Publications

1

Using 2006 survey data on 374 Chinese manufacturers representing six major industrial groups in Suzhou, Dalian, and Tianjin cities, we test the relationship between normative, coercive and mimetic international institutional pressures and the adoption of three important proactive environmental practices -- ISO 14001, TQEM (total quality environmental management), and eco-auditing -- by Chinese firms. We also find that that this relationship is greater than that arising from internal domestic pressures. However, there is no support for the hypothesis that parent ownership or venture partners moderate this relationship.

Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) requires coordinated action across firms from different countries. The chapter uses a case study of a Taiwanese SME supplying automotive parts to a large French car-maker to analyze to what extent and why final customers’...

No abstract is provided for this article.

Water embodied in traded commodities is important for water sustainability management. This study provides insight into China's water footprint and virtual water trade using three specific water named Green, Blue and Grey. A multi-region input-output analysis at national and sectoral analysis levels from the years 1995 to 2009 is conducted. The evolution and position of China's virtual water trade across a global supply chain are explored through cluster analysis. The results show that China represented 11.2% of the global water footprint in 1995 and 13.6% in 2009. The green virtual water is the largest of China's exports and imports. In general, China is a net exporter of virtual water during this time period. China mainly imports virtual water from the USA, India and Brazil, and mainly exports virtual water to the USA, Japan and Germany. The agriculture sector and the food sector represent the sectors with both the largest import and export virtual water quantities. China's global virtual water trade network has been relatively stable from 1995 to 2009. China has especially close relationships with the USA, Indonesia, India, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Australia. Trade relations, resource endowment and supply-demand relationships may play key roles in China's global virtual water footprint network rather than geographical location. Finally, policy implications are proposed for China's long term sustainable water management and for global supply chain management in general.

No abstract is provided for this article.

Rapid industrialization, increasing population urbanization, and improved living standards have all contributed to greatly increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in urban areas of developing countries. This situation is especially true for China, where fossil fuel depletion is a critical issue from its contribution to GHG emissions, and in terms of resources being consumed. To address these issues the Chinese government has supported application of ground source heat pumps (GSHP) technology. This focus is meant to alleviate the dependence on fossil fuels and improve the country's energy structure. Several Chinese cities have embraced GSHP technology, and currently achieved some results. Shenyang, in Liaoning province, is one pioneering municipality. The city has become a champion of GSHP projects. However, the international energy research community has not been made aware of this important regional effort. The aim of this paper is to introduce and review the progress of GSHP technology diffusion within this region of China. This practical review will include policies, benefits and challenges facing the region and their adoption of GSHP technology. Recommendations for improvement of regional application on GSHP technologies given regional conditions are also made. These recommendations include strong leadership, appropriate policy incentives, effective enforcement mechanisms, and roundtable-based management. Relevant experience and lessons learned can be shared by other, globally locations, to help in GSHP technology diffusion.

Uncertainty and risk have become increasingly prominent issues in firm operating environments. Addressing uncertainties and risks brought by the historically disruptive COVID-19 pandemic crisis requires organizations to establish reliable, visible, and traceable information processing and sharing capabilities. Blockchain is a disruptive technology that can build capabilities to support operational resilience where uncertainty may manifest as risk or opportunity. Using an event study, we examine the COVID-19 pandemic relationship to stock returns for 217 blockchain-related firms—those that develop or apply blockchain technology—over five major pandemic life cycle periods. Our results indicate firms with blockchain capabilities have less mean negative stock price reaction—on average, a reduced 8.24 % shareholder value loss across crisis stages. Different blockchain application fields exhibit varied shareholder value effects—in general, production blockchain applications can help firms reduce more negative impact while financial blockchain applications show no significant mitigation effects. We further demonstrate how blockchain operational characteristics affect stock returns. Overall, blockchain technology provides effective risk buffer capabilities and can help manage shifting institutional fields—which the market views as building resilient capabilities resulting in competitive advantage to overcome known and unknown uncertainties and risks.

The concept of sustainability has become increasingly important for organisations and has permeated a number of managerial and organisational decisions. Sustainability, as defined by its 'triple-bottom line' factors of economic, environmental and social dimensions, is the underlying framework we use to develop and apply a strategic justification tool for project evaluation with sustainability implications. An activity based management methodological framework is used as a vehicle to frame decisions around using corporate sustainability. An illustrative application of this technique investigates how an organisation would select from one of two competing reverse logistics providers. This process requires that we introduce issues relevant to three major sustainability factors (and their sub factors) and how they are influenced by a reverse logistics provider decision. The dual contribution of this paper includes investigating the design and development of the strategic sustainability evaluation framework and the linkage of reverse logistics to economic, environmental and social sustainability dimensions.

Purpose The authors explore the impact of an emerging technology, blockchain technology, on diverse governance mechanisms and sustainable supply chain practices and how its relationships with the linkage of these elements. Design/methodology/approach The methodology incorporates a literature review and a qualitative empirical analysis of the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) standards. Expert opinions from various firms and organizations within the electronics sector are assessed. Through a thematic analysis, the relationships are identified and examined. Findings Data immutability, transparency and traceability capabilities of blockchain technology enhance the relationship between environmental standards and ecological supply chain sustainability practices. Although immature, the blockchain can influence the governance of supply chain sustainability practices. Immaturity of technology, lack of expertise, sharing information and trust have delayed adoption. Originality/value There is limited empirical evidence regarding blockchain's impact on governance mechanisms, specifically hybrid public-private mechanisms and sustainable supply chain practices. The study further evaluates how particular blockchain features may exert varying influences on these aspects and different sustainable supply chain traits. As an exploratory study, it proposes new areas for further research, including how blockchain's traceability function can improve sustainability standard adoption. Additionally, there is a call for integrating blockchain with technologies like IoT and sensors which may influence supply chain governance mechanisms, standards and sustainability practices.

Supplier selection plays an important role in the management of a supply chain. Recent emphasis on sustainability has made this selection more complex. Decision support tools and methodologies can help organizations and supply chain managers make more effective decisions. Many tools have been developed with a variety of formal modeling techniques. These techniques may be limited for a variety of reasons. To help advance this area of research and to help further integrate sustainability discussion into the supplier selection modeling area, we expand on a novel approach first introduced by (Li et al., 2008). This approach utilizes grey system and rough set theory. Our expansion and contribution includes introduction of additional levels of analysis and application of this methodology, the explicit consideration of sustainability attributes, and insights into the technique with some sensitivity analysis. Implications of the methodology and future research directions, further expanding the methodology and its applications, conclude the paper.

While the use of internal, external, and both types of environmental audits are becoming more pervasive in society, little is known about the stakeholder influences associated with their use, in large part because previous research has viewed them as a uniform type of management practice. This study draws on stakeholder theory to explore organizations’ use of different types of environmental audits. It uses international manufacturing data to show that significant variations in the use of environmental audits are associated with differences in stakeholder influences, and that a more nuanced treatment is needed when evaluating these audits.

Presents the introductory editorial for this issue of the publication.

Editors have made requests of manuscript authors to carefully examine their reference lists and to incorporate references from the target journal. These requests seem to have become more common, as is evidenced by this and other commentaries on the issue. Journal self-citation requests may be viewed as impinging on an author’s academic freedom and could be construed as an unethical or unprofessional request. In this commentary we argue that it is not necessarily the case that all, or even many, of these requests cross the line into unprofessional or unethical behavior. There are a number of institutional and stakeholder forces that play a role in this seemingly simple editorial request. These forces arise because of the environment that is faced by editors, authors, publishers, and their audiences. We incorporate some discussion on these various motivating forces and the responses to them. Rather than rushing to alter our codes of ethical editorial conduct, we need to take a careful look at our research and publication environment to determine the reason editors would make journal self-citation requests.

Facilitating Sustainable Innovation through Collaboration, takes an unusually international perspective of sustainable innovation with contributions from Australia, Europe, and North America. Prominent policy makers, scientific researchers and practitioners in this field provide various inputs and analyses relating to the development of sustainable innovations. It is expected that policy makers, organizations, individual researchers, students and even communities can further develop and implement concepts and practices by drawing on the variety of projects and theoretical foundations presented in this volume.