Measuring the impact of sustainability policy and practices in tourism and hospitality industry

This paper aims to investigate the impact of environmental policy and training aspects on hotels' sustainability practices, as well as the impact of these practices on their environmental and financial performance. Based on survey data from 312 managers operating in tourism and hospitality industry, this study applies structural equation modelling. Empirical results reveal that hotels' environmental policy and training aspects are positively related to sustainability practices. Environmental communication has almost equal degree of impact on resource and energy conservation, whereas both resource conservation and energy conservation have a significant positive impact on both environmental and financial performance. The main findings of this research highlight that hotels are increasingly considering sustainability issues in their business models and strategies. These findings provide practical managerial implications for the development of tourism and hospitality industry in emerging countries.     

PROPRIETORIAL CONTROL IN FAMILY FIRMS: SOME FUNCTIONS OF 'QUASI-ORGANIC' MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the strategies of managerial control which are used by the proprietors of family-owned business enterprises. Interviews with the proprietors and senior managers of businesses in the building industry illustrate the ‘quasi-organic’ nature of management structures. These grant some autonomy to senior managers without threatening proprietorial decision-making prerogatives. Although the family firm has certain distinctive features, similar control strategies designed to ensure that delegated decisions are ‘reliable’ and ‘responsible’ are evident in various types of business enterprise. There is, then, scope for further comparative research within a conceptual framework which does not entirely divorce the family firm from other business organizations.     

An examination of sustainable development of supply chain using foreignness perspective

This multidisciplinary paper examines the sustainability of supply chain partners from a foreignness perspective. The arguments draw from the research on institutional theory to explain the underlying mechanisms. We propose and discuss a comprehensive conceptual framework evaluating the relationships of foreignness to economic, social, and environmental sustainability. In addition, we consider contingent factors such as the level of development of supplier's nation, level of global integration of buyer, and type of industry, on sustainable development of focal firms. The direct and contingency frameworks introduced in this paper are presented along with research propositions that provide valuable insight into the sustainable supply chain management from the international business perspective.     

Towards commercial and environmental excellence: A green portfolio matrix

This article examines the strategic framework and options available for product strategy towards commercial and environmental excellence. It defines the environmental dimension as a ‘moving target’, explores a conceptual framework to integrate commercial and environmental dimensions and elaborates a ‘green portfolio matrix’. The proposed matrix is also empirically investigated as to its practical validity by using a set of secondary data including twelve product cases. Using the matrix, a company can diagnose its existing product mix from an environmental point of view, and furthermore can establish future ‘targets’ for an environmentally-friendly product portfolio. In addition, the matrix can be used as a framework for comparative analyses between strategic business units or for longitudinal assessment of a specific business entity.     

Ngo-Business Partnerships

The rapidly changing external environment is having major implications for the role of NGOs, their sources of funding, the nature of their relationships and their activities Globalization, the Increasingly multinational nature of business and electronic communication, has caused a parallel reduction in the powers of the nation state to affect development and a rise in the powers of the business community NGOs need to engage with the private sector in new ways. INTRAC's own ongoing monitoring of the NGO sector suggests that an analysis of these issues would be of great value to NGOs and the private sector as they grapple with possible new modes of engagement in their quest to have a positive impact on justice, peace and poverty alleviation.

Relations have moved beyond the purely philanthropic, with corporations giving money to good causes, and the highly antagonistic, with organizations protesting a company's operations, to a situation where the two sectors often work in partnership to address core business issues such as environmental management, product development and ethical sourcing.There has been an explosion in these forms of partnership between business and NGOs. This raises many issues for strategies and tactics to be followed by NGO management. As such this research is of key strategic importance to NGOs and the private sector.     

Connecting business with the agricultural landscape: business strategies for sustainable rural development

Agribusiness enterprises link rural landscapes to global and regional markets. The nature of these business–landscape relationships is vital to the sustainability transition. Decisions by farmers and agriculture policymakers aggregate to changes in the ecology of landscapes, but the influence of food supply system businesses on rural landscape sustainability also requires scrutiny. This article uses four international cases to present a conceptual framework for investigating how different business strategies can support agricultural landscape sustainability. Insights from North America, New Zealand, The Netherlands, and Denmark inform the framework dimensions of horizontal/territorial and vertical/systemic business–landscape relationships. Three types of business model that promote rural sustainability are highlighted: provenance, cogovernance, and placemaking. These models engage strategies such as environmental management systems, certification, ecosystem and landscape services, and spatial planning. Research directions that will improve understanding about how business can engage with rural stakeholders for more sustainable rural landscapes are identified, including the need for cross disciplinary perspectives incorporating social, ecological, and business knowledge.     

