The Drivers of Corporate Climate Change Strategies and Public Policy

Abstract

Effective public policy to mitigate climate change footprints should build on data-driven analysis of firm-level strategies. This article’s conceptual approach augments the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and identifies investments in four firm-level resource domains (Governance, Information management, Systems, and Technology [ GISTe]) to develop capabilities in climate change impact mitigation. The authors denote the resulting framework as the GISTe model, which frames their analysis and public policy recommendations. This research uses the 2008 Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) database, with high-quality information on firm-level climate change strategies for 552 companies from North America and Europe. In contrast to the widely accepted myth that European firms are performing better than North American ones, the authors find a different result. Many firms, whether European or North American, do not just “talk” about climate change impact mitigation, but actually do “walk the talk.” European firms appear to be better than their North American counterparts in “walk I,” denoting attention to governance, information management, and systems. But when it comes down to “walk II,” meaning actual Technology-related investments, North American firms’ performance is equal or superior to that of the European companies. The authors formulate public policy recommendations to accelerate firm-level, sector-level, and cluster-level implementation of climate change strategies.

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

“…First, categorizations of strategies primarily rely on cross-sector analyses (e.g. Jeswani et al, 2008;Sprengel and Busch, 2011;Backman et al, 2017). Little research has studied the variation of strategies within sectors (Weinhofer and Hoffmann, 2010).…”

“…remuneration based on corporate emission performance) and non-monetary incentives (e.g. energy-efficiency awards) (Backman et al, 2017) Risk management…”

“…In this regard, CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project) served as the main source. The CDP questionnaire has been used by several other studies in the field and has proved to be a valuable and comprehensive source of information (Weinhofer and Hoffmann, 2010;Jira and Toffel, 2013;Backman et al, 2017). To increase the reliability of data, only companies with at least two different types of available document (e.g.…”

The Role of Public Transport in Society—A Case Study of General Policy Documents in Sweden

“…In the last decade or so, public sector strategy has been vitalized by the resource-based view (RBV) of strategy, which focuses on an organization's internal resources and capabilities as a source for success [4,33,41]. The idea is that imbalances in the possession of resources and capabilities among organizations explain differences in performance over time despite the same market conditions, and therefore become a determining factor of organization success.…”

“…Capabilities are cumulative and develop over time, and different types of capabilities-including economic, social and environmental-mutually reinforce each other [43]. Backman et al [41] discuss how resource analysis can be used and how it can provide public policy recommendations on specific issues, such as the mitigation of climate change footprints. One of their main conclusions is the importance of establishing a common vision as a way to organize the focus and attention of other actors towards the common goal.…”