Publications

Green growth : managing the transition to a sustainable economy : learning by doing in east asia and europe

Investigating Technical and Ecological Efficiencies in the Electricity Generation Industry: Are There Win-Win Opportunities?

Using data from the EPA's EGRID and Clean Air Markets databases, we investigate the energy (technical) and emissions (ecological) efficiencies of 437 of the largest U.S. electricity generators. We focus on fossil-fuel based electricity generating plants because of their significant impact on industry environmental performance, especially with respect to air media emissions. Data envelopment analysis is used to determine the relative technical and environmental performance of these plants and whether win-win opportunities and end-of-pipe versus in-process (reactive versus proactive) practices relate to these efficiencies. The results show that win-win opportunities in terms of simultaneous technical (operational) efficiency and ecological efficiency do not appear to exist.

The Benefits of a Good Company Tour: Insights From Walking Around

Touring corporate facilities can provide insights to many issues and practices. In this article we provide some general insights into information that can be gleaned from plant tours by various stakeholders. Whether it is internal employees, external actors such as suppliers and customers, or even educational tours, various learning can occur. We provide some examples of insights gained from some company tours and how it can be useful to managers and educators or scholars.

Corporate environmental benchmarking

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Closing the Loop: Forging High-Quality Virtual Enterprises in a Reverse Supply Chain through Solution Portfolios

Reverse supply chains are receiving increased attention in both academia and practice to address business and environmental sustainability opportunities. As few organizations are adept at both forward and reverse supply chains, subcontracting various activities is imperative. Forging temporary partnerships as a virtual enterprise to take advantage of a short-term market opportunity is one available avenue. Vendor selection that can best achieve combined expertise to complete the entire or strategic portions of a reverse supply chain, while simultaneously forming the virtual enterprise quickly to seize market opportunities, is an emerging and important issue. This paper presents a mixed-integer program that seeks to select vendors that minimize the maximum formation time of a reverse supply chain virtual enterprise, subject to a set of practical decision-making constraints. This model is then integrated into a novel algorithmic technique that generates a portfolio of high-quality and yet diverse solutions of optimal vendor choices, allowing managers to integrate intangible and subjective factors into their final decisions. Numerical examples and computational experiments on simulated data demonstrate the model’s efficiency for generating sets of high-quality solutions and the flexibility for accommodating a range of decision factors. Moreover, this paper sets the stage to further investigate the research nexus of reverse supply chains and virtual enterprises. Keyword: Virtual Enterprise, Reverse Supply Chain, Sustainability, Integer Programming, Solution Portfolios, Diversity

THEORY AND METHODOLOGY EVALUATING ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS BUSINESS PRACTICES

How to globalize the circular economy

Set up an international platform to share data and experiences and coordinate industrial policies and trade to conserve resources and energy, urge Yong Geng, Joseph Sarkis and Raimund Bleischwitz.

A Pragmatic Profile Approach to Evaluating Environmental Sustainability Investment Decisions

This chapter contends that environmental sustainability is a subject of great contemporary importance, but due to biases associated with traditional project appraisal approaches, projects that have strong environmental issues may be neglected. The chapter then presents a modified version of the pragmatic financial appraisal profile model by including an environmental assessment in the form of the ‘environmental score index.’ An illustrative case study is used to outline the important aspects of this new approach. The chapter concludes that this approach will help to fill a gap in the environmental investment literature, where there is a paucity of comprehensive, structured, and transparent methodologies that can prove acceptable to management decision-makers from a variety of functions and viewpoints.

Framing Sustainability Performance of Supply Chains with Multidimensional Indicators

Purpose– This paper aims to provide a framework which can assist focal companies in the development of sustainable supply chains. Sustainable development from an industrial perspective has extended beyond organisational boundaries to incorporate a supply chain approach.Design/methodology/approach– The literature related to sustainable supply chain management is reviewed by incorporating concepts from four organisational theories, including the resource-based, institutional, stakeholder and social network perspectives, to illustrate key drivers and enablers of sustainability initiatives in the supply chain. A conceptual multidimensional framework is then developed that can be used for the initial assessment of supply chain sustainability.Findings– Development and assessment of sustainability in supply chains are being increasingly incorporated as part of supply chain management today. This paper presents a multidimensional framework which can serve as a tool for research scholars and supply chain practitioners in identifying and assessing various economic, environmental and social performance indicators.Research limitations/implications– The framework and approach presented are conceptual, and require additional and broader validation. Additional theories, at differing levels, such as individual behaviour theory, should be utilised to further enhance and evaluate the framework. Developing and integrating analytical models for prescriptive and practical supply chain solutions can enhance the applicability of the framework.Practical implications– The framework adopts a multidimensional approach to assessing and designing sustainable supply chains, as it not only incorporates economic and environmental dimensions but also provides a practical approach to quantifying and embedding the social dimension into decision-making. The framework helps industry practitioners in initial exploration of trade-offs among economic, environmental and social performance of supply chains, which, in turn, could assist them in creating a business case for sustainability.Originality/value– The paper is one of few studies that incorporates some of the key aspects of all three dimensions of sustainability in a single overarching framework for supply chains and offers significant theoretical contribution and implications for sustainable supply chain management.

