Current and Expected Development of Corporate Strategies for Managing Environmental Risks in Hungary

Abstract

Environmental challenges often present businesses with unexpected situations, and in order to address them, innovation in the direction of sustainability must become an unavoidable activity. This entails the transformation and development of the existing business models, assuming a great business risk. The occurrence of the risk and its extent can only be estimated, which is why it is important to have management models that are able to handle the challenges posed by new, constantly arising risk factors. We analyzed the largest companies based on the number of employees with headquarters or sites in Hungary with regard to the management methods used by them to manage environmental risks. The methods used were the analysis of variance and cluster analysis. Based on the results of the research it is clear that the companies surveyed are already very concerned with environmental opportunities and risks, and they expect that the role of innovations applied to manage them to play a more prominent role in their future target system. However, the level of this is significantly different and does not depend on the financial performance, and at the same time companies can be divided into distinct groups according to the level of environmental risk management.