Does adoption of ISO 56002-2019 and green innovation reporting enhance the firm sustainable development goal performance? An emerging paradigm

Reporting is a means of communication for companies to their respective stakeholders. The literature on non-financial reporting has mostly focused on operational, Carbon Discloser Project (CDP), and environmental disclosure to firm performance. This reporting and disclosure approach adopted by companies in their sustainability practices appears to be a normative approach. However, there has been a growing demand by stakeholders to incorporate proactive approach in business activities. To meet that, green innovation practices (GIPs) has been integrated as a new element in environmental reporting, thereby reflecting the proactiveness of companies in their adoption of green innovation reporting (GIR). The objective of this study is to advocate for greater disclosure on sustainability reporting by incorporating the GIPs of companies and substantial, sustainable development goal contribution, along with the moderation of the newly upgraded ISO 56002-2019 innovation management system. Adoption of green innovation reporting and ISO 56002-2019 will enhance the level of transparency of business activities and create greater stakeholder confidence along with enhancing the firm's sustainable development of goal performance. Furthermore, an extensive literature review was undertaken to create a GIR framework (i.e., product, process, service and technology) for firms to integrate GIPs into sustainability reporting. The conceptual model proposed the adoption of green innovation reporting and ISO 56002-2019 innovation management system to firm sustainable development goal. This needs to be injected into the sustainable reporting of companies to reflect their innovativeness, actual sustainable business practices and sustainable development goal performance for the firm.     

Sustainable Development of Electrical and Electronic Equipment: User‐driven Green Design for Cell Phones

Communication and cooperation with consumers are key to sustainable development. This article considers the environmental and user benefits of producing a sustainable product design that enable users' involvement and encourages the use of sustainable products to enhance environmental value. Depending on users' sensitivity to ecodesign for energy‐related products, six environment evaluation criteria may structure their perceptions of cell phone attributes (monitor, panel, battery, shell, modeling, lens and fingerprint). Innovative methods are needed for effective communication, as well as to encourage consumer participation in designing sustainable products that satisfy their needs. The design of product attributes appears able to enhance the sustainable development of products, through users' awareness of various environmental characteristics. This study thus proposes a unique method to understand product design structures and make cell phone design decisions that feature individualized designs. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

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.     

Measuring Retailers' Sustainable Development

This study aimed to develop a framework and measurement items for retailers to assess sustainability while avoiding potential subjectivity by combining top‐down and bottom‐up approaches, and verifying their validity based on consumer perceptions of sustainable retailing. The framework consisted of 54 measurement items categorized into a three‐order hierarchical model. At the top level of the model, there were three third‐order dimensions respectively related to consumers, retailers, and society. At the middle level, eight second‐order sub‐dimensions associated with retailing mix were classified into the aforementioned third‐order dimensions. At the bottom level, there were 21 first‐order sub‐dimensions related to the sustainable retailing activities. The development of sustainability assessment by combining top‐down and bottom‐up approaches and including consumer perceptions will allow retailers to assess their sustainability more strategically, as it will reduce the subjectivity and increase consumers' recognition of sustainable retailing. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Consumer adoption of access-based product-service systems: The influence of duration of use and type of product

Access-based product-service systems (AB-PSS) are business models that can potentially decouple the satisfaction of consumer needs from environmental impacts. Hence, they have been promoted for the circular economy. Their sustainability potential has not yet been realised because consumer adoption is lagging. Although this challenge has been studied for two decades, knowledge to identify and address AB-PSS adoption barriers that matter to consumers is lacking. We hypothesise that the duration of use, the time a consumer obtains exclusive access to a specific product (short-term vs. long-term) and the type of product (bicycles vs. clothing) moderate the importance of AB-PSS adoption barriers to consumers. We compared several adoption barriers across four AB-PSS and found that the duration of use and the type of product significantly moderated the importance of some AB-PSS adoption barriers. More specifically, the Effort to access has a higher influence on consumer preference for short-term AB-PSS, whereas Product quality has a higher influence on consumer preference for long-term AB-PSS. We also found that Effort to access and Product characteristics were more important for bicycle AB-PSS, whereas Contamination and Product quality were more important for clothing AB-PSS. These insights help companies to identify and design out key AB-PSS consumer adoption barriers.     

Sustainable product disposal: Consumer redistributing behaviors versus hoarding and throwing away

Business strategies involving sustainable product disposal have focused mostly on technical aspects but neglected to adequately incorporate the nature of consumers' behavior. The current study addresses this void. We study consumer product disposal behavior and subsequently offer insights to businesses on how to incorporate consumer input into their strategic decision making in the light of opportunities to mitigate environmental impacts. Consumers' redistributing of unwanted but still useful products to others by reselling, passing along, or donating, rather than hoarding or throwing away, contributes to product lifetime extension and waste management. We study factors influencing product redistribution and explore profile of consumers who engage in various disposal behaviors. Findings from two online surveys, on mobile phones and sunglasses, reveal that specific waste attitudes, that is, waste minimization and waste aversion, rather than general environmental concern, are key determinants of product redistribution choice. Product cost is positively related to reselling and giving behaviors. Furthermore, product quality and product self-image congruency significantly reduce the odds of throwing away. The method of product redistribution is also influenced by consumers' demographic characteristics including age, education level, and income. This paper advances extant literature on product disposal from the perspective of the consumer and provides input into development of business strategies that incorporate consumers' sustainable disposal behaviors. We also offer input to policy makers on how to curb or delay waste and pollution.     

Sustainability in multi-tier supply chains: Understanding the double agency role of the first-tier supplier

In light of the growing complexity of globally dispersed, multi-tier supply chains, the involvement of first-tier suppliers has become instrumental in the quest for achieving sustainability compliance along the supply chain. We describe this new responsibility as the double agency role. We employ agency and institutional theory arguments to explore the conditions under which first-tier suppliers will act as agents who fulfill the lead firm's sustainability requirements (i.e., the primary agency role) and implement these requirements in their suppliers' operations (i.e., the secondary agency role). The findings from three in-depth case studies embedded in different institutional contexts highlight the importance for lead firms to incentivize each agency role separately and to reduce information asymmetries, particularly at the second-tier level. In addition, our inductive analysis reveals several contingency factors that influence the coupling of the secondary agency role of the first-tier supplier. These factors include resource availability at the first-tier supplier's firm, the lead firm's focus on the triple-bottom-line dimension (i.e., environmental or social), the lead firm's use of power, and the lead firm's internal alignment of the sustainability and purchasing function. We integrate our findings in a conceptual framework that advances the research agenda on multi-tier sustainable supply chains, and we subsequently outline the practical implications of assigning the double agency role to first tier suppliers.     

Green management,firm innovations,and environmental turbulence

The multifaceted nature of firm innovation has prevented researchers from fully explaining the relationship between firm innovation and green management. This study, building on the Schumpeterian theory of innovation, explores this relationship by examining three major types of firm innovation—strategic innovation, managerial innovation, and product innovation—and their respective relationships with green management, considering several dimensions of environmental turbulence as distinctive boundary conditions. We propose that both strategic innovation and managerial innovation facilitate green management, which in turn mediates these effects on new product performance. The results of a survey of 303 Chinese firms provide strong support for this mediating logic. Moreover, we find that market turbulence weakens the effect of strategic innovation on green management whereas technological turbulence strengthens such effect but the effect of managerial innovation on green management is not influenced by environmental turbulence. Our research contributes to the innovation as well as green management and sustainability literatures by offering a framework in which to analyze firm innovation and green management and by showing how firms pursue sustainability and prosperity under specific environmental conditions.     

Public procurement for innovation through supplier firms' sustainability lens: A systematic review and research agenda

Public sector purchasing processes are gaining increasing prominence as a demand-side innovation tool for addressing national sustainability challenges. Accordingly, there has been growing research attention to this topic. Prior studies suggest three key rationales that underlie the use of public sector procurement to drive innovation: (i) the buyer–user rationale (for creating new needs); (ii) the market/system failure rationale (for improving suppliers' capacity to innovate); and (iii) the public services rationale (for improving public services). However, operational activities at the upstream supply chain affecting the sustainable innovation capacities of supplier firms appear to be under-researched in the public procurement for innovation (PPI) scholarship, despite knowledge about innovation capacity being critical to successfully implementing PPI. This paper adopts a systematic literature review approach to synthesise existing fragmented literature on sustainability-oriented PPI, focusing on supplier perspectives. Findings from a synthesis of 41 relevant articles suggest, among others conditions, that a procurement framework that maintains a good balance of competition and innovation, builds buyer–supplier relationship and urges strong supply networks, maintains a stable political commitment, offers security for niche markets with effective innovation risk management culture would enhance suppliers' sustainability capacity and propensity to innovate. This paper contributes to the PPI literature and the literature on determinants of sustainable innovation systems from supplier firms' sustainability lens.     

