results revealed significant differences in the amount of CO2 emissions between companies that have integrated climate change in business strategy and those that have not incorporated climate change strategies in both the UK and USA. 

From the results obtained in the section above, there is enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis in favour of the alternative hypothesis that states: There is a positive relationship between government influence on industries and reduction of carbon emissions in climate. From these deliberations, the conclusion is that government influence on businesses significantly reduces the rate of CO2 emissions by companies in the United States of America and the United Kingdom.

The research study sought to check whether there is a significant connection between government influence on business and the rate of CO2 emissions by business in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. An independent samples t-test was carried out between the USA and UK companies, to check whether there was a difference in their CO2 emissions. Additionally, paired samples t-tests were carried out for companies that have integrated climate change in their strategies and those that have not in both the countries.

Findings from data analysis on the independent samples t-test showed that there was no significant difference in the rate of reductions of CO2 emissions between the United States of America and the United Kingdom.

These findings are in line with studies on the fight directed towards carbon emissions by developed nations in the world. Research studies have shown that many of the developed countries generally dedicate a similar amount of budget towards governing climate change (Peters et al., 2015). It is therefore right to deduce that the rate of emissions is fairly the same between the Unites States of America and the United Kingdom.

In addition, the finding from data analysis revealed that there were significant differences in the rate of CO2 emissions between the two sets of companies in each country (that is, companies that have integrated climate change in their business strategies and those that have not integrated it). This clearly showed that the government had significant impacts on the reduction in CO2 emissions by organisations in USA & United Kingdom.

Many governments are actively involved with the fight towards reducing and ultimately curbing climate change. Research has shown that with steady government influence on the strategies set against carbon emissions, there has been positive improvements since the emissions have significantly reduced in such countries (Doppelt, 2017).

Study Hypotheses

Further analysis of the data revealed that for both countries, the rate of CO2 emissions reduced from the previous years. The variability of the reductions rates however was large from the means in both nations. Additionally, the analysis results showed that most of the selected companies had incorporated climate change in their business strategies in both the USA and the UK.

The analysis findings for both nations reveal the importance of government involvement in setting regulations aimed at governing climate change. Other studies have also proved that government involvement in curbing climate change through company strategies has a strong impact in reducing emissions to the atmosphere (Garmann, 2014).

Governance of climate change has been assimilated in many business strategies in a bid to reduce CO2 emissions as per the results in the sections above. However, enough research has not been done to check whether there are other ways which should be considered in a bid to reduce emissions all over the globe. Therefore, it is important that more funding is directed towards this research gap, in order to reduce the global emissions of CO2 into the environment. This will in turn assist in governing climate change worldwide (Bryman & Bell, 2011).

From the finding of this research study, other ways of governing climate change should be considered. A research study by Andonova et al., (2014), revealed that one of the ways of governing climatic change is through multinational governance. The study proposed that different factors leading to reduction of emissions should be considered collectively by different nations, in a bid to govern the global emissions. This way, the emissions will be governed worldwide, rather that independently by each nation. This approach might have an impact since reduction of emission in only a few parts of the globe is not a fruitful approach. This is because other nations with weak or no governance will continue emitting uncontrolled CO2 and other pollutants thus increasing climate change. However, if nations come together to govern climate change, emissions will be reduced and therefore climate change will be significantly governed (Burnett, 2013).

The selected sample size was large enough to detect differences between groups and relationships between variables. However, it would be better to target more businesses that have incorporated climate change in both UK and USA, in order to get a clearer picture of the target population of companies (Kaplan et al., 2014).

The CDP data was collected by targeting businesses that have incorporated climate change into their business strategies in a bid to reduce CO2 emissions. For better generalizability, the data should also capture other factors that might lead to reduction of CO2 emissions globally.

