| Author: | Zhang, Miaomiao |
| Title: | Three essays on addressing climate change challenges in operations management |
| Advisors: | Lo, K. Y. Chris (LMS) Lee, Peter (LMS) Yeung, Andy (LMS) Cheng, Edwin (LMS) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2026 |
| Subject: | Climatic changes -- Economic aspects Industrial management -- Environmental aspects Business logistics -- Environmental aspects Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies |
| Pages: | iv, 127 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Climate change poses profound challenges for business and society, requiring firms to rethink their operations and strategies. This dissertation examines how climate change influences corporate behavior in operations management from three complementary perspectives: the focal firm, the supply chain, and the competition relationship levels. The first essay draws on Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) to examine vertical integration as a strategic response to firm-level climate change exposure that enables firms to internalize critical upstream and downstream activities, thereby reducing external transaction frictions and enhancing control over sustainability outcomes. The second essay grounded in institutional theory explores how digitalization of focal firms can spill over to improve supplier environmental performance in response to increasing calls for new insights on green supply chain management. The third essay investigates how competitors' Science Based Targets initiatives (SBTi) drive focal firms as SBTi non-adopters to reduce carbon emissions, revealing how mimetic pressures drive broader low-carbon transitions. Taken together, these essays provide a multilevel perspective on how firms and supply chains respond to climate challenges, advance theoretical understanding of transaction cost and institutional mechanisms in the field of sustainability management, and offer practical implications for managers and policymakers navigating the low-carbon transition. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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