Supply-chain performance-measurement system management using neighbourhood rough sets

Performance measurements are central to improving organisational competitiveness. Organisations and researchers have developed and investigated various performance-measurement systems to manage and improve internal and external operations for logistics and supply chains. Yet, formal modelling tools and approaches for organisations to help evaluate the relationships between the performance measures and the desired competitive outcomes are limited, especially in logistics and supply-chain management functions. To help address this gap, we introduce a novel application of neighbourhood rough-set theory for the identification and selection of performance measures related to externally derived desired outcomes on the sourcing function. Our contribution includes introducing an innovative neighbourhood rough-set approach using elements of the Supply-Chain Operations Reference model. The model may aid in determining a core set of external logistics and supply-chain performance measures to internal performance expectations and outcomes. Implications and results interpretation of the methodology, sensitivity analysis, limitations, and future research directions conclude the paper.

Blockchain Application of Supply Chain

Overview of supply and value chain management

The concept of the supply chain has been a relatively recent business topic, especially when compared to the broader history of industry and commerce. Yet, the actual practice of supply chain management has been occurring for many decades, if not centuries. Using the supply chain for competitive advantage can easily be traced to Henry Ford who vertically integrated his vendors and materials supply chains to more effectively and efficiently manage his operations. Thus, competitive advantages of the supply chain were noticed in the early stages of the US's rise to world prominence as an industrial and commercial power.

Evaluating functional and cellular manufacturing systems: a model and case analysis

Cellular Manufacturing (CM) is increasing in importance as a philosophy with broad applicability in manufacturing organisations. In the most recent years, CM has faced criticism by the academic community due to its inferior performance relative to functional layouts (FL). This controversy has led to a lack of consensus among researchers on the appropriate manufacturing environment for CM. Important operational and environmental characteristics that may influence the preference of one system over another include equipment set-up and product processing times, as well as their ratios. Few research efforts have studied the behaviour of CM systems as a function of these parameters. This paper adopts a set of theoretical analytical models to investigate the relative performance of a CM system when compared to an FL manufacturing system. A large domain of values for set-up time and its ratio to processing time per unit, helps identify a "performance mapping" that may be used as a decision making framework by manufacturing managers. The performance criteria incorporated in the study include flow time, work-in-process and utilisation. The study provides insights into the conditions under which CM or FL, or both systems are feasible and also when one strategy outperforms the other. A simple case study from a small manufacturing organisation helps to evaluate the practical dimensions of the models and study results.

Multi-stakeholder Digitalization: A Key to Building More Sustainable and Resilient Supply Chains?

No abstract is provided for this article.

Pricing of Emission Permits in Internal Markets: A Bayesian Markov Chain Monte

No abstract is provided for this article.

A Paler Shade of Green: Implications of Green Product Deletion on Supply Chains

Product management activities by marketing, operations, and finance functions have typically focused on the innovation, acquisition, growth, and management of product lines and products. The same is true when considering product management for green products. The latter stages of critical strategic decisions related to product deletion or discontinuation have received less emphasis. In this conceptual paper, the focus is on green product deletion implications for supply chain management. Organizations may view green product deletion as evolving from a deep green to a paler shade of green in their product offerings. A proposed strategic framework pays particular attention to implications of the green product deletion decision for supply chain processes and operational competencies. In this situation, lessened organizational greenness needs to be weighed against other organizational competencies. The strategic and inter-organizational relationships associated with this decision help set the stage for future research on this critical, yet neglected marketing issue.

Design for automating the inspection of manufacturing parts

The integration of quality into management of advanced manufacturing systems has not typically included automated approaches. With the advent of automated inspection and quality tools such as coordinate measuring machines and other dimensional measuring equipment, the linkage with integrated manufacturing systems seems natural. This paper shows the functional relationship of computer aided process planning to automated inspection process planning. The series of functional activities within each of these frameworks are mapped in this paper. The operational environment to include computer aided quality control in an integrated manufacturing system is also defined.

Stakeholder pressure and the adoption of environmental practices: The mediating effect of training

The influence of stakeholder pressure on the adoption of environmental practices has been established in the literature. In this paper we posit that these direct effects are further mediated, causally, by the level of training in companies. Theoretically, this relationship is supported by the relationship between institutional theory (stakeholder pressure) and the dimensions of dynamic capabilities in resource‐based theory. We investigate this relationship within the Spanish automotive industry. The theoretical contribution of this paper focuses on further supporting the relationship between stakeholder and resource‐based theory as complementary theoretical frameworks. The practical implications focus on whether or not training should be integrated in order to help in the adoption of particular environmental practices, which in this study are represented by environmentally oriented reverse logistics practices.