Before You Rely on a Corporate Climate Transition Plan: Governing Handoffs Across Organizational Boundaries

Corporate climate transition plans often depend on organizations that the company does not control. Suppliers, infrastructure providers, customers, financiers, governments, workers, and communities may all need to act on compatible timelines. A plan can therefore appear credible within the company while leaving important external commitments unresolved.

This working paper connects corporate transition-plan assessment with organizational change, institutional economics, and collaborative governance. It presents a practical, non-scoring framework for examining what other parties must deliver, what evidence supports their commitments, how responsibilities are coordinated, how progress can be monitored, and what happens when delivery is delayed or incomplete. The transition of the German steel industry toward direct-reduction production provides an illustration of the approach.

The framework is intended to help investors, lenders, policymakers, and other readers distinguish corporate ambition from coordinated delivery. It does not predict whether a plan will succeed, identify an optimal governance arrangement, or treat missing public information as evidence of failure. Questions of lawful authority, consent, justice, legitimacy, labour participation, and public purpose remain separate judgments for the people and institutions responsible for them.