Firms are increasingly operating in turbulent environments in which unpredictable change is driven by causes such as climate change and economic crises. In this paper, we study how firms perceive environmental turbulence and respond with four types of actions. We distinguish between actions creating economic value for the firm and actions creating sustainable value for society and the environment and between substantive and symbolic actions with only the former changing firms' strategies, structures, and processes. We built a unique dataset on large European firms and their 470 responses to turbulence from 2017 until 2022. We show that in volatile and complex environments, in which rapid change occurs but information is available, firms respond with substantive actions. In uncertain and ambiguous environments that lack information, firms respond with symbolic actions. These findings hold for responses that aim to create both economic and sustainable value. However, these findings change when firms acquire environmental, social, and governance (ESG) capabilities. With high and improving ESG capabilities, firms are more likely to respond with sustainable substantive actions, even when they perceive their environments to be uncertain. We contribute to the literature on organizational capabilities and corporate environmental responsiveness by showing that firms with superior and improving ESG capabilities increase their substantive commitments to sustainable development and are less inclined to base their responses on their perception of turbulence.

中文翻译：

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动荡环境下的可持续发展：ESG能力对应对动荡的影响


企业越来越多地在动荡的环境中运营，气候变化和经济危机等原因导致了不可预测的变化。在本文中，我们研究了企业如何看待环境动荡并采取四种行动来应对。我们区分为企业创造经济价值的行动和为社会和环境创造可持续价值的行动，以及实质性行动和象征性行动，前者仅改变企业的战略、结构和流程。我们建立了一个关于大型欧洲企业及其 2017 年至 2022 年对动荡的 470 种反应的独特数据集。我们表明，在动荡和复杂的环境中，在发生快速变化但信息可用的情况下，企业会采取实质性行动来应对。在缺乏信息的不确定和模糊的环境中，企业以象征性的行动做出反应。这些发现适用于旨在创造经济和可持续价值的应对措施。然而，当企业获得环境、社会和治理（ESG）能力时，这些发现就会发生变化。凭借较高且不断提高的 ESG 能力，即使企业认为环境不确定，企业也更有可能采取可持续的实质性行动来应对。我们通过表明具有卓越且不断改进的 ESG 能力的公司增加了对可持续发展的实质性承诺，并且不太倾向于根据对动荡的感知来做出反应，从而为有关组织能力和企业环境响应能力的文献做出了贡献。