Speaker: Yuxiao YE, Associate Professor at Nottingham University Business School China
Time: 9:00 a.m., October 13, 2026
Venue: Room 105, Building 12, Wushan Campus
Abstract
Energy price uncertainty is a pervasive operational risk for energy-dependent manufacturers. It disrupts cost forecasting and undermines production planning and long-term investment decisions. Many manufacturers therefore collaborate with energy firms, yet these collaborations involve a trade-off: they can buffer exposure to turbulent energy markets while also tying firms to particular energy sources, technologies, or partners. Drawing on resource dependence and real options theories, we ask whether higher energy price uncertainty increases the value of manufacturer-energy collaborations and which collaboration designs are most valued under uncertainty. We measure energy price uncertainty using volatility in crude oil prices and a text-based measure derived from energy-related news. Using a novel dataset of 582 collaboration announcements by publicly listed North American manufacturing firms from 1990 to 2023, we show that under higher energy price uncertainty, investors assign higher value to these collaborations. We further find collaboration design matters. Collaborations centered on renewable energy, focused on energy utilization, and governed through strategic alliances receive higher valuations when uncertainty is elevated. These results suggest that under energy turbulence, manufacturers benefit most from collaboration designs that stabilize energy conditions while preserving operational flexibility in how energy is sourced and used.
Biography
Yuxiao YE is an Associate Professor in the Department of Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Management at Nottingham University Business School China (UNNC). Before joining UNNC, she served as Associate Professor and earlier Lecturer at Tianjin University. She holds a PhD in Logistics and Maritime Studies from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Under a joint PhD program leading to dual awards) and a PhD in Management from Zhejiang University. Her research focuses on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) management in supply chains, responsible operations management, sustainable operations, and global supply chain strategy, with an emphasis on empirical identification using large-scale datasets. Her work appears in POM, IJOPM, IJPE, etc. She serves on the Editorial Review Boards of the IJOPM, DS, IJPE. She is Principal Investigator of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) General Program “Research on the Reconstruction of Global Supply Chains: An ESG Perspective” and previously led an NSFC Youth Program. She is also a key member of the NSFC Major and Key Programs.
