Business Response Strategies to Climate Change: An Integrative and Research Frontiers Outlook

Abstract

As climate change (CC)-related adversity has become more evident, physical CC impacts and the need to respond to it are now a prominent topic in the political agenda in multiple countries. Accordingly, businesses have begun to adopt strategies to seeking to respond to CC. Recently, strategy and general management scholars have produced a growing number of articles examining the factors that increase the adoption of CC strategies, and, in a few cases, the environmental and financial performance implications of these strategies. Our review indicates that: (a) business research tends to dismiss CC-related adversity, with much of the research on drivers of responses highlighting a clear anthropocentric bias; (b) many papers discuss either adaptation or mitigation without much examination of synergies and tradeoffs between strategies; and (c) we know little about what and how physical climate conditions affect firms and their ability to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage.