Abstract
Amid growing calls for innovative, safe, and collaborative green transformation to support sustainability transitions, we propose a framework that integrates contingency-based dynamic capabilities, organizational co-evolution, and active socio-technical transition theories to model flood-risk (FR)-induced firm-level green resilience, unique to oil and gas (O&G) facility-based commercial ecosystems.
Motivated by preliminary causal evidence showing that historical flood events in China have led to an increase in carbon-emission-reduction-related patents, with stronger effects in regions hosting systemically significant O&G facilities, we theorize the following:
(i) FR-induced capability building exists among small constituent firms within the operational management of O&G facility-based ecosystems. However, such anticipatory learning can be disrupted by non-anticipatory cross-site spillovers of FR in other locations through pipeline connections.
(ii) The evolution of constituent firms’ risk-mitigating capabilities into carbon-reducing innovation can be enhanced by organizational co-evolution forces, through synergy with the green profiling strategies of facility-owning large O&G corporations.
(iii) These phenomena are affected by regime-peripheral actors located within O&G ecosystems.
We investigate these mechanisms using data from 127,410 constituent firms over 20 years, complemented by robustness checks using a stricter and narrower supply-chain definition (9,536 firms).
We find quantitative evidence supporting (i) and (ii), with the latter also shielding the anticipatory learning in (i) from cross-site FR spillovers. Finally, we find that most other local interest groups unintentionally impede this organic co-evolution, suggesting that large O&G corporations may need to take a leading role in driving ecosystem-wide sustainability transitions.
Speaker
Yang Chen
Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Dr. Yang Chen is an Associate Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU). She obtained her PhD in Economics from Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
Her research interests include urban economics, public finance, environmental economics, and development issues in the Chinese economy.
She has published in ABS 3* and ABDC A* (A) journals such as Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Business Strategy and the Environment, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Economics Letters, and Energy Economics.
Her research projects have been funded by the Provincial Government of Jiangsu on talent agglomeration, the Lincoln Institute on fiscal decentralization, and the Asian Development Bank on innovation networks.
Discussant
Haowei Yu
Dr. Haowei Yu is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Blue and Green Development, Shandong University. He obtained his PhD from Washington State University.
His research interests include environmental economics, public economics, and development economics.
He has published in Resource and Energy Economics, Energy Economics, The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, and several other field journals.
His research has been funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.