The embeddedness of companies in regional energy transitions

Abstract

Both place-specific context conditions and the interplay of a variety of actors influence regional energy transitions. Yet, the role of regional lead companies and how they are embedded in regional transitions has not been systematically analysed, even though a lack of embeddedness in their geographical context could possibly impede transitions. In our contribution, we expand transition studies with insights from economic geography and sociology to grasp the embeddedness of regional lead companies in regional transitions along ten indicators. We analyse how intra-organizational and regional factors influence these indicators and the overall degree of embeddedness. Finally, we reflect on how the (dis)embeddedness of companies affects regional energy transitions. Empirically, our analysis is based on a most different case study design, comparing a wind turbine manufacturer and its detached relation to the energy transition around a city in Central Germany with a wind project developer deeply embedded in a rural Northern German district. These findings are mirrored not only in different embeddedness degrees, but also in different types of embeddedness that we term ‘transactional’ and ‘transformational’. By systematically describing the interrelation between organizations and regions, our contribution shows how multifaceted embeddedness is and how closely inner-organizational factors are intertwined with regional transitions.