Environmental sustainability engagement of firms: The roles of social capital,resources, and managerial entrepreneurial orientation of small and medium enterprises in Vietnam

How firms in transition economies demonstrate their strategic engagement in sustainable environmental management given their limited resources and capabilities is less understood in the literature. This study explores how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam, an exemplar of a country in transition from a closed and socialist economy to an open and liberal market, draw on their external social capital to access critical resources that are leveraged by the entrepreneurial orientation or capabilities of the firms' top management towards engagement in business-wide environmentally sustainable practices. Drawing on a database of more than 2000 firms from a large-scale survey of firms in Vietnam, this study tests the relationships between two facets of social capital, environmental management resources and environmental sustainability engagement. This study further contends that managerial entrepreneurial orientation moderates by enhancing the strategic utilisation of resources to enable firms in Vietnam to engage in environmental sustainability. The results offer novel theoretical insights and timely managerial or practical implications as well as promising directions for future research on the resources, strategies and capabilities of firms in transition economies.     

Organizational sustainability identity: Constructing oneself as sustainable

In the literature, organizational sustainability identity tends to be treated as something that is ‘engineered’ within business organizations through control, reporting, target setting, strategic communication, and other instruments. Through a case study of a company mainly active within the recycling industry, an alternative understanding is given. A distinct organizational sustainability identity is, rather, a social construct based on perceptions of the core operations as “sustainable in themselves” and collaborative work with customers that is perceived as entailing sustainable solutions. Understood in this way, organizational sustainability identity has relatively little to do with formal controls such as codes, policies, reports used by management to position the company as sustainable. Rather, for organizational members, the process of constructing oneself as sustainable builds on convictions about the core operations and the possession of specific capabilities manifested in customer relations. The article adds to current literature through its constructivistic approach and through identifying underlying beliefs that condition the process of forming an organizational sustainability identity.     

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.     

汽车生产网络地域化及其对地方发展影响研究——以花都东风日产为例

广州汽车制造业在广州特定地段聚集与崛起,既有偶然性也有必然性,是外部机遇与内部创造共同作用的结果。东风日产进入广州的战略动机与空间进入模式体现了产业的地域化过程,它推动了广州汽车制造业的发展,也促成了广州与周边汽车制造业发展形成互动的格局     

Renewing a dysfunctional innovation ecosystem: The case of the Lalejin ceramics and pottery

The innovative output of nations is partly explained by the strengths of its innovation ecosystems. The Iranian Lalejin city has been home to a ceramics and pottery industry for at least 200 years. Despite showing resilience over the years and occasional success; e.g. the 2016 “World Pottery Capital” designation; the industry is facing plummeting demand for consumer artifacts and rivalry from competitors. Innovation is the key to survival and sustainability but innovation capacity is low. This study adopts the “innovation ecosystem” lens to address the problems. Interviews provide information for understanding the historical evolution of the industry, mapping the status quo, highlighting the barriers and drivers of innovation, and crafting a renewal plan. The proposed renewal process pools regional authority, expertise, and stakeholders to craft an effective and sustainable solution. While the study does not proffer a new theory of ecosystem renewal, there are important implications for research and practice. For practitioners, understanding the ecosystem evolution and the cultural underpinnings of the observations will help craft a detailed, sustainable ecosystem renewal plan. A cultural turnaround program may also be needed. For researchers, linking cultural characteristics, ecosystem evolution and outcomes is a viable and fruitful research avenue.     

Corporate sustainability and innovation in SMEs: Evidence of themes and activities in practice

Recently, innovation processes towards sustainable development have received increasing attention in academic literature. This research introduces the combination of insights from innovation theory, sustainable development practice and small business characteristics to unlock new knowledge on factors that influence the translation of sustainable innovation within small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) into practice. The sustainability themes and activities as described for large companies (i.e. in the sustainability reporting and management literature) were used as starting point in this study. It presents empiric results of the PRIMA Project conducted within the rubber and plastics industry (RPI) on sustainable innovation activities. It will show that many sustainable innovations are directed at the improvement of technological processes (eco‐efficiency) and to lower costs of production. These innovations can be seen as incremental. Companies with sustainability integrated in their orientation and innovation processes show value creation: the development of products new to the market (radical innovations) and cooperation with stakeholders. The PRIMA project shows that more insight in SME innovative characteristics and (e)valuation of sustainable innovation efforts provides opportunities to improve the sustainability performance of SMEs. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Integrating Environmental,Social and Governance (ESG) Disclosure for a Sustainable Development: An Australian Study

Addressing environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues has become a critical part of business strategy. This article explores the extent of ESG reporting of metal and mining sector companies listed in the Australian Securities Exchange to determine the nature of ESG indicators in use in the sector. The current study argues that stakeholder engagement is the key to enhance company environmental policy and sustainable development. According to the results of this study, ESG reporting motives are highly influenced by reporting regulations. Given the diversity in reporting of ESG, comparability of ESG strategic performance is problematic. This study contributes towards developing an ESG disclosure index, which companies could use as a legitimacy tool that external stakeholders could use to reliably measure and compare the ESG performance of companies. It also reveals there is an increased demand for more empirical research on integration of sustainability into strategic planning process. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Strategic Choices at Entry and Relative Survival Advantage of Cooperatives versus Corporations in the US Bio‐Ethanol Industry, 1978‐2015

The sustainability of cooperatives versus corporations is hotly contested. We propose that strategic choices at entry can help to explain the endurance of these two governance modes. We hypothesize that cooperatives have a survival advantage if their major drawback – high coordination costs – is curbed by high levels of member engagement at founding. Our analysis of survival rates in the US bio‐ethanol industry shows that cooperatives outlive corporations (1) if investment size at founding is large (strong financial engagement), (2) if they enter de novo instead of de alio (strong product‐market engagement) and (3) if the cooperative venture has been carefully planned from the start (greenfield entry) instead of built upon the acquisition of an existing plant (strong venture‐building engagement). These findings caution against the view that a particular mode of governance is superior or inferior to another in all circumstances.     

Industry 4.0, innovation,and sustainable development: A systematic review and a roadmap to sustainable innovation

Despite the recent interest in the Industry 4.0 applications for sustainability, little is known on the processes through which digital transformation and Industry 4.0 technologies enable sustainable innovation in manufacturing. The present study addresses this knowledge gap by developing a strategic roadmap that explains how businesses can leverage Industry 4.0 technologies to introduce sustainability into innovative practices. For this purpose, the study conducts a systematic review of extant literature to identify Industry 4.0 functions for sustainable innovation and applies interpretive structural modeling to devise the promised roadmap. The results offer interesting insights into Industry 4.0 applications for sustainable innovation. The strategic roadmap developed reveals that Industry 4.0 enables sustainable innovation through 11 functions. Industry 4.0 and the underlying digital technologies and principles allow businesses to improve interfunctional collaboration and better integrate with internal and external stakeholders. Industry 4.0 further improves the knowledge base and advanced manufacturing competency and promotes organizational capabilities valuable to sustainable innovation such as green absorptive capacity, sustainable partnership, and sustainable innovation orientation. Through these functions, Industry 4.0 subsequently enhances green process innovation capacity and the ability to develop or reintroduce eco-friendly products economically and competitively. Overall, the roadmap explains the complex precedence relationships among the 11 sustainable innovation functions of Industry 4.0, offering important implications for businesses that seek to leverage Industry 4.0 sustainability implications and manage sustainable development.     

Product chain collaboration for sustainability: A business case for life cycle management

Life cycle management (LCM) is frequently described as a holistic sustainability perspective along the product chain. It has mainly been a company internal practice. However, recent developments reveal a new type of LCM where companies collaborate in product‐chain‐specific initiatives. This raises questions concerning why corporations extend “corporate LCM” toward “product chain LCM”. Here, we explore rationales and challenges for corporations engaging in one such coalition: The Sustainable Transport Initiative. The study covers five companies in different product chain positions and practitioners in different corporate functions. The results show a broad range of rationales for engaging in product chain LCM, related both to self‐interest and a shared interest in the product chain. The importance of the “business case,” both for the individual companies and the product chain, is identified. The importance of sustainability managers as actors and as facilitators in discussions between managers from different corporate functions is also identified.     

