Mitigating climate change – how do corporate strategies differ?

Many companies are facing increasing pressure by governments, shareholders and other stakeholders to reduce their CO₂ emissions in order to mitigate climate change. The importance of managing CO₂ emissions and crafting adequate CO₂ strategies has increased for those companies affected. We present a framework that conceptualizes a company's CO₂ strategy as the focus on one or a combination of several strategic objectives: CO₂ compensation, CO₂ reduction and carbon independence. In order to investigate the CO₂ strategies of a worldwide sample of 91 electricity producers we perform a content analysis of their answers to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). We demonstrate the measures the companies take to manage their emissions, the CO₂ strategies they adopt and antecedents that influence these strategies. We find that half of the companies take parallel emission management measures that aim at all three strategic objectives, while the other half pursue selected objectives only. We also find that companies with different CO₂ strategies significantly differ in terms of regional affiliation, company size and absolute amount of CO₂ emissions, while we could not identify a significant difference in relative CO₂ emissions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Intra‐Sectoral Differences in Climate Change Strategies: Evidence from the Global Automotive Industry

Companies are increasingly challenged for action on climate change. Most studies on business responses to climate change focus on cross‐sector comparisons and neglect intra‐sectoral dynamics. This paper investigates the influence of supply chain position and regional affiliation on climate change strategies within a particular industry. We present a generic framework integrating both market and non‐market responses to climate change. We argue that climate change strategies comprise several corporate activities that have different foci of interaction and four main objectives: governance, innovation, compensation and legitimation. Using a global sample of 116 automotive companies, we conduct a cluster analysis and identify four types of strategy. We find that the sophistication of automobile manufacturers' strategies significantly differs from that of suppliers. Regional affiliation and firm size prove to be determinants of the strategy type pursued. We cannot find evidence for a relationship between financial performance and a company's strategic approach to climate change. © 2017 The Authors. Business Strategy and the Environment published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

Opening up the firm: What explains participation and effort in voluntary carbon disclosure by global businesses? An analysis of internal firm factors and dynamics

A voluntary climate initiative that has emerged over the past two decades as an institutional arrangement for corporations around the globe to signal and demonstrate their proactive climate leadership is the CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project). Unlike the extant literature that has emphasized stakeholder and regulatory pressures, this paper argues that voluntary carbon disclosure is both beneficial and costly for corporations with respect to the existence of supportive management structures, explicit CSR practices, and the existence of complementary assets. Moreover, there is variation between European firms and other global businesses because of Europe's distinctive national business systems framework in conjunction with global supply chain imperatives. Empirically, this study employs a novel discrete‐continuous modeling approach to distinguish between a corporation's decision to disclose and the linked but subsequent decision of how much to disclose climate change information. Results indicate that the main drivers of participation in voluntary carbon disclosure by the Global 500 firms is the existence of senior managers and executive‐level officers and the adoption of ESG principles by global businesses. Conditional on participation, European Union‐based and other global businesses that articulate a corporate vision for environmental sustainability, adopt ESG principles, and invest in complementary assets disclose climate change strategies and emissions at higher levels than companies without these internal firm capabilities. This study has implications for national climate policy and global climate change governance more generally, both of which increasingly focus on concrete climate solutions by corporations.     

Does the Diversification–Firm Performance Relationship Change Over Time? A Meta‐Analytical Review

We study the relationship between diversification and firm performance in the context of the decline in levels of diversification over time. We argue that the pressure to reduce diversification may have more strongly affected those firms whose diversification strategies were most detrimental to firm performance. We employ meta‐analytical regression (MARA) in order to test our hypotheses, using a total of 267 primary studies containing 387 effect sizes based on 150,000 firm‐level observations from over 60 years of research on the diversification–firm performance relationship. The findings suggest that levels of unrelated diversification have decreased, whereas levels of related diversification have increased since the mid‐1990s, following an initial decrease in the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, we find that the relationship between unrelated diversification and firm performance has improved significantly over time, whereas the relationship between related diversification and performance has remained relatively stable.     

韩国港口东亚战略的探析

近年来,随着中国沿海集装箱港口群的迅速崛起和日本超级中枢港计划的实施,对韩国港口的生存和发展空间带来了前所未有的压力。韩国政府基于物流立国战略,为巩固本国港口群的国际竞争力,顺利实现东亚物流中心的宏伟目标,展开了一系列重大举措。文中从港口经营管理和基础设施投资建设两个侧面探讨韩国集装箱港口的发展对东亚港口的影响。     

Do Company Directors Underestimate the Adoption of Corporate Governance Provisions？ A Survey Approach

This paper examines whether company directors underestimate the adoption of corporate governance provisions within Ghanaian listed firms. Using a survey approach, the respondents, who were company executives and non-executive directors with knowledge of the Ghanaian Code and its provisions, regard the code as a benchmark for good corporate governance practices within Ghanaian listed firms. They also report some improvement in the standard of corporate governance in their companies since the introduction of the Code. Many of the company directors indicated their preparedness to comply with further corporate governance requirements, such as the adoption of a formal nomination committee something not been currently included in the Ghanaian Code. However, the directors noted that they receive inadequate support from the regulatory and institutional bodies for the implementation of the Ghanaian Code provisions. Many of the directors also supported the review of the Ghanaian Code by an independent committee. With regard to the adoption of the Ghanaian Code and its influence on firm performance, the respondents indicated that the adoption of the specific governance provisions in the area of chief executive officer （CEO）/chairman roles separation, having a balance of executive and non-executive directors on the board, the establishment of audit and remuneration committees, and the full adoption of the Ghanaian Code provisions were all influential in determining firm performance. They, however, did not support the adoption of the board size provision as influential to firm performance. This raises questions about the usefulness of the range of board size as recommended by the Ghanaian Code.     

The impact of financial performance on environmental policy: does firm life cycle matter?

Existing literature has provided inconclusive evidence regarding the impact of financial performance on firm policy relating to environmental issues. In this paper, we propose that the influence of corporate financial performance on corporate environmental policy is unlikely to be monotonic but, rather, will vary with firm life cycle. We test this hypothesis by the application of static and dynamic techniques on panel data from UK companies. The results provide support for our hypotheses that financial performance has the strongest impact on environmental policy in the maturity stage of the firm life cycle and the weakest impact in the rapid growth stage. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.