From Dyadic Change to Changing Business Networks: An Analytical Framework

This paper investigates the dynamics of business networks. We distinguish between confined dyadic change and network change and show how change itself may be incremental or radical, using the punctuated equilibrium model of change. The concept of the critical event is introduced to highlight radical change. We propose an analytical framework where the ideas of mechanism, nature and forces of change are integrated. Two circles of network change (incremental and radical) are presented and transfers from one circle to the other are discussed. We believe this conceptual elaboration may have significant implications for future network dynamic research     

Assessing the Comprehensiveness of Supply Chain Environmental Strategies

As environmental awareness grows, firms are expected to expand the scope of their environmental strategies beyond organisational boundaries and to address more comprehensively environmental issues in their supply chains and product life cycles. Drawing on different literature streams, international standards and corporate disclosure, this paper presents a conceptual framework for the quantitative assessment of the comprehensiveness of firms' environmental strategies. This framework allows us to capture: (i) the environmental inputs and outputs addressed, (ii) the firm versus supply chain orientation of environmental strategies, and (iii) the environmental management practices adopted by companies. We illustrate the application of this framework with a content analysis of corporate sustainability reports for a cross‐sectoral sample of sustainability leaders. Our results indicate that there is a need for greater specificity in environmental reporting and that, overall, companies remain firm‐oriented. It is also observed that supply chain orientation can generally be associated with stakeholder pressure. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

浅析水泥包装袋的质量

近几年随着经济的发展,建筑行业也取得了良好的效益。建筑行业的繁荣对水泥等相关产业的发展也起到了推动作用。但与此同时,水泥行业的产品质量问题也倍受关注。特别是水泥包装的质量问题尤为突出。市场上出现了大量不符合国家标准的水泥包装袋,从根本上讲,这与水泥生产企业的经营思想不无关系。本文主要就水泥包装袋方面的质量问题及水泥行业的其他相关问题进行分析,并寻求解决办法。     

Circular Business Model Innovation: Inherent Uncertainties

Circular business models based on remanufacturing and reuse promise significant cost savings as well as radical reductions in environmental impact. Variants of such business models have been suggested for decades, and there are notable success stories such as the Xerox product–service offering based on photocopiers that are remanufactured. Still, we are not seeing widespread adoption in industry. This paper examines causes for reluctance. Drawing on a hypothesis‐testing framework of business model innovation, we show that circular business models imply significant challenges to proactive uncertainty reduction for the entrepreneur. Moreover, we show that many product–service system variants that facilitate return flow control in circular business models further aggravate the potential negative effects of failed uncertainty reduction because of increased capital commitments. Through a longitudinal action research study we also provide a counterexample to many of the challenges identified in previous studies, which could be overcome in the studied case. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

国有大型煤炭企业产业转型与持续发展研究——来自萍乡矿业集团的实践与启示

煤炭企业是典型的资源依赖型企业,随着不可再生的煤炭资源逐渐枯竭和受生态环境保护约束的日益加大,我国越来越多的煤炭企业面临着如何通过产业转型实现持续发展的挑战.本文在借鉴已有相关研究成果的基础上,以我国具有代表性的江西萍乡矿业集团为个案,从"创新视角"对影响大型煤炭企业实施产业转型的关键成功因素进行深入分析,研究发现:不...     

Sustainable product innovation and changing consumer behavior: Sustainability affordances as triggers of adoption and usage

This conceptual paper argues that for sustainable product innovation to make a contribution to addressing sustainability issues, we need to understand not only why consumers adopt sustainable products but also what makes them use these in sustainable way. To explain how specific product features can change the ways in which consumers engage with sustainable products in the adoption and usage phase, we draw on affordance theory. Affordances refer to the potential for agentic action of users in relation to a technological object. We develop a conceptual framework that explains how sustainable product innovation can lead to the design of sustainability affordances that stimulate adoption and sustainable usage. The framework shows how three forms of agency—material, firm, and user agency—interact and together influence a product's sustainability affordances that drive adoption and a change in consumer behavior. The framework explains how trade-offs between a product's environmental features and consumer expectations regarding desired functionalities and user experience can be overcome.     

中国服务外包业现状、问题与对策：基于中国与ORN数据的比较分析

离岸服务外包产业发展的好坏在当前我国实现经济转型深化改革开放的关键阶段有重要的战略意义。但未来整个行业的发展则依赖于服务外包企业在竞争日益加剧的全球离岸服务外包市场中竞争优势的建立和强化。本研究通过交大一杜克中关全球外包联合研究中心平台,就中国服务外包企业和国际服务外包企业的竞争力、业务状况及未来发展预期和增长与创新战略意愿等进行了调查研究。对比分析发现,中国服务外包企业存在整体规模偏小、服务外包经验不足、业务标准化程度不高、成本优势不显著等问题。我们分析了问题产生的原因及后果,并从企业和政府的角度提出了有关的对策建议。     

Corporate responsibility and value creation in the port sector

The paper reviews existing literature on corporate responsibility (CR) in the port sector and proposes a conceptual framework that brings together the CR drivers in port environmental strategies. The conceptual framework is derived from the existing literature and is based on institutional theory. The literature review is supported by a discussion on CR strategies in 10 major ports around the world. The paper argues that ports tend to replicate environmental strategies across regions and learn from each other, and that a competitive focus on logistics tends to strengthen the importance of CR and in particular of environmental performance in ports. For some ports CR has become an integral part of their value creation proposition mostly as a result of competitive pressure. Furthermore, the paper advances also a correspondence between the degree of port agility and the CR profile of the port. Managerial and policy implications are also discussed.     

Defining Eco‐efficiency: A Case Study on the Finnish Forest Industry

Environmental reporting is a tool of corporate environmental management that can also be used as research material. The aim of this paper is to produce a comprehensive definition of eco‐efficiency based on the literature and then compare it with definitions identified in the environmental reports published by selected companies. In addition, this paper presents a conceptual framework of the relationship between environmental and economic performance in the companies. Three Finnish companies in the forest industry are selected as case companies. This analysis reviews environmental reports published by the companies from 1998 to 2007. In short, eco‐efficiency can be seen either as an indicator of environmental performance, or as a business strategy for sustainable development. The case companies very seldom give an exact definition of eco‐efficiency in their environmental reports. However, different aspects of eco‐efficiency are often referred to. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Environmental Business–NGO Partnerships in Nigeria: Issues and Prospects

A number of insightful efforts have explored the nature of business–NGO partnerships and their associated outcomes for sustainable development. While some of these works have helped to clarify the benefits of such partnerships, and the different strategies NGOs can adopt in their interaction with business, others have identified the conditions necessary for a successful partnership. However, the question of how the different strategies adopted by NGOs in their engagement with business interact has remained relatively unexamined. Drawing on an environmental business–NGO partnership for sustainable development in Nigeria, this paper confirms the existence of a creative tension between the different NGOs’ strategies. This creative tension affects the nature of the environmental partnership and performs three main functions. These are an enabling function, a discipline function and a critical distance function. The article concludes by considering the theoretical and practical implications for business–NGO partnerships as a vehicle for sustainable development in developing countries. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Understanding sustainable development flexibility: An information perspective

Although flexibility has been considered critical in responding to uncertainty in a business environment, few studies have explored firms' flexibility in sustainable development. To understand the nature of firms that can respond better to uncertainty in their sustainable development practices, this study defines sustainable development flexibility and investigates the mechanism underlying its formation. The study proposes a conceptual framework on the interactions of managers' environmental attitude and cognitive style, as well as firms' information integration on sustainable development flexibility. A questionnaire survey was developed to test the corresponding hypotheses, and 241 valid responses were received from middle- and top-level managers in Chinese firms. The results show that (a) the higher the manager's environmental attitude, the higher the firm's information integration and greater sustainable supply chain flexibility, and (b) the more intuitive the manager's cognitive style, the greater the impact of environmental attitude on sustainable development flexibility.     

Business and the genesis of the European Community carbon tax proposal

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of business in the regulatory process associated with the carbon tax proposal. The first part of the paper describes the Community's climate change policy, noting first the essential features of Community environment policy-making, the role of consultation with industry and the significance of the ‘subsidiarity’ principle. This part of the paper moves on to examine the carbon tax proposal and its evolution since 1990. The second part of the paper addresses the specific role which business played in influencing the development of the carbon tax proposal. The general strategy of business was to block the proposal entirely. The paper identifies the potential impacts of the tax on business, implications for corporate strategies and the specific channels through which business influenced the tax proposal, by participating in public debates, through representations to different directorates of the European Commission or by making a case to national authorities. The final part of the paper attempts to draw some lessons about: the business position in relation to large scale environmental problems such as climate change; business responses to economic instruments such as the carbon/energy tax; and the wider relationship between public authorities and business in regulatory processes. The question of whether this relationship has entered a new phase or whether there is still ‘business as usual’ is addressed.     

Implementing manufacturing innovations: Critical choices of structure and staffing roles

The implementation of manufacturing process innovations is explored through a case study that focuses on the steps taken to develop and implement a successful proprietary, computer-based parts planning process by a firm in the aerospace industry. The issues of the case are analyzed using a conceptual framework that considers successful implementation to be a function of the nature of the innovation, the appropriate configuration of organizational structure, and the existence of a constellation of critical staffing roles. Implications for human resource management are discussed as well.     

Enforcing the environment: regulatory realities

This paper explores mandatory environmental regulation of industry through the eyes of the regulator. While there is much written about the salutary effects of environmental law on industry, we are only just beginning to appreciate how, in practice, this operates and the extent to which the regulatory official is a key actor in the process. The paper reports on a qualitative study of environmental agency officials – their values, their attitudes toward industrial operators, pressures from environmental groups and the manner in which they interpret and apply axioms of environmental law. Their technicist, ‘shallow green’ perspective is revealed as they attempt to make regulatory deals. Their interpretative discretion is considerable in the face of a highly ambiguous legal framework, and much uncertainty about the limits of their power. Major features of legislative control, such as towards sustainability, are regarded as unworkable, and prosecution is experienced as a blunt weapon. The implications of the findings for the regulatory official and for the wider role of mandatory regulation are discussed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment