INTEREST CATEGORY: INTERORGANIZATIONAL
POSTING TYPE: Calls: Journals

Author: Maja Arslanagić-Kalajdžić

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INDUSTRIAL MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Call for Papers

Climate Change, Sustainability and Business-to-Business (B2B) Marketing: How Organizations Translate Climate Risk, Environmental and Social Risk into Business Value

Deadline for submission: May 1, 2023

Overview and purpose of the special issue

Projections on the severity of climate change-related disruptions and displacements are becoming increasingly alarming over time (DiBella, 2020). Climate change has elevated sea level flooding coastal areas, raised temperate in many regions to levels unsustainable for human survival, and generated a higher frequency of natural disasters, such as hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, and fires. Thus, the climate change induced disruption has compelled business leaders and policymakers across the world to recognize the phenomenon and integrate it in their decisions. There has been an increased recognition that more attention needs to be paid to marketing area to identify and understand the behaviour of environmentally conscious customers for making better marketing strategy to target them and develop an environmental and social management System for a financial institution’s existing risk management framework (Drumwright, 1994; Menon and Menon, 1997; Sharma et al., 2010).

While the environmentally-friendly product marketing strategies are gaining better consumer’s endorsements and contributing to long-term profits, this has become an issue of great importance in marketing research recently. Although there have been a few studies in business to consumers (B2C) markets to implement the environmentally sustainable corporate programs, this problem is still insufficiently explored in business to business (B2B) markets (Akter et al., 2021). However, climate change represents not only elevated environmental and social management risks, but also many opportunities for firms and society. Global companies like Siemens now see sustainability not only as a mere business opportunity, but also rather as an aspect of business management, that needs to be embraced in order to survive (Siemens Sustainability Report, 2020).

In a report for firms and business leaders, McKinsey listed six types of climate risks (physical risks, price risks, product risks, ratings risk, regulation risk and reputation risk) that were grouped into value-chain and external-stakeholder (Engel, Enkvist, and Henderson 2015). Physical risks are related to chronic risks, such as extreme weather or record temperature, which may disrupt supply-chain of firms. Price risks define the uncertainty of raw materials prices due to adverse climate events (e.g., drought) or climate-related regulations. An elevated price risk could compel firms to manage unpredictability in all aspects of their supply-chain operations like demand planning, production, planning, transport and sales. The Mckinsey Report described product risk as the set of things that disrupts operations of a firm and prevents it from delivering main products due to unexpected effects of climate change, including supply-chain disruption on an unpopular and ultimately unsellable item. Regulation risks refers to government actions (i.e., rules, taxes, subsidies) that may significantly alter the cost-structure of a firm. Finally, reputation risk represents the poor coordination between firm actions or policies and management decisions that may damage firm’s brand reputation and relationship with firm’s stakeholders.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recently started a platform Adaptation Private Sector Initiative (PSI) for guiding firms to manage risks and hazards associated with the climate change in their daily operations and governance (DiBella, 2020). Climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) programs have been designed to mitigate and respond to various risk factors associated with the current or expected climate change. The need for both programs varies from place to place, but the underlying goal is a set of changes in the process and structure of a firm for reducing damages and converting risk into a business opportunity. For example, firms can save on costs & energy, focus on long-term value, and enhance their reputation in the market (Forino and Meding, 2021). Firms need to understand impact of climate change on opportunities & risks in their daily operation and integrate climate change adaptation strategy to implement DRR and CAA (Surminski, 2013; Forino and Meding, 2021). Thus, DRR and CCA should be corporate priorities for increasing a firm’s awareness about climate change hazards and risks using AI-based climate-driven service analytics capability; developing advanced artificial intelligence (AI) based tools and techniques for predicting climate change risks; reducing the adverse effect of climate change on firms; and pursuing appropriate actions to minimize the adverse effect and protect firm assets and operations (Forino and Meding, 2021, Akter et al., 2021).

However, a B2B firm’s approaches toward interpreting and adapting to climate change has received limited scholarly attention in the literature. A limited number of studies provides critical insights into how B2B marketing firms effectively adapt their behaviours, policies and procedures for developing products and services, managing supply chains, and continuing innovation in response to the risks and impacts of climate change (Chandy et al., 2019). This Special Issue of Industrial Marketing Management seeks to stimulate original research that contributes to our understanding of B2B firms’ behaviour and outcomes and informs managerial practice. Research articles should be original research that has potential to inform managers’ planning in a world where climate change is effecting massive changes in vulnerabilities and risks in all aspects of a firm’s operations, especially in transportation and energy systems.  Managers, seeking to navigate successfully in this environment may need to know how to effectively adjust operations and management of their firms in light of opportunities to adapt to and mitigate the physical and social consequences of the climate change.

