Climate change skills for the new CFOs : a preliminary analysis on TCFD by Italian listed companies

In the current context of climate change, and despite the general acceptance of the urgency of actions, accounting disclosure fails to outline financial climate-related risks. In this regard, considering the different environmental and sustainability frameworks, this paper adopts the Task force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) framework because it encompasses the potential substantial risks to financial results stemming from a corporation's climate dependency. It is noteworthy to investigate the changing role of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) as climate-related disclosures are constructed and reported based on TCFD requirements, as transposed by the EU's recommendations. Based on these premises, this study analyzes the reporting requirements provided by the TCFD for the voluntary disclosure on climate change that must be addressed by contemporary CFOs.

Considering the required disclosure, it is possible to identify the competencies that CFOs must acquire in the immediate future (in terms, e.g., of environmental-managerial metrics that must be measured) and the soft skills that are required to collaborate with scientific experts who provide the technical side of the disclosed data. The authors develop a content analysis of the most recent, available Non-Financial Declarations of Italian listed companies and then disentangle the results into distinct categories. This study expands the field of knowledge of a key future issue and, in so doing, it emphasizes the role of accounting in fostering/contrasting the necessary actions to manage climate change. [Publisher's text]