At the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Chinese government solemnly promised “carbon peak in 2030 & carbon neutrality in 2060”. Under the instruction of the Chinese government, Chinese firms have been increasingly engaging in decarbonization to achieve carbon neutrality. However, these responsible firms with carbon emissions have encountered many management problems that undermine their motivation to engage in decarbonization and forestall the long-term planning for corporate carbon neutrality.

Since corporate decarbonization plays an essential role in fulfilling the “30·60” national commitments, we must innovate the management and incentive strategies and integrate them into the whole process of corporate decarbonization, so as to realize corporate carbon neutrality on time. Firstly, this paper summarizes the relevant research on corporate carbon neutrality from different disciplinary levels. Realizing corporate carbon neutrality needs two aspects of supports: management and technology. In the past 30 years, scholars have conducted extensive researches on management and technical issues related to carbon neutrality. However, the management-related research mainly focuses on energy economy and public policy, which targets on low-carbon policy-making. The research on exploring the corporate carbon neutrality strategy is limited.

Secondly, this paper elaborates the management difficulties of corporate carbon neutrality. There are significant differences between corporate carbon neutrality behavior and traditional corporate social responsibility behavior in five dimensions: definition, implementation, complement, information disclosure and performance effect, which makes corporate carbon neutrality have its own unique characteristics differed from corporate social responsibility.

Lastly, this paper focuses on the entire process of corporate carbon neutrality and develops a CROCS model, in which it aims at facilitating the key elements that determine the success of each stage, and takes the perspective of solving the management issue in each stage to accomplish each target. Specifically, it focuses on the following five critical issues: (1) How to classify and allocate the duty of corporate decarbonization? (2) How to promote firms to engage in the reduction of carbon emission substantially? (3) How to use the conduits of carbon offsets properly? (4) How to effectively disclose corporate carbon information? (5) How to build up the sustainable incentive on approaching corporate carbon neutrality? In summary, the CROCS model refers to carbon neutrality management, which includes five steps: commitment of carbon neutrality, reduction of carbon emission, offsets of carbon emission, communication of carbon neutrality, and stimulation of carbon neutrality.

The CROCS model provides theoretical guidance for the establishment of corporate strategies on promoting corporate decarbonization, which helps Chinese firms to approach carbon neutrality, realize green transformation, and finally contribute to fulfilling the national “30·60” commitments.