Strategic Configuration: Options and Perspectives

Publisher Summary Deregulation of infrastructure opens up numerous alternative modes/patterns of strategic configuration, leaving it up to the firms to optimize their positions. This chapter explores some of the main options available and some theoretical perspectives on drivers of strategic configuration. It presents the emerging patterns of strategic configuration for major European energy companies. The chapter also focuses on the extent to which the European Union (EU) deregulation leads to the Europeanization of the energy industry, beyond the boundaries of the individual nation-state, and explores the extent to which the energy industry business strategies move beyond the traditional electricity and petroleum configurations towards broader multi-energy integration.. It also presents a statistical analysis of patterns of strategic reconfiguration of the fifty largest European energy firms. The chapter explores some of these patterns in detail through a qualitative analysis of selected company cases.