Making sense of climate change in central government annual reports and accounts: A comparative case study between the United Kingdom and Norway

Abstract

Taking a sensemaking and accountability perspective, this paper explores how the Norwegian and the United Kingdom (UK) central governments understand climate change in the annual reports and accounts and how this shapes its accountability. Using a thematic analysis, we find that the Norwegian central government makes sense of climate change as a global problem requiring coordinated actions with shared responsibility and accountability to international agreements. In contrast, the UK central government understands climate change as a problem for individual departments and accountability to national guidelines. Sensemaking is enabled primarily in the narratives but also visually in the UK central government. Our research contributes to climate‐related and accounting research by illustrating how central government understands climate change. Theoretically, we extend the literature on sensemaking to the public sector and how sensemaking shapes accountability for climate change.