Sample Topics

This special issue seeks submissions that address any of the topic areas below as well as similar field-based aspects and examinations:

• Develop the AI-based services to assist companies with climate change analysis in B2B markets to enhance the service innovation and market performance
• Theoretical and conceptual frameworks to implement an environmental and social management system to address environmental and social risks in B2B financial transactions.
• Governance, strategy, management policy and control mechanisms to handle global climate change using AI in B2B marketing
• Theoretical and conceptual frameworks to estimate the benefits of global climate change policies to mitigate the environmental and social risks in B2B context
• Critical evaluation and cost-benefit analysis of the climate change policies and implementation challenges on B2B firm’s operations
• Theoretical and conceptual frameworks to estimate the benefits of global climate change policies in B2B context
• Long-term macroeconomic, social, labor, distributional and financial stability impacts of environmental and social risks on B2B firm’s operations
• Leveraging AI and information and communication technology (ICT) to fight climate change and designing effective firm strategies for B2B market
• Analyzing the role of AI, ICT and big data analytics in predicting, mitigating and adapting to the adverse effects of the climate change in B2B markets
• Linking the role and services of ICT in climate change adaptation for sustainable development for B2B firms
• Impact of AI for understanding carbon footprint and designing innovative transportation system for B2B markets
• Analyzing the global economic impacts of climate shocks and policies on B2B firms in climate risk assessment
• Impact of climate change and policies on entrepreneurial opportunities, entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurial B2B firms
• Discussion on recommendations and suggestions of improvement in policies and strategies for mitigating the global climate change in B2B markets
• Designing the environmental and social management strategies for B2B firms and lessons learned in the process
• Analyzing the global economic impacts of environmental and social management system implementation on B2B firms

All in all, we welcome both methodological papers on experiments in B2B as well as substantive applications of experiments for B2B.

For enquiries regarding this call, please contact one of the guest editors.

Preparation and submission of paper and review process

Papers submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submissions should be about 6,000-8,000 words in length. Copies should be uploaded on Industrial Marketing Management’s homepage through the Editorial management system. You need to upload your paper using the dropdown box for the special issue on VSI: Climate Change and B2B Marketing. For guidelines, visit:

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505720/authorinstructions.

Papers not complying with the notes for contributors (cf. homepage) or poorly written will be desk rejected. Suitable papers will be subjected to a double-blind review; hence, authors must not identify themselves in the body of their paper. Manuscripts within the scope of the special issue (as described above) and deemed to have a reasonable chance of conditional acceptance after no more than two rounds of revisions will enter the review process.

Important dates

• Submission opens: February 1, 2023
• Deadline for submission: May 1, 2023

Guest editors

• Ajay Kumar (EMLYON Business School, France; akumar@em-lyon.com)
• Michel van der Borgh (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark; marktg@cbs.dk)
• Valérie Swaen (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium; swaen@uclouvain.be)

References

Akter S., Fosso Wamba S., Mariani M., Hani U. (2021). How to build an AI Climate-Driven service analytics capability of innovation and performance in industrial markets? Industrial Marketing Management, 97, 258-273.

Chandy, R., Dowell, G., Mayer, C., Plambeck, E., Serafeim, G., Toffel, M. Toktay, B., and Weber, E. (2019).  Management Science—Special issue on business and climate change. Management Science, 65 (7) 3447-3448.

DiBella, J. (2020). The spatial representation of business models for climate adaptation: An approach for business model innovation and adaptation strategies in the private sector. Business Strategy & Development, 3(2), 245–260.

Drumwright M.E. Socially responsible organizational buying: Environmental concern as a non-economic buying criterion. Journal of Marketing, 58 (3) (1994), pp. 1-19

Forino, G. and von Meding, J. (2021). Climate change adaptation across businesses in Australia: Interpretations, implementations, and interactions. Environment, Development and Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-021-01468-z

Engel, E., Enkvist, P.-A. Enkvist, and Henderson, K.  (2015), How companies can adapt to climate change, Mckinsey Report, URL Access on September 8, 2021 ( https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/how-companies-can-adapt-to-climate-change )

Menon, A., & Menon, A. (1997). Enviropreneurial marketing strategy: the emergence of corporate environmentalism as market strategy. Journal of marketing, 61(1), 51-67.

Sharma, A., Iyer, G. R., Mehrotra, A., & Krishnan, R. (2010). Sustainability and business-to-business marketing: A framework and implications. Industrial marketing management, 39(2), 330-341.

Surminski, S. (2013). Private-sector adaptation to climate risk. Nature Climate Change, 3(11), 943–945.