| The Trade-Environment Linkage: Strategic Responses in Canada's Pulp and Paper Industry |
| | Higginson, Nancy Jean | U. of Calgary | nhigginson@compuserve.com | (403) 253-5298 |
| | Vredenburg, Harrie | U. of Calgary | vredenbu@mgmt.ucalgary.ca | (403) 284-3061 |
| | Canada's pulp and paper industry is a major contributor to the country's GDP and net trade balance. The industry is depedent upon export markets, selling over 80 percent of production internationally. In recent years, the industry has come under intense scrutiny in both domestic and export markets for its environmental responsiveness. Meanwhile, the trade-environment linkage has emerged as an important issue on the international trade agenda.
This paper presents the results of a qualitative study undertaken on pulp and paper firms in Canada's West Coast cluster. The study has two main goals: 1) to identify the main sources of environmental pressures in export markets; and 2) to determine the firm-level strategic responses to these pressures.
The study determined that environmental pressures impact on firm-level competitiveness in export markets in Germany and the U.S. These pressures are the result of government regulatory regimes and market-driven consumer demands. Firms respond by incorporating environmental issues at all levels of the organization in a strategic function. |
| | Keywords: Trade; Environment; Strategy |
| The Environmental Change Process and Firm Size: An Empirical Study |
| | Angell, Linda C. | Pennsylvania State U. | lca2@psu.edu | 814-863-2645 |
| | Rands, Gordon P. | Western Illinois U. | GP-Rands@wiu.edu | (309)-298-1342 |
| | External pressures drive the strategic formulation and implementation of environmental initiatives in manufacturing organizations. However, the business context influences management's interpretation of these pressures, and thereby the strategic formulation and implementation process. This paper examines the hypothesis that firm size impacts both management's expectations regarding, and approach to, environmental change. The results of a large mail survey confirm this hypothesis in several areas. First, while managers in most respondent firms expect environmental change to be moderately expensive, managers in medium firms are more likely to expect the cost of environmental initiatives to be either minimal or substantial. Second, small firm managers worry about the disruptive impact of environmental change upon operations significantly more than managers in medium or large firms. Third, expectations about the time necessary for project implementation are positively related to firm size - thus, the larger the firm, the more time allocated for implementing environmental initiatives. In all cases, actual implementation times were approximately as projected. Fourth, final approval for environmental change initiatives comes primarily from top management in small and medium firms, while large firms often empower plant and operations managers to make these decisions. Finally, while all groups assign operations a heavy role in the actual implementation of planned environmental initiatives, management groups carry this responsibility more in small firms, while larger firms delegate this responsibility more to engineering departments. Other aspects of environmental change (such as initiative types and drivers) vary independently of firm size.
|
| | Keywords: Natural Environment; Change; SME |
| Corporate Strategic Responses to Environmental Regulations |
| | Rugman, Alan M. | Templeton College, U. of Oxford | alan.rugman@templeton.oxford.ac.uk | 01865 422705 |
| | Verbeke, Alain | U. of Brussels | pr.dr.a.verbeke@glo.be | 32 2 629 21 28 |
| | We develop a new framework to analyse the green strategies of six multinational enterprises in
response to environmental regulations. The framework adds government environmental regulations
as an explicit sixth force to Porter's "five forces" model of competitive strategy. Our new framework
consists of three parts. First, we relate the relative shifts in corporate strategy towards market
forces or regulators, recognising that it is possible for simultaneous shifts in strategy to occur.
Second, we examine the advantage of being a first mover, again in response to either market forces or
regulators. This recognises that first mover behaviour is a multidimensional strategic issue. Third,
we develop a resource-based perspective on green strategies in an explicit international dimension.
We model the creation of either non-location bound or location-bound green firm-specific advantages.
We label these dynamic organizational capabilities as "change absorption" capabilities. Using our three
part framework, we find that four multinational enterprises have developed change absorption capabilities
(DuPont, Honeywell, McDonald's and Xerox) where two have not (Laidlaw and Allied Signal).
|
| | Keywords: green strategies; change absorption capabilities; environmental regulations |
| Globalization and Sustainable Development - Change, Development and Governance of Business in a Plural World |
| | Roome, Nigel John | Tilburg U. | nigel.roome@kub.nl | (31)-13-466-2337 |
| | This paper addresses the implications of global change and sustainable development for firms. It considers the implications
that arise for the governance of firms in an increasingly interconnected and turbulent world.
The paper conceives sustainable development as a response to the first wave of global change experienced in the modern era.
It analyses the more recent waves of global change and their economic, financial, social and cultural dimensions. This analysis
is used to develop a view on the changes that will influence the position of firms in the new millennium. It is suggested that
we are entering an information, systems and biological age in which firms will be increasingly concerned with the ownership and
management of 'systems'. This will force firms to come into new relationships with a wide set of stakeholders. These developments
will expose an acute gap between the capabilities available to firms and the demands arising from the systems they own and the
stakeholders embedded in those systems. This will lead to a need to reconceptualize the firm, its role in society, the function
of management and approaches to corporate governance. |
| | Keywords: global change; sustainable development; governance |