In the context of distinctive international business phenomena of global environmental concern i.e., climate change, this dissertation addresses two research questions. Does multinational enterprise (MNE) orientation (global- or regional-orientation) have an influence on the carbon performance of the multinational? Is there any significant home country effect that drives carbon performance? Stakeholders are increasingly watching the green performance of the firms and investors are looking for information of how firms deal with externalities such as carbon emission. Environmental capabilities are increasingly becoming the core competence of a multinational enterprise. This also enables the MNE to be an active entity and play a key role in global environmental governance. Defining carbon performance as the capability of firms to integrate climate change strategy into the overall strategy, this dissertation used resource-based view and institutional theory as the theoretical framework along with the concept of regionalization of firms. We argue that differences in integrating strategy to reduce carbon emission (carbon performance) are related to MNE orientation and home country effect. Using a sample of 324 firm-years drawn from the carbon disclosure project reports 2011, 2012, and 2013, we analyzed the data running a logistic regression. We found that global-oriented MNEs had better carbon performance compared with regional-oriented MNEs (p This result was against the hypothesized relationship. One of the reasons for this result could be projected good image by the firms in environmentally non-sensitive industries because of cost advantage. Lower environmental institutional distance between home and host country of a firm increased the likelihood of its carbon performance regardless of its orientation as global or regional (p

Within the last decade research on climate change strategies and adaptive capacity emerged as the debate about climate change was intensified with the publishing of the Third Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001. That companies are facing risks and opportunities is not new and the awareness to address these issues is growing. However, there is still need for research in the field of corporate strategic response to climate change. Recently, research focused on resilience management to address climate change. Resilience management is about being able to experience changes and remain stable getting back into the same situation before the change happen. On the contrary to resilience management adaptive capacity is about the ability to be able to adapt to uncertain and unexpected events on the long term. This includes long-term changes. This work argues that companies should think about their adaptive capacity as climate change induces short and long-term changes. Adding this dimension to the strategic planning companies need to think of how they can improve their adaptive capacity. This work investigates research in both issues adaptive capacity and climate change research and in their relation. Applying a systematic literature review this study conducted 60 references which are examined by a qualitative-quantitative analysis and answers the following questions: What is the current scientific view of adaptive capacity within strategic management literature? What are determinants of adaptive capacity? How can adaptive capacity be linked to climate change strategy and is it even antecedent to climate change strategies? The findings of this research indicate that adaptive capacity and climate change strategies exhibit a link but it cannot be proved whether adaptive capacity is antecedent. Furthermore, the term adaptive capacity is merely discussed within strategic management literature and if it is discussed and examined, several concepts and theories are applied to explain determinants of adaptive capacity. Several concepts such as dynamic capabilities, organizational learning capability, organizational learning, organizational change capacity, flexibility and more could be identified as concepts enhancing adaptive capacity. This works provides an overview of related concepts and theories.

Les principaux objectifs de la thèse sont : d'explorer les motivations sociales et stratégiques et leurs conséquences, de modéliser et de décortiquer les mécanismes relationnels et instrumentaux des stratégies des organisations sur le marché du carbone. Pour cela, trois études empiriques ont été menées sur le terrain du marché du carbone régit par le Mécanisme de Développement Propre (MDP) élaboré dans le cadre du protocole de Kyoto. La première recherche exploratoire qui se base sur une étude de cas inductive a été réalisée dans un pays en voie de développement. Les résultats suggèrent que les préoccupations institutionnelles et concurrentielles influencent la stratégie des organisations du marché du carbone. Traitant de l'influence sociale comme opérant au sein d’une structure relationnelle, les deux études suivantes analysent la dynamique du comportement de l'organisation et son réseau relationnel. Les résultats suggèrent que, dans le cadre du marché MDP, l'ancrage et la centralité du réseau des entreprises affectent leurs comportements. Cependant, tout en contrôlant les contingences structurelles d’ordre relationnel à l’échelle des acteurs, les dynamiques co-évolutionnaires liées au réseau et au comportement suggèrent que les motivations instrumentales d’une entreprise sont plus promptes à influencer son comportement. Cette thèse contribue à la littérature sur la stratégie climatique par l'explication des dynamiques comportementales sociales et stratégiques, ainsi que par l’analyse des caractéristiques structurelles du réseau d’acteurs sur le marché carbone. / The main objectives of the dissertation are to explore social and strategic motivations and consequences, and to model and disentangle relational and rational-instrumental mechanisms of carbon market strategies of organizations. To achieve these objectives, three empirical studies were conducted in the context of carbon market that operates under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The first inductive case study based exploratory research was carried out in a developing country. Findings suggest that institutional and competitive concerns motivate carbon market strategy of organizations. Treating social influence as operating through relational structure, the next two papers then analyze dynamics of organization’s behavior and its relational network. Results suggest that in the CDM market, firm’s network embeddedness, and centrality affect firms’ behaviors. However, while controlling for certain actor level and relational-structural contingencies, network and behavior co-evolutionary dynamics suggest that firm’s instrumental motivations are more pronounced in influencing the behavior of firms. This dissertation contributes to the climate strategy literature by explicating the social and strategic dynamics of behavior, and network structural characteristics, of the carbon market actors.

Within the last decade research on climate change strategies and adaptive capacity emerged as the debate about climate change was intensified with the publishing of the Third Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001. That companies are facing risks and opportunities is not new and the awareness to address these issues is growing. However, there is still need for research in the field of corporate strategic response to climate change. Recently, research focused on resilience management to address climate change. Resilience management is about being able to experience changes and remain stable getting back into the same situation before the change happen. On the contrary to resilience management adaptive capacity is about the ability to be able to adapt to uncertain and unexpected events on the long term. This includes long-term changes. This work argues that companies should think about their adaptive capacity as climate change induces short and long-term changes. Adding this dimension to the strategic planning companies need to think of how they can improve their adaptive capacity. This work investigates research in both issues adaptive capacity and climate change research and in their relation. Applying a systematic literature review this study conducted 60 references which are examined by a qualitative-quantitative analysis and answers the following questions: What is the current scientific view of adaptive capacity within strategic management literature? What are determinants of adaptive capacity? How can adaptive capacity be linked to climate change strategy and is it even antecedent to climate change strategies? The findings of this research indicate that adaptive capacity and climate change strategies exhibit a link but it cannot be proved whether adaptive capacity is antecedent. Furthermore, the term adaptive capacity is merely discussed within strategic management literature and if it is discussed and examined, several concepts and theories are applied to explain determinants of adaptive capacity. Several concepts such as dynamic capabilities, organizational learning capability, organizational learning, organizational change capacity, flexibility and more could be identified as concepts enhancing adaptive capacity. This works provides an overview of related concepts and theories.