The obtained research findings give a picture of relationship between government impact on businesses and the reduction of CO2 emissions. These results are generalizable to other developed nations globally. However, in order to have a picture of other developing nations and also under- developed nations, it would be critical to include companies from such nations (Wang & Zhao, 2015). In this way, we would have a global picture of the relationship between governments’ influence on businesses and reduction of CO2 emissions around the world.

For further research, other factors apart from government influence on businesses should be considered as predictor variables. This will help in identifying other significant factors that explain the variation in reduction of CO2 emissions globally (Yao et al., 2015).

Additionally, while collecting data, primary data might be used in addition to secondary data (Stewart & Kamins, 2013). Such data could be obtained through case studies of businesses with interests in governing climate change. Such data could also be generated through interviews or experiments targeting the aforementioned businesses across the globe.

This research study’s theoretical framework considered two developed countries as control variables in studying the relationship between government impact on businesses and the reduction of CO2 emissions. For further research, other intervening or control variables such as the type of industry that a business operates in should be considered (Feng et al., 2015).

References

Allum, N., 2015. Paired Samples T-test and the Time Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (2010): Attitudes to Immigration in the USA. New York: SAGE.

Andonova, L., Betsill, M.M., Bulkeley, H., Compagnon, D., Hale, T., Hoffmann, M.J., Newell, P., Paterson, M., Roger, C. and VanDeveer, S.D., 2014. Transnational climate change governance. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2011) Business Research Methods 3e. London: Oxford University Press.

Burnett, J. W. (2013) Economic Growth and Environmental Degradation. Athens: Maypop Books.

Dahan, N.M., Doh, J.P. and Raelin, J.D., 2015. Pivoting the role of government in the business and society interface: A stakeholder perspective. Journal of Business ethics, 131(3), pp.665-680. New York: Springer.

Doppelt, B., 2017. Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for business, government and civil society. London: Routledge.

Feng, K., Davis, S.J., Sun, L. and Hubacek, K., (2015). Drivers of the US CO2 emissions 1997–2013. Nature communications, 6, p.7714. New York: Elsevier.

Garmann, S., 2014. Do government ideology and fragmentation matter for reducing CO2-emissions? Empirical evidence from OECD countries. Ecological Economics, 105, pp.1-10. New York : Elsevier.

Kaplan, R.M., Chambers, D.A. and Glasgow, R.E., 2014. Big data and large sample size: a cautionary note on the potential for bias. Clinical and translational science, 7(4), pp.342-346. London: Routledge.

Kim, T.K., 2015. T test as a parametric statistic. Korean journal of anesthesiology, 68(6), pp.540-546. Korea: Seoul.

Kumar, R. (2014) Research Methodology: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners. India: SAGE Publications.

Mackey, A. and Gass, S.M., 2015. Second language research: Methodology and design. London: Routledge.

Peters, G.P., Le Quéré, C., Moriarty, R., Andrew, R.M., Ciais, P., Friedlingstein, P., Jones, S.D., Sitch, S., Tans, P., Arneth, A. and Boden, T.A., 2015. Global carbon budget 2014. Earth System Science Data, 7(1), pp.47-85.

Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2007) Research methods for business students fifth edition. 3rd edn. Harlow: Prentice Hall.

Stewart, D. W. and Kamins, M. A. (2013) Secondary Research: Information Sources and Methods. 2nd edn. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE

Wang, Y. and Zhao, T., 2015. Impacts of energy-related CO2 emissions: evidence from under developed, developing and highly developed regions in China. Ecological Indicators, 50, pp.186-195.

Yao, C., Feng, K. and Hubacek, K., 2015. Driving forces of CO2 emissions in the G20 countries: An index decomposition analysis from 1971 to 2010. Ecological informatics, 26, pp.93-100. New York: Elsevier.

Yu, Y. and Choi, Y., 2016. Stakeholder pressure and CSR adoption: The mediating role of organizational culture for Chinese companies. The social science journal, 53(2), pp.226-235. Beijing: Elsevier.

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