Multinational enterprises and their role in mitigating climate change: comparative perspectives

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) sit at the center of global climate mitigation, ranking among the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions while possessing the reach and capabilities to advance decarbonization at scale. International business research has examined firms’ environmental strategies and national institutions largely in isolation, leaving unexplained why the same MNE may comply merely symbolically in one institutional setting while advancing substantive mitigation in another. This introductory article develops a comparative institutional account of MNEs and climate change, showing how varieties of capitalism, geoeconomic competition, and deglobalization pressures shape corporate climate action. Drawing on this account and the six articles in the focused issue, we advance a mechanism-based framework in which MNEs simultaneously perform three functions, driving carbon-intensive globalization, mediating climate governance across borders and value chains, and mitigating emissions through innovation and capability building. We specify the institutional, ownership, and capability conditions under which each function becomes most prominent. We conclude with a research agenda that treats climate change not as context for international business but as a force reshaping multinationality itself.