Abstract
Today, there is strong pressure for firms, in Norway and abroad, to adopt green or sustainable strategies. Furthermore, many Norwegian firms, directly or indirectly dependent on the dominating but declining petroleum sector, face a further challenge as they have to enter new industries in search of market opportunities. We address these dual challenges and study how green and new industry strategies are a function of firm- and regional-level characteristics. Multilevel analyses of Norwegian survey data show that both green and new industry strategies are pursued by knowledge-intensive firms that are innovative and having interfirm innovation collaboration. Green strategies are pursued by large firms and firms localized in sparsely populated regions, but they are avoided by independent firms and firms having carried out layoffs. New industry strategies are pursued by small firms, firms with growth in employees, and firms having carried out mergers or acquisitions and cost reductions.
Highlights
Today, there is strong pressure for firms, in Norway and abroad, to adopt green or sustainable strategies
We argue that knowledge-intensive firms, due to their absorptive capacity, will relatively perceive potential benefits of pursuing green and new industry strategies as viable responses to challenges related to environmental sustainability and market constraints
To study the concept of green strategy empirically, we developed four new Likert-scale items anchored in responses varying between “strongly disagree” (1) and “strongly agree” (5). (For each item, the respondents could respond “do not know/not relevant”.) The wording of the items is as follows: “We consult collaborators, governmental bodies, or interest groups concerning environmental improvements”, “We share information with competitors concerning environmental improvements”, “Environmental improvements have greater importance than short-term economic gains”, “Environmental improvements strengthen our earnings”
Summary
There is strong pressure for firms, in Norway and abroad, to adopt green or sustainable strategies. Many Norwegian firms, directly or indirectly dependent on the dominating but declining oil and gas industry, face a further challenge as they have to enter new industries or businesses in search of market opportunities. We address these dual challenges, and in particular, we investigate firm-level and regional characteristics that enable or disenable firms to adopt green or new industry strategies. The concept of new industry strategy is similar in connotation to cross-industry innovation capability. The concept implies that a firm transfers resources and capabilities from the industry where it currently operates to another new industry [5]. We study the concept by asking firms to indicate whether they have increased sales in an industry where they previously had limited sales or whether they have entered an industry that is totally new to them
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