Strategies for Managing Uncertainty

Alfred A. Marcus is Professor and Edson Spencer Endowed Chair in Strategy and Technological Leadership at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. He is the author, co-author, or editor of seventeen books, including Innovations in Sustainability: Fuel and Food (Cambridge, 2015), which won the Academy of Management ONE 2016 Outstanding Book Award.

'Alfred A. Marcus has been a pioneer in exploring how corporate managers deal with uncertainty. Now he has developed a set of deep case studies in how the leading players in the energy sector have responded to the quotidian challenge of volatile energy prices and the existential threat of climate change. In showing how these corporations have evolved various ways to hedge their way forward operationally, Marcus demonstrates how profoundly irrelevant the traditional fixation of economists on optimizing investments is when the information required to define an optimal strategy simply does not and cannot exist. Thus, Marcus' contribution transcends the bounds of his study of the energy sector, critically important as the future of that sector is to the world, to make a rich contribution to an emergent economics discipline that seeks to embrace the conditions of radical uncertainty under which business decisions are necessarily made.' William H. Janeway, author of Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy

• Introduction: calculated wagers and hedging; Part I. The Problem: 1. Risk and uncertainty in the energy industry; 2. The management of risk and uncertainty; 3. Hedging in the energy industry; 4. Booms and busts in the energy industry; Part II. Challenges in Major Sectors: 5. The oil and natural gas sector; 6. The motor vehicle sector; 7. The electric utility sector; Part III. Oil and Natural Gas Company Strategies: 8. Strategies to try to offset plummeting prices: Exxon Mobil; 9. Strategies to try to offset plummeting prices: BP; 10. Strategies to try to offset plummeting prices: Shell; 11. Strategies to try to offset plummeting prices: Total; Part IV. Motor Vehicle Company Strategies: 12. Strategies to take advantage of plummeting prices: GM; 13. Strategies to take advantage of plummeting prices: Ford; 14. Strategies to take advantage of plummeting prices: VW; 15. Strategies to take advantage of plummeting prices: Toyota; Part V. Conclusion: 16. Oil and gas companies strategic moves 2017–18; 17. Motor vehicles companies strategic moves 2017–18; 18. Ambivalence, paradox, and hedging.