Greening strategies in Russia's manufacturing - from compliance to opportunity

Despite increasing interest, strategic firm-level decisions about greening of manufacturing companies are far from being understood. This paper follows claims for more empirical studies of strategies manufacturing firms choose to become green based on a sample of over 600 Russian eco-innovative firms. We apply latent class analysis and find the presence of six strategic options. The largest cluster includes highly innovative firms in energy-intense industries which extend their greening emphasis on both product and process improvements and their activities stretch throughout their whole supply chain. On the opposite end are state-owned companies focused on improving their resource efficiency. We find evidence for strategies described in earlier contributions, and could identify some Russian particularities. Also, we identify strategies that have so far not been empirically described. One group of highly innovative companies identifies green product development as a way to raise their ailing sales figures.