Influences on Sustainable Innovation Adoption: Evidence from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

The adoption of innovations associated with environmental sustainability has been a topic of growing interest among scholars. The research presented in this paper draws on Abrahamson's theoretical framework of fads and fashions to argue that dimensions of uncertainty and degree of external versus internal influence provide significant insights into firms' decisions to adopt sustainable building innovations. We develop three hypotheses, reflecting three views of adoption influence: fad, fashion, and efficient‐choice. We find that adoption of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building certification in the United States was more likely among firms similarly oriented toward end‐consumers and among firms strategically positioned as environmental leaders. These results provide support for the fad and efficient‐choice views of adoption, respectively. Contrary to expectations suggested by the fashion perspective, adoption was not more likely among firms located in states whose political leaders are more committed to environmental protection. Our findings offer important implications for practitioners and policy makers seeking to encourage sustainable building design. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The effect of controversial global sourcing practices on the ethical judgments and intentions of U.S. consumers

Global sourcing has led to lower cost and more effective supply chains for many companies. However, when the cost-driven practices of many suppliers in these chains come to light there is often considerable debate over the ethics of these practices. This research uses the well-known Hunt–Vitell framework as the theoretical foundation for a structural equation model of the deontological and teleological evaluations used by consumers when making ethical judgments of a firm's controversial cost-driven global sourcing practices. Data from a large-scale U.S. consumer survey show the importance of deontological and teleological evaluations in forming consumers’ ethical judgments of global sourcing practices, and establish a strong relationship between ethical judgment and the intention of consumers to alter consumption of a firm's products. Extensions to the framework and demographic analyses for age, gender, and income provide insights as to how perceptions of these practices affect consumer evaluations of a company involved in global sourcing and how consumers actualize their resultant intentions.     

Sustainability concerns in luxury supply chains: European brand strategies and French consumer expectations

Sustainability in supply chain management has become a concern in both research and practice. Although consumption and purchasing have been significantly explored in the luxury sector, a gap in supply chain studies is still evident. Therefore, the aim of this article is to examine how industry bodies and supply chain partners address sustainability concerns in the European luxury sector and how they respond to consumer expectations. In an explanatory study, we have collected data about sustainable supply chain practices in 11 European luxury good companies, by interviewing and surveying 13 managers. In a first consumer study, we held interviews with French luxury consumers in Bordeaux about their sustainability expectations (N = 170). The results show that while the distribution of attention is dependent on the respective supply chain activities, luxury goods companies address sustainability concerns and aim to take responsibility for their activities. However, the emphasis is on the dimension of economic sustainability. A comparison with sustainability expectations of French luxury goods consumers suggests that business practices are not perfectly well aligned with these expectations. Consumers put more emphasis on social and environmental sustainability dimensions. On the other hand, business activities concerning waste reduction and raw material management rather well match consumer expectations.     

How do firms achieve sustainability through green innovation under external pressures of environmental regulation and market turbulence?

Analyses in the fields of environmental and innovation research have hindered our understanding of the real effects of external drivers of firms' green innovation and sustainability behaviors on financial performance. This study compares the ways in which two different external factors drive firms to be green innovative: environmental regulation and market turbulence. By dividing green innovation into green process innovation and green product innovation, we propose that environmental regulation increases financial performance mainly through green process innovation rather than through green product innovation, and market turbulence affects financial performance mainly through green product innovation rather than through green process innovation. The results of an empirical analysis based on a mediation model and panel data on 472 Chinese listed firms for 2006–2017 lend support to our hypotheses. Our study contributes to the green innovation management and sustainability literature by offering a holistic framework for examining how firms pursue green innovation and sustainability in response to two different forms of external pressure.     

Evaluating environmental sustainability strategies in freight transport and logistics industry

This paper provides a conceptual framework on green initiatives adoption in companies operating in freight transport and logistics industry and presents an overview on the emerging green practices and information systems adopted. On the basis of a literature review on the topic, a research question was identified and addressed through an analysis conducted in a sample of freight transport and logistics companies. This research question regards the behaviours of freight transporters in adopting green practices and information systems. As for the adoption of both green practices and information systems, the paper shows that freight transporters are not a homogeneous industry, but different types of behaviour emerge. As for the relationship between the degree of adoption of green practices and information systems, the paper proposes a taxonomy bringing together sustainable strategies for adopting green initiatives. Specifically, four strategies are identified: sustainability leaders, green practice adopters, information system adopters, and sustainability followers. These sustainable strategies highlight the different phases of the process of adoption of green initiatives.     

Sustainable entrepreneurship,innovation, and business models: Integrative framework and propositions for future research

This article introduces the business models for sustainability innovation (BMfSI) framework to study how business models mediate between sustainability innovations and business cases for sustainability. The BMfSI framework integrates two major perspectives (implicitly) found in the sustainable business model literature. The first is the agