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The purpose of this paper is to explore engagement of flexpatriates on rotational and regular field assignments in the energy industry, theoretically grounded in the “Four Fundamental Pillars of Engagement”.

In an exploratory case study within a global organisation in the energy industry, in a post-merger/acquisition integration stage, the authors interviewed 24 rotational and regular field assignees of seven different nationalities, residing at nine different global locations.

The results of the case study show that the following newly identified drivers within the “Four Fundamental Pillars of Engagement” are crucial for engagement of flexpatriate rotational and regular field assignees in the energy industry: information, communication and technology; training, learning and growth; support from colleagues and line managers (“capacity to engage”); job ownership/control; respect, recognition and appreciation (“reason to engage”); freedom to be creative and innovative; pride and promises; client satisfaction (“freedom to engage”); alignment between the organisation and the individual (“alignment to engage”), especially in a post-merger and acquisition (M&A) organisational context during a downturn in the oil and gas industry.

The case study focused on rotational assignees from one particular organisation in the energy industry, which restricts the generalisability of the findings on engagement of rotational assignees to other organisations, industries and geographies.

Organisations in the energy industry that actively promote engagement of rotational assignees, especially during the post-M&A integration stage and economic turmoil, will strengthen their sustainable global competitive advantage.

The contribution of this paper is that it presents a refinement and expansion of the drivers of engagement within the “Four Fundamental Pillars of Engagement”, conceptualised in an international post-M&A organisational context during a downturn in the oil and gas industry.

The oil and gas industry has developed in south Louisiana over the last hundred years, first in the salt domes and coastal marshes, then out onto the Outer Continental Shelf, and most recently in the deep and ultradeep waters off the shelf. Communities such as New Iberia and Morgan City have grown with the cyclical industry, experiencing prosperous upturns and difficult downturns. Many of the forces these communities have to contend with are outside their control, including the effects of globalization and corporate restructuring common to advanced capitalism. This paper provides an overview of communities and capitalism in south Louisiana.

Professional careers have become more precarious in recent decades. Corporations today engage in downsizing even during profitable times, a practice that impacts workers throughout the labor force, including those with advanced degrees. Using a case study of women geoscientists in the oil and gas industry, I investigate how the increasing precariousness of professional careers reinforces gender inequality. The compressed cycle of booms and busts in the oil and gas industry permits an investigation into how women fare in precarious professional jobs. Extending gendered organization theory, I argue that three mechanisms are built into professional careers today that enhance women’s vulnerability to layoffs: teamwork, career maps, and networking. I illustrate how these mechanisms disadvantage women with in-depth portraits of three geoscientists who lost their jobs during the recent downturn in oil prices. Their personal narratives, collected over a 3-year period of boom and bust, reveal how a particular multinational corporation is structured in ways that favor the white men who dominate their industry. The rhetoric of diversity obscures the workings of gendered organizations during good times, but when times get tough, management’s decisions about whom to lay off belies the routine practices the reproduce men’s advantages within the industry.

The relationship between the offshore oil and gas industry and southern Louisiana has been one of ongoing, mutual adaptation. The industry has long been cyclical, responding to price changes, corporate decisions, and federal and state policies. Today, however, the industry offers little guarantee of employment, difficult terms of advancement, and, in general, an uncertain future. Many of the young men and women of the communities of southern Louisiana are looking elsewhere for work. As the local labor sources diminish, companies seek out new labor supplies, including workers from outside the region and from other parts of the world. This paper discusses some of the processes that corroded the unique relationship between the region, its people, and this industry.

In Louisiana's coastal communities with traditions of heavy dependence on the oil industry, cycles of industrial uncertainty have become routine, eliciting a set of coping responses from local government and community institutions. However, recent industrial restructuring within the context of globalization, accompanied by shifts in the climate of federal and state policy, have significantly disrupted traditional support mechanisms and threatened their survival. This article explores the realities that two South Louisiana communities impacted by the offshore oil industry face at the close of the 20th century, with a focus on health service institutions. It also explores community efforts in managing local housing and workforce preparation issues.

Norway is a small nation state on the northernmost coastline of Western Europe, integrated in the Western world economy. For centuries Norway's integration in the world economy had been based on exports of raw materials such as fish and timber, as well as shipping services. In the early 20th century, furnace-based metals (made possible by cheap hydropower) were added to this export basket. Just as the world economy entered an increasingly unstable phase in 1970s, another natural resource was discovered in Norway: petroleum – that is, oil and natural gas from the North Sea. This chapter analyses the challenges and possibilities inherent in the Norwegian strategy of developing an oil economy in a world economic situation influenced by new and stronger forms of international integration through the four decades between 1970 and 2010.

The importance of decision maker interpretations in determining organizational responses to performance downturn is underscored and incorporated into a model proposed by Ford and Baucus (1987). In this study, we adapted a Ford and Baucus model to examine 25 organizations in an area of economic downturn. Managerial perceptions of the business environment were related to internal and external organizational responses. Findings were interpreted as supporting the portion of the model dealing with active responses. Logical relationships between variables were observed. Moreover, a series of linkages was suggested. While the model shows distinct categories of responses, an important finding of this research is that firms' responses could not be characterized as falling exclusively into any one specific category as predicted by the model. Instead, we found complex networks of internal and external strategies.

This chapter examines the oil and gas industry and the efficacy of vertical integration strategies. Using multiple theoretical lenses ranging from the resource-based view, transactions costs, and parenting perspective, the chapter considers different arguments associated with vertical integration. The 2011 breakup of ConocoPhillips and its global value chain helps address the question of which strategy is best – integrated or nonintegrated. We provide several conclusions about the structure of integration and value chains within the oil and gas industry. First, vertical integration based on the physical transfer of products between value chain activities will generate little firm advantage in the form of classical integration benefits, such as control over input quality or speed to market. Second, competing across the industry value chain as a hedge or strategy against industry cyclicality is not theoretically defensible. Third, pure play industry specialists can create value through management focus, agility, and, transparency for investors. Fourth, firms that compete across a wide range of industry value chain activities can create value-adding corporate strategies if they are able to leverage knowledge and assets across different industry sectors.