1 / 8

Integrating Climate Change with Core Business Activities

Integrating Climate Change with Core Business Activities. Jonatan Pinkse & Ans Kolk University of Amsterdam Business School The Netherlands. Introducing business and climate change. Initial business responses merely political :

casper
Télécharger la présentation

Integrating Climate Change with Core Business Activities

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Integrating Climate Change with Core Business Activities Jonatan Pinkse & Ans Kolk University of Amsterdam Business School The Netherlands

  2. Introducing business and climate change • Initial business responses merely political: • At first most large firms opposed policy initiatives to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but since the inception of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol increasingly more firms are in favor • Gradual emergence of market responses: • Firms are starting to develop ‘climate-friendly’ technologies • Firms start to engage in emissions trading and other Kyoto mechanisms • Aim of our paper: • Analyze to what extent firms integrate climate change with their core business activities

  3. Integration of climate change • Commonly business response understood in terms of mitigation: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, e.g. improving energy efficiency • Usually only minor changes in the production process • But, do firms also choose for integration of their concern for climate change into their mainstream business activities? • And, to what extent does climate change motivate firms to modify their core business activities?

  4. A dynamic capabilities framework • Dynamic capabilities: competence to renew existing capabilities to maintain a fit with changing environment • Whether firms appear to integrate climate change with their core business depends on: • Nature of climate-induced dynamic capabilities • Green or conventional? • Origin of climate-induced dynamic capabilities • Geographic spread: global, regional, domestic? • Spillover effects throughout value chain • Aimed at upstream (suppliers) and/or downstream (sales) activities

  5. Data & Method • Analysis of Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) 2004 questionnaire data of Global 500 firms • 218 multinationals publicly responded to CDP • Using content analysis with inductive coding, the data were scrutinized for activities that: • Form a response to the climate change issue • Fundamentally change current business practices • Are likely to have a significant impact on firm competitiveness

  6. Findings (1) • Firms follow distinctive pathways towards: • Technological (conventional) capabilities • Towards similar technologies (automotive) • Towards different technologies (oil & gas) • Organizational (green) capabilities • Exploitation of existing capabilities (utilities, finance) • New capabilities (emissions trading; in some cases only) • Activities undertaken by multinationals from all three regions of the Triad – US/EU/Japan (regulation not decisive) • Much cooperation for technological development: particularly with firms and research institutes in home country

  7. Findings (2) • Organizational capabilities potentially more location-bound than technological capabilities • E.g. emissions trading only where such systems exist and firms/sectors are included • Technology usually incorporated in products so better transferable • More opportunities in downstream activities, but • Worldwide marketing of technology-based products problematic • E.g. when an infrastructure is required (case of marketable hydrogen car)

  8. Conclusions • Integration still limited, some first steps for the long run in a few industries only • A strategic reorientation towards sustainability still utopia • But, quite some firms are developing different kinds of technological and/or organizational capabilities, mostly green sometimes conventional • In doing so, multinationals mainly rely on existing capabilities in making incremental changes

More Related