Sustainabilty integration in product portfolio for sustainable development: Findings from the industry

Many companies decide which services, products, and technologies to include in their product portfolio using evaluation criteria, which often consider cost, quality, risk, revenue, time, and market position. Incorporating sustainability in the portfolio evaluation criteria could ensure the development of sustainable solutions from the early stages of the product development process, where there is more room for innovation. The aim of this paper is to understand how sustainability can be integrated in the company portfolio development. Semi-structured interviews were performed with experts in the field and representatives from multinational manufacturing companies with operations in Sweden. Main findings from this study include a proposed definition of a sustainability product portfolio concept and suggested portfolio evaluation criteria from an industry perspective. Future research will develop a method to guide manufacturing companies in sustainability integration and implementation in product portfolios.     

Stakeholder Engagement: Defining Strategic Advantage for Sustainable Construction

Although sustainable development is increasingly becoming a part of business plans, it is unclear what makes the economic, social and environmental dynamics strategically compatible. This research examines which of the following in sustainable development – government policy, managerial attitude and stakeholder engagement – is the most influential on the profitability of companies in the UK construction sector. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were rendered through a survey and semi‐structured interviews. Patterns of ambiguity in legislation were discovered as an obstacle for changing the sector's mind‐set. Stakeholder engagement was identified as the defining factor increasing managers' awareness, helping legislation to be effectively implemented and making sustainability highly appealing to clients. These findings indicate that to gain competitive advantage, companies should embark on long‐term strategic alliances which adopt the proposals of environmental non‐governmental organisations and closely follow public opinion. This, strengthens brand equity, allows for premium pricing, increases market share and maximizes profit. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Green aviation industry sustainable development towards an integrated support system

Sustainable development is becoming increasingly crucial for the green aviation industry. To promote the sustainable development of the green aviation industry, researchers all over the world have attempted to explore and experiment with new initiatives. This study investigates green aviation industry development trends by a bibliometric-based data analysis system. Cluster, timezone, and timeline visualizations are employed to identify the current development trends of the green aviation industry within three topics: noise, environmental impacts, and green image. In response to environmental challenges, an integrated green aviation industry support system that involves stakeholder engagement should be established, including business strategies, innovative technologies, environmental policies, and public support. In this study, the innovation and sustainability potential of the green aviation industry is evaluated. Then, the roles of strategy improvement, technology integration, policy support, and public participation in forming the integrated support system are examined. The outline of this system may prove helpful for the sustainable development of the green aviation industry.     

Improving companies' impacts on sustainable development: A nexus approach to the SDGS

Companies play a decisive role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, most of the world's sustainable development challenges are interconnected and systemic in their nature. How can companies ensure that their strategies effectively contribute to sustainable development? This interdisciplinary paper draws from the social-ecological systems, corporate sustainability, and sustainability sciences literatures, in order to introduce a nexus approach to corporate sustainability. A nexus approach induces companies to assess and manage their positive and negative interactions with the SDGs—which may arise directly and indirectly—in an integrated manner. Instead of treating SDGs as isolated silos, a nexus approach aims to advance multiple SDGs simultaneously (creating “co-benefits”) while reducing the risk that contributions to one SDG undermine progress on another (avoiding “trade-offs”). Through managing the interactions between the SDGs, a nexus approach to corporate sustainability enables companies to improve their societal and environmental impacts. This nexus approach is a step towards developing a theory of sustainability management that helps companies improve their impacts on sustainable development. Such systemic corporate sustainability strategies are sorely needed to drive progress towards achieving the SDGs and to safeguard companies from “SDG-washing.”     

Corporate sustainability,ecological modernization and the policy process in the South African automotive industry

In the past decade, the plea for corporate sustainability has gathered momentum and protecting the environment is one aspect for organizations to address if they are to conduct business in a sustainable manner. In this paper, we present the results of a questionnaire survey on the state of corporate sustainability within the South African automotive industry. The survey focused on the meaning and relevance of sustainability to South African automotive companies, and their use of different approaches to implement sustainability in corporate practice. On this score, the paper seeks to analyze and compare the levels of voluntary environmental initiatives between large and small and medium‐sized enterprises within the automotive milieu. Survey results reveal that a majority of automotive companies have sought to improve their environmental performance by integrating environmental considerations into their core activities. Although the majority of these companies have standardized EMSs, our analysis reveals considerable differences between companies' approaches to corporate sustainability. In particular, they varied in the extent to which procedures were formalized and documented behind the corporate rhetoric of a high commitment to sustainability. The paper concludes by prescribing a number of recommendations as to how to engage and promote more widely the South African automobile manufacturing companies in environmental change. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Sustainable tourism development in islands: a case study of Gran Canaria

