British Journal of Management, Vol. 32, 569–578 (2021) DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12533 Imposing versus Enacting Commitments for the Long-Term Energy Transition: Perspectives from the Firm Alain Verbeke 1,2,3 and Thomas Hutzschenreuter 4 1 Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4, Canada, 2 Henley Business School, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6UD, UK, 3 Solvay Business School, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, 1050, Belgium, and 4 TUM School of Management, Technical University of Munich, Munich, 80333, Germany Corresponding author email: alain.verbeke@haskayne.ucalgary.ca Introduction Societal stakeholders in many developed economies are increasingly pushing for a long- term energy (LTE) transition from high carbon- emitting energy supply to lower emission and even emission-free energy sources. For most of these stakeholders, the societal debate on the merits of an LTE transition is over, and in their minds the remaining implementation challenges relate to the timing and scope of this transition across indus- tries and locations: how can the LTE transition be accelerated and how can it be broadened to cover as many industries and geographic milieus as possible? It is factually correct that the global energy mix has changed signifcantly during the past three decades, with world renewable energy gen- eration having more than tripled. Building upon the current state of energy technologies, the LTE transition is expected to entail further reductions in carbon emissions when using conventional energy sources, and also additional shifts from The authors are grateful to the past Co-Editors-in-Chief of the British Journal of Management, namely Pawan Budhwar and Geoff Wood, for leading the joint initia- tive on Long-Term Energy Transitions with the Journal of International Business Studies. [Correction added on 10 June 2021, after frst online pub- lication: Copyright line has been updated in this version.] non-renewable energy sources towards renewable ones (hydro, biomass, wind, solar). However, given the growth in world population and the increase in wealth in many countries, global carbon emissions have not been reduced (Ritchie and Roser, 2020). At this point in time (2021), some proponents of the LTE transition therefore desire a more rapid and more drastic reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from conventional sources, accompanied by an equally swift and signifcant increase of emission-free sources of energy supply. But as is usually the case in business, one size does not ft all when large-scale capital invest- ments and innovation activities are involved. The timing and scope of the LTE transition appear to vary greatly across country and industry con- texts. At the national level, the impact and speed of the LTE transition appear to depend at least partly on the type of legal system prevailing in the country. Within the developed world, the lib- eral market economies governed by common law have historically had national policy frameworks favourably inclined towards supporting the hy- drocarbon industry (Boersma and Johnson, 2012; Brown and Hess, 2016; Chasek, 2007; Jacoby, O’Sullivan and Paltsev, 2011). Conversely, in other developed countries with more market coordina- tion and governed by civil law, the policy agenda appears to have shifted more swiftly to stimu- lating renewables (Chasek, 2007; Reiner et al., © 2021 The Authors. British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifcations or adaptations are made.