CEO Managerial Ability and the Strategic Repetition of Climate Disclosures;




Rajabalizadeh, Javad

PublisherWiley

2026

 Business Strategy and the Environment

bse.71084

0964-4733

1099-0836

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1002/bse.71084

https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.71084

https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/523737908



This study examines whether CEO managerial ability shapes the repetition of firms' climate-related disclosures in mandatory 10-K filings. Climate reporting is highly judgment based and central to firms' broader climate-risk management strategies, yet little is known about why some firms repeatedly use similar climate narratives and others revise them extensively. Using 12,533 US firm-year observations from 2005 to 2023, we measure climate-disclosure repetition through four dictionary-based similarity metrics and an AI-based semantic embedding approach. CEO ability is captured using an efficiency-adjusted managerial ability score. The results show that firms led by higher-ability CEOs provide more repetitive climate narratives over time. These findings remain robust across matching procedures, entropy balancing, within-year disclosure-alignment tests, lagged-ability models, and change-on-change specifications. Overall, the study highlights managerial capability as an important driver of firms' long-term climate-communication strategies and introduces intertemporal repetition as a novel dimension of climate-disclosure practice.


This work was supported by the Foundation for Economic Education (32-16841).


Last updated on 12/06/2026 01:06:06 PM