In Article I, I found that at a local level, the respondents considered CBNs important for engaging the private sector and creating climate action-related business opportunities. Although there is some scepticism about whether networking causes fundamental changes in the relationship between city and businesses, information sharing is an important element here: city organisations can be very challenging to understand from outside, while such organisations easily lack, for example, the technical knowledge that a specialised company can have. Furthermore, the network aims to bring members together so that they can learn from each other.
Based on the interviews with city officials working with a CBN (Article I), such participation can happen in two ways: through events or by reporting.
Using CP from Helsinki as a case example, we analysed the first using graph analysis and the second by analysing the yearly reports of the network (Article II). Overall, some members are quite active, others do not participate at all, and the rest fall in between.
Participation in events is characterised by high starness, which means a majority of the members participate in a single event only. This result is repeated when the analysis is conducted in two-year time windows over the entire timescale observed and when the non-member participants are removed. Moreover, the starness of the network was significantly higher than that of the null model. We found certain members who were unexpectedly active in comparison to the null model, but this core group was so small that it seemed improbable that it would effectively support the aims of the network.
Members from certain fields of business were significantly more active than those from others. Members from energy, construction, maintenance and NGO sectors participated more actively, on average, than expected in comparison to the null model, while members from investing, insurance and services were particularly inactive.
The groups of companies participating in the same events included more fields of business than would be expected, based on the null models. Members from some fields of business were more active than would be expected based on the total number of members belonging to that field in the sample. Based on the three diversity measures, we found that the network is able to bring companies from different fields together, and the only way to increase diversity would be to restrict the participation of the members from the most active fields, which would hardly serve the goals of the network. However, since many of them only participate occasionally, it remains unclear whether participation is sufficient to support new collaborations.
When it comes to analysing participation in reporting, the scores of the index show that while a few members of CP are ambitious, most report low or mediocre performance. Only 19 members out of 93 scored 50% or more of their theoretical maximum, 29% of the theoretical maximum being the average. The best performers come from different business fields. Hence, ambition or lack thereof is not connected to special characteristics of the business fields. Generally, performance has not improved over time. The goals of companies vary from carbon negativity to minor changes, such as increasing paper recycling in offices, but are mostly moderate. Some of the companies have some sort of climate change mitigation or adaptation included in their business ideas (e.g. they offer a service that can help their customers to save energy) and the promise they make to CP is to continue their business as usual.
While this may be beneficial for the environment, it remains questionable whether this kind of commitment is somehow an additional benefit of network participation: companies most probably aim to continue their business independent of their membership in cooperation networks. In each year, fewer than half of the reporting members set any direct emission reduction goal. In some cases, such a goal was set in relation to some variables, such as number of staff or sales volume. This, in practice, means that absolute emissions may grow even if the company achieves its goal. In reporting emission decrease, even in the best year (2014), fewer than half of the companies reported any reductions.
There is a moderate positive correlation (r = 0.39, p < 0.001) between participation in networking events and higher performance scores (see Graphic 2).
Graphic 2 Companies’ self-reported performance is, to some extent, connected to their event participation. The dotted line marks the 50% index score.
Values of the performance index are calculated over the entire period as a function of degree normalised by the total number of events in each company’s members. (Graphic from Article II)
However, we cannot say whether this is causal or if there is a third factor that explains both activities. There may be variables that make certain companies generally more active in climate change mitigation than others, thus explaining both high event participation and high index scores. For example, these companies may have active environmental management staff.
They may also participate in other initiatives that require reporting, thus leading to synergies, as they can submit the same reports to CP.
The results show that CP has certain members who score high but do not participate in the events as well as some who score low and do not participate in the events. These groups are interesting, as the first would probably have valuable insights to share with other members if they can be motivated to participate more in actual networking. On the other hand, the latter group is
clearly not benefitting from the network or advancing its aims; determining why may be beneficial for developing the network.