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Over the past decade, scholars and practitioners have increasingly paid attention to sustainable business models (SBM). How to upscale SBMs is a key question in transition research, but current research has rarely adopted a firm-level perspective to discuss the scaling strategies that initiators of SBMs can use. Collaboration with other actors is one of these scaling strategies, but its adoption by firms hinges on different factors. Considering the type of initiator of the SBM (newcomer vs. incumbent firm) and the differentiation of the SBM's value proposition (high or low), we propose a framework which distinguishes four ‘scaling-through-collaboration’ strategies that firms can use. We explain each strategy with illustrative examples and discuss the array of potential partners and the incentives to pursue collaboration with them. Our work shows how firms can contribute to sustainability transitions by leveraging collaboration to scale their SBM.

This chapter is a commentary on “A perspective on multinational enterprises and climate change: Learning from “an inconvenient truth”?” by Kolk and Pinkse (2008). The commentary zooms in on the role played by MNEs in the climate change debate, namely considering how MNEs may cause or aggravate the problem and/or help bring solutions to climate change, and the energy transition more broadly, issues that can significantly affect MNE strategies, performance and growth. Importantly, new ideas are introduced concerning the shift from green firm-specific advantages (FSAs) (discussed in depth in the original article) to what are referred to as business model-related specific advantages (BMSAs). The commentary discusses, amongst others, the influence of factors such as digitalization and locational dimensions, including MNEs’ embeddedness in various institutional contexts, as well as the potential for transferability and recombination of BMSAs. Altogether, a clear and forward-looking agenda for research on international business, climate change and the energy transition, emerges.

This editorial introduces ten research articles, which form part of this special issue, exploring the governance of "European values" inside data flows. Protecting fundamental human rights and critical public interests that undergird European societies in a global digital ecosystem poses complex challenges, especially because the United States and China are leading in novel technologies. We envision a research agenda calling upon different disciplines to further identify and understand European values that can adequately perform under conditions of transnational data flows.

Summary In the debate on how to combat poverty, the positive role of MNCs is frequently mentioned nowadays, although doubts and criticism remain. Facing this societal debate, MNCs feel the pressure to formulate a position. This paper analyzes MNCs’ policies on their poverty-alleviating potential. “Frontrunner” MNCs turn out not to be very outspoken, especially not on those issues that have the largest potential to help alleviate poverty. Placed in the context of other MNCs’ behavior, a sector-coordinated morality seems important, which means that a meso approach to poverty alleviation needs to complement the current global (macro) and individual company (micro) focus.

International audience; This paper explores how climate change affects MNEs, focusing on the challenges they face in overcoming liabilities and filling institutional voids related to the issue. Climate change is characterized by institutional failures because there is neither an enforceable global agreement nor a market morality. Climate change is also a distinctive 'international business' issue as its institutional failures materialize differently in different countries. As governments are still highly involved, MNEs need to carefully consider their strategies to cope with nonmarket forces, including their embeddedness in multiple institutional settings. Using some illustrative examples of MNE responses to climate-related components in stimulus packages, we explore MNEs' balancing act concerning their institutional embeddedness (or lack thereof) in home, host and supranational contexts as input for further research on the dynamics of MNE activities in relation to climate change

Climate change is often perceived as the most pressing environmental problem of our time, as reflected in the large public, policy, and corporate attention it has received, and the concerns expressed about the (potential) consequences. Particularly due to temperature increases, climate change affects physical and biological systems by changing ecosystems and causing extinction of species, and is expected to have a negative social impact and adversely affect human health (IPCC, 2007). Moreover, as a result of the economic costs and risks of extreme weather, climate change could have a severe impact on economic growth and development as well, if no action is taken to reduce emissions (Stern, 2006). This means that it can affect multinational enterprises (MNEs) active in a wide variety of sectors and countries. Climate change is not a 'purely' environmental issue because it is closely linked to concerns about energy security due to dependence on fossil fuels and oil in particular, and to energy efficiency and management more generally. Controversy about the climate change issue has led to a broadening of the agenda in some cases, with policy-makers targeting energy to avoid commotion about the science and politics of climate change, and firms likewise, also because addressing climate change in practice usually boils down to an adjustment in the energy base of business models.

The effectiveness of self-regulation to promote corporate social responsibility, with codes of conduct as most common means, continues to be the subject of widespread interest. This article explores the effectiveness of corporate codes of conduct, focusing on the issue of child labour. This issue is all the more pronounced, because a strict approach, involving firing child workers or terminating relationships with suppliers that employ them, does not change underlying causes. Effectiveness is explored by a close examination of the nature of child labour codes of six pioneering international garment companies, and by a survey among a focus group of opinion leaders in companies and stakeholders, who were asked for their views on the different dilemmas surrounding codes and child labour. Overall, our research shows that corporate codes are considered to be important, though not the only instruments for addressing child labour. Possible negative side effects and limitations of codes are not seen as crucial factors that harm their effectiveness. Codes must be specific, strictly implemented and monitored, and combined with alternative arrangements for under-age child workers. The importance of a supply-chain approach and attention for the host-country context is recognized. But this also raises many difficult dilemmas concerning the boundaries of corporate social responsibility, which the article examines in more detail.

Economics of environmental management