Integrating Environmental Sustainability into Strategy-How headquarters-subsidiary dynamics shape the integration across locally embedded subsidiaries
| Stenberg, Jessica | ||
| Bönninger, Mareike | ||
| University of Gothenburg/Graduate School | eng | |
| Göteborgs universitet/Graduate School | swe | |
| 2014-12-12T10:17:10Z | ||
| 2014-12-12T10:17:10Z | ||
| 2014-12-12 | ||
| MSc in International Business and Trade | sv | |
| Environmental sustainability has gained increased attention among corporations and stake-holders. Recently, proactive companies have started to integrate environmental sustainability into strategy by accumulating products with enhanced environmental performance in ‘envi-ronmental portfolios’. Even though in research environmental portfolios have been presented as a successful way to integrate environmental sustainability into strategy, there are few, if any, empirical studies. By performing a case study based on a Swedish industrial corpora-tion’s environmental portfolio, this thesis starts to fill this research gap. Thus, this research contributes to both the literature about environmental portfolios and the more general litera-ture about the integration of sustainability into strategy. In sharp contrast to the claims in con-ceptual papers, this research shows that environmental portfolios have limited impact on op-erations and are therefore no fast means to integrate environmental sustainability into strategy. This is due to a conflict of interest between the multinational corporation’s (MNC) headquar-ters (HQ) and subsidiaries. In such situations HQ has difficulties overcoming subsidiaries’ local embeddedness. In other words, when subsidiary managers experience a squeeze between HQ demands to integrate environmental sustainability and market demands, subsidiary man-agers prioritise market demands, at least in this case study and at this point in an on-going process. Thereby, this research contributes by linking the literature fields of Sustainability and International Business by showing how HQ-subsidiary dynamics shape the integration of en-vironmental sustainability into strategy. The study also contributes to International Business literature by suggesting that when integrating environmental sustainability into strategy, the HQ role shifts between brain and puppet on a string as a result of organisational and external conditions. | sv | |
| http://hdl.handle.net/2077/37730 | ||
| eng | sv | |
| Master Degree Project | sv | |
| 2014:8 | sv | |
| SocialBehaviourLaw | ||
| environmental portfolio | sv | |
| environmental sustainability | sv | |
| the MECH Group | sv | |
| Posi-tive Impact | sv | |
| network MNC | sv | |
| subsidiary dual embeddedness | sv | |
| headquarters (HQ) | sv | |
| subsidiary | sv | |
| dynamics | sv | |
| middle management squeeze | sv | |
| Integrating Environmental Sustainability into Strategy-How headquarters-subsidiary dynamics shape the integration across locally embedded subsidiaries | sv | |
| Text | ||
| Master 2-years | ||
| H2 |