Search results

The changing roles of the United Nations (UN) and national institutions have made addressing climate change a critical concern for many multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) survival and growth. This chapter discusses how such institutions, which vary in their nature and characteristics, shape firm strategies for climate change adaptation. Exploring different versions of institutional theory, the chapter demonstrates how and why institutional characteristics affect typical patterns of firm ownership, governance, and capabilities. These, in turn, influence companies’ internationalisation and climate-change strategies. Climate change poses challenges to how we understand firms’ strategic decisions from both an international business (IB) (HQ–subsidiary relations) and global value chains (GVC) (buyer–supplier relations) perspective. However, climate change also provides opportunities for companies to gain competitive advantages – if firms can reconfigure and adapt faster than their competitors. Existing IB and GVC research tends to downplay the importance of climate change strategies and the ways in which coherent or dysfunctional institutions affect firms’ reconfiguration and adaptation strategies in a globally dispersed network of value creation. This chapter presents a perspective on the institutional conditions that affect firms’ climate change strategies regarding ownership, location, and internalisation (OLI), and GVCs, with ‘investment’ and ‘emerging standards’ playing a significant role. The authors illustrate the discussion using several examples from the Global South (i.e. Bangladesh) and the Global North (i.e. Denmark, Sweden, and Germany) with a special emphasis on the garment industry. The aim is to encourage future research to examine how a ‘business systems’, or varieties of capitalism, institutional perspective can complement the analysis of sustainability and climate change strategies in IB and GVC studies.

This chapter highlights how implementing circular economy principles can help companies working with sustainability to move from a reductionist and waste management approach to marketing competitive circular value propositions that intentionally design out waste (e.g. emissions and pollution) by rethinking, reinventing and redesigning the value chain. Schijvens, a Dutch family-owned corporate fashion textile company, acts as a case for exemplifying successful implementation of circular economy principles as a marketing strategy in a sector that struggles with finding solutions to the ethical challenges of producing and marketing textile fashion. The textile industry has, for many years, been accused of production that is based on environmentally harmful processes and conditions that are not socially fair. Circular economy principles provide a range of suggestions to address the ethical challenges occurring from covering the human needs of having clothes to wear. Yet, implementing circular economy principles is not a panacea. It is not only a question of delivering a technological quick fix but also a question of managing the new processes and human mindset guiding the actions in the value chain. This chapter, therefore, outlines reasons for a different perspective on the traditional linear value chain and related implications managers face when undertaking a journey from sustainability based on a reductionist approach to a closed-loop approach. It is argued that implementing circular economy principles by pro-actively managing the value chain processes based on eco-centric dynamic capabilities can provide even more radical changes than the incremental reductionist approach often associated with being a green sustainable company.

The Rajapaksa regime over the 2005–2022 period promoted a national-popular project based on a militarised Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism promoting a market-driven rentier economy. It illustrated a form of patrimonial capitalism undermining public accountability and the efficacy of the state bureaucracy. This popular-national project was dependent on strengthening ties with China while distancing relations with India and the Global North (USA and the EU). The ways in which the external relations were coordinated reinforced discrimination against Tamil and Muslim communities, while disregarding their demands for justice and reparations. The increasing integration of the economy with financial markets, driven by the Central Bank, amplified the commercialisation of the state, restraining public revenues and state oversight. Meanwhile, the militarisation of the state involved the commercialisation of the military, opaque military budgets and violent repression of protests. The Rajapaksa regime, which enabled a minority-privileged (leisure) class to culturally flourish in regulated safe spaces, also instigated multiple protests from below demanding democracy as well as justice.

This study aims to reveal the perspectives of the management and senior accountants on the subject regarding the effects of climate change on the business world, within the framework of utilisation of tools like strategic cost management and strategic management. An electronic form was sent repeatedly to the e-mail addresses of public companies listed on the Borsa Istanbul (BIST), which were obtained from the Public Disclosure Platform (PDP), between June 2018 and June 2019. According to the data obtained from the survey of this study, it is not possible to comment that these tools are effectively utilised in Turkey. Besides, it is also early to say that top management is fully aware of the need to manage climate change. This study contributes to the literature by revealing the view of management accountants and finance experts in Turkey on climate change.

Alain Verbeke is one of the world’s leading thinkers on international business (IB) and globalization, a renowned scholar and educator who contributes to creating a better global business environment by addressing some of today’s most critical challenges. He was one of the first scholars to advance a theoretically rigorous and practically significant perspective on international corporate social responsibility (CSR). Verbeke’s work on international CSR is particularly impactful because it is rooted in IB theory and based on a realistic set of assumptions about the behavior of managers, policymakers, and other market and nonmarket stakeholders. In this chapter, the authors apply theoretical principles central to Verbeke’s research – most notably behavioral assumptions of bounded rationality and bounded reliability – to analyze businesses’ and societies’ pace of progress in relation to stated environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. The authors argue that bounded rationality and reliability challenges create misalignment between stated/imposed commitments toward ESG performance, and economic actors’ ability to deliver on these commitments. The authors discuss examples of such misalignment, focusing on tensions among stakeholders, between stakeholder organizations and firms, and within firms. The authors propose that to be relevant for policy and practice, the sustainability research should be based on realistic microfoundational assumptions.