Anatomy of a paradox: management practices, organisational structure and energy efficiency

Ralf Martin, Mirabelle Muuls, Laure De Preux Gallone and Ulrich Wagner

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper presents new evidence on managerial and organizational factors that explain firm level energy efficiency and TFP. We interviewed managers of 190 randomly selected manufacturing plants in the UK and matched their responses with official business microdata. We find that ‘climate friendly’ management practices are associated with lower energy intensity and higher TFP. Firms that adopt more such practices also engage in more R&D related to climate change. We show that the variation in management practices across firms can be explained in part by organizational structure. Firms are more likely to adopt climate friendly management practices if climate change issues are managed by the environmental or energy manager, and if this manager is close to the CEO. Our results support the view that the “energy efficiency paradox” can be explained by managerial factors and highlight their importance for private-sector innovation that will sustain future growth in energy efficiency.

Keywords: climate policy; energy efficiency; firm behavior; management practices; manufacturing; microdata; organizational structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M14 M20 Q41 Q54 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2010-12-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121716/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Anatomy of a paradox: Management practices, organizational structure and energy efficiency (2012)
Working Paper: Anatomy of a Paradox: Management Practices, Organisational Structure and Energy Efficiency (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:121716

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().