Strategic responses of petroleum companies to the oil price drop of 2014 : a multiple-case study on how investment and divestment behavior is shaped by internal and external firm factors
Master thesis
Permanent lenke
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2454857Utgivelsesdato
2017Metadata
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- Master Thesis [4512]
Sammendrag
The drop in oil prices in 2014 induced various strategic responses among international oil
and gas companies. This master thesis explores how petroleum companies responded to the
oil price slump in terms of investments and divestments and how their internal and external
factors influenced these decisions. Internal firm factors are assessed from the perspectives of
the resource-based view and the theory of dynamic capabilities, while the external factors of
a firm are analyzed with the game-theoretic approach. We conduct a multiple-case study and
collect secondary data on six different oil and gas companies which have exploration and
production operations. We find that internal firm factors, resources and dynamic capabilities,
delineated the general directions for undertaken strategic responses, while strategic games
defined the specific actions. Thus, evidence is provided on the characteristics that shape the
strategic responses of firms, which can then be used by managers when making decisions in
times of unfavorable changes in the economic environment. Likewise, our findings
contribute to the further development of the dynamic theory of strategy by Porter (1991).