While sustainable development is recognized as an essential requirement for achieving economic goals without degrading the environment, major problems arise in defining methods for formulating and implementing sustainable strategic actions at the macro‐level, including islands. Bearing in mind this limitation, this research paper will attempt to present a strategic planning methodology for drawing up strategic issues for tourism development from the point of view of sustainability, which is particularly appropriate to islands. The authors first review existing literature on sustainable development with a view to defining a conceptual approach to sustainability and identifying particular areas for sustainable tourism development in the island context. A methodology for formulating strategic issues for sustainable tourism development in Gran Canaria is then drawn up. Sociocultural aspects, the environment and the economy, with particular emphasis on tourism, are examined in order to identify major strategic issues for sustainable development in Gran Canaria. Copyright Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

刍议商业银行产品研发的策略选择和路径实现

商业银行已经进入到产品竞争的时代,产品决定核心竞争力、产品决定成长的持续性、产品决定银行价值的高低。商业银行应根据自身的战略愿景、发展阶段、市场份额、产品特点等实际情况,把已有或者将有的产品进行分类,以能否提升银行整体价值为标准,选择相应的产品研发策略,并根据最新变化实现所选策略的动态平衡。在做实同业研究的基础上,商业银行要紧紧把握产品研发的制度创新和机制创新,合理配置各种资源,科学规划产品实现路径,构建完备的数据仓库和产品仓库,从而保证分层产品研发策略的落地实现。     

Sustainable supply chain management and partner engagement to manage climate change information

Climate change poses significant new risks and challenges for businesses and their supply chains. Additionally, in many sectors, Scope 3 indirect greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the sourcing and distribution of goods and services are larger than firms' own carbon footprints. Here we study how firms engage their key stakeholders in their supply chains in obtaining, processing, and transferring relevant climate change‐related information designed to overcome information asymmetry and drive sustainable development. Grounded in organisational information‐processing theory (OIPT), we draw on data from the Carbon Disclosure Project's Climate Change Supply Chain initiative for a qualitative content analysis of a large sample of global firms. Consistent with OIPT, we find that although firms primarily engage their supply chain partners in a variety of ways to reduce information uncertainty around indirect emissions data, effectively interpreting and managing broader sustainability information equivocality becomes a growing priority. Our findings further suggest that firms engage suppliers, customers, and other supply chain partners through basic, transactional, and collaborative types of engagement. We contribute to literatures on interorganisational information processing and sustainable supply chain management by providing a more detailed understanding of how firms engage supply chain partners in the context of climate change.     

我国汽车产业自主创新能力分析

随着汽车产业的逐渐成熟,我国已经发展成为世界性的汽车制造基地。然而,中国的汽车业仍处于世界汽车产业价值链的末端,没有掌握核心技术;同时,我国汽车企业已经完全进入全球化竞争的环境中。我国汽车企业要想真正实现可持续发展,必须走自主创新之路。根据当前的行业形势,分析了我国汽车业中存在的问题并提出对策。     

Transition towards and of sustainability—Understanding sustainability as performative

Our purpose is to explore the concept of “sustainability” when understood from a performative perspective, i.e. as a concept that is filled with meaning across time. Drawing on a 10 year-long study of the digital footprint of Stockholm Royal Seaport, claimed to be northern Europe's largest sustainable urban development district, we show that “sustainability” emerged as the project became associated with particular places, projects, histories, and technologies. This means that “sustainability” was local in that it was situated in the particular spatial context of the project; temporal in that it was situated in a particular time; and political in that it expressed particular values and perspectives. The study contributes to explaining why “sustainability” remains—and always will remain—a contested concept, which is why sustainability transitions are complex. Consequently, we suggest that the transition towards sustainability always involves the transition of sustainability, something that needs to be acknowledged in order for a transition to actually become sustainable.