Title: Environmental Regulations and Corporate Strategy: A NAFTA Perspective

Authors: Alan Rugman, John Kirton and Julie Soloway

Publisher: Oxford University Press (Oxford: England)

Date: August, 1999

List Price: £45.00

ISBN: 0-19-829588-X

Pages: 270

 
A new book co-authored by Alan Rugman reports pioneering research on the strategies of firms faced with environmental regulations. In particular, the linkage between environmental regulations and their capture by rival foreign firms, who use them as entry barriers, presents a new challenge to managers. Firms are seeking strategies to keep open access to internationa markets, while maintaining shelter at home. To secure shelter firms try to capture the administration of domestic environmental regulations. The industries seeking shelter (usually in agriculture,forestry and fishing), often form alliances with environmental groups and seek protection through the discriminatory application of national and local environmental regulations. However, outward-looking firms (such as those in automobiles and chemicals) now have a broader array of corporate strategies, resulting from the North American FreeTrade Agreement (NAFTA).

NAFTA provides a fascinating laboratory to examine the Interaction between government environmental regulations and corporate strategy. NAFTA is the first international trade agreement to explicitly incorporate environmental regulations. The responses of corporations in NAFTA offer useful insights into similar challenging situations in Europe and Asia. The book develops a political economy model of complex Institutional responsiveness to guide firm strategy in the arena of Environmental regulation. It applies this model to NAFTA and explores its implications for Europe and Asia. Drawing on the disciplines of management studies, economics, political science and law, it examines 84 relevant cases, based on 230 confidential interviews with senior executives and officials in companies, governments, environmental groups and research centres. Corporate strategies of both a market-oriented and politically-directed nature are examined as they relate to environmental regulations. It suggests how managers and government officials should approach the architecture of the new trade and environment regimes at the regional and global level.

Contents:

1 Introduction

Part 1: Economic and Corporate Strategy

2. The Analytic Framework of Capture

3. Corporate Strategy and Environmental Regulation:

Corporate Strategy Perspectives

4. Corporate Strategy and Environmental Regulation:

Baptist-Bootlegger Coalitions.

Part II: Complex Institutional Responsiveness: NAFTA's

Political Experience

5. Trade and Environment Institutions: The NAFTA Regime

6. Environmental Institutions in Action: The CEC

7. Firm Responses to Trade and Environment Regulation

Part III: Case Studies of Complex Institutional

Responsiveness

8. MMT and Investment Dispute Settlement

9. The Agriculture Disputes

10. Trade and Environment Regimes in Operation: The

North American Auto Industry

Part IV: Conclusions

11. Implications for Firm Strategy and Public Policy
 
 

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