Changes in Energy Sector Strategies: A Literature Review

Abstract

Sustainable development (SD) can indicate the direction of the development of modern organizations’ transition and transformation strategies in the energy sector. Currently, in most countries, the main challenge for the energy sector’s strategies is to deal with energy security. The implementation of SD induces changes both in strategy and technology. The strategies are based on the technological transition toward renewable energy sources (RES). The aim of this paper is to explore business management literature dedicated to the transformation and transition strategies in the energy sector. The adopted methods are a systematic literature review (SLR) accompanied by a classical literature review (CLR) in Scopus database exploration. A literature review is developed in VOSviewer software and keyword co-occurrences analysis allowed to identify the main changes of direction in energy sector transformation strategies. The literature was explored by the 26 queries which resulted with 11 bibliometric maps. The analysis of the bibliometric maps was a challenge due to the cross-disciplinary strategic directions of development presented in indexed publications in the Scopus database. The identification of the changes in energy sector strategies is important because of its reliance on depleting resources and natural environment degradation. As a result of this paper, there is a visible shift of the trend in explored scientific publication from not only technological-based solutions but also towards managerial and organizational practices to achieve sustainability in the energy sector. This paper, besides the results, presents the theoretical contribution and managerial recommendations for business practices and addresses future research avenues. There are discussed implications of the presented analysis for further research.