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Strategic Responses to Global Climate Change: Conflicting Pressures on Multinationals in the Oil Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

David L. Levy
Affiliation:
Department of Management, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Massachusetts 02125, David.Levy@umb.edu
Ans Kolk
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Graduate Business School, The Netherlands, akolk@fee.uva.nl

Abstract

MNCs are increasingly facing global environmental issues demanding coordinated market and non-market strategic responses. The home country institutional context and individual company histories can create divergent pressures on strategy for MNCs based in different countries; however, the location of MNCs in global industries and their participation in ‘global issues arenas’ create issue-level fields within which strategic convergence might also be expected. This paper analyzes the responses of oil MNCs to climate change and finds that local context influenced initial corporate reactions, but that convergent pressures predominate as the issue matures.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © V.K. Aggarwal 2002 and published under exclusive license to Cambridge University Press 

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