A policymaking perspective on international business and the natural environment

Abstract

Multinational enterprises are central to today’s economy, simultaneously driving environmental pressures and holding capabilities to mitigate them. What matters for policymaking is how cross-border firms that orchestrate global value chains shape environmental outcomes that spill over borders, and how policy mixes can steer behaviors. We advance a policymaking perspective, framework, and research agenda on the international business–natural environment nexus. They direct scholars to specify geo-physical, geo-economic, and geo-political linkages; trace how policy instruments shape firm responses, how these scale into system trajectories, and how feedback/feedforward loops alter policy and strategy over time and across places; and unravel emerging tensions.