Sustainability and energy management : innovative and responsible business practices for sustainable energy strategies of enterprises in relation with CSR

Abstract

Climate change and other crisis are more and more dominating today’s life. As a consequence, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is rising along with extreme weather. The current refugee phaenomenon is mainly caused by war and terror, however with increasing water shortages and draughts, many more people will prospectively be on the run for a place to survive and further increase the current scenarios. Besides other effects, as a consequence the energy economics are changing world wide impacting the way enterprises used to do their business. Elements such as energy efficiency, renewable energies, resource efficiency, sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) more and more get on the agendas of today’s enterprises. But how do enterprises deal with these changes, which measures do they execute, which are there major threats, are they aware of legal changes coming along with these changes, how do they judge the ongoing trends and how does their wish list look like for politics - questions which so far were not investigated and evaluated yet. In this context, there are also many other elements impacting and influencing enterprises as well as the national economies. Some of which were selected to additionally be studied or to allow for a deeper dive into specific energy related topics. Cyber security for power plants, smart homes, e-mobility and energy storage systems is in this context as important as sustainability in transport, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or the role of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). In addition to the pure energy economics, also those were evaluated in the context of innovative and responsible business practices and sustainable energy strategies for enterprises, as well as the roles of innovation and change management as supporting factors. As laid out in Figure 1, part I of this thesis is focusing on the theoretical aspects and the current state of knowledge in the respective areas. Part II represents the “practical” and “empirical” section of the thesis. The main research evaluates the correlations between changes in energy economics and counteracting strategies & behaviours of enterprises. In that context, more than 2,000 enterprises in Germany (2013-2015) and Romania (2013) were interviewed each year with specific questions related to the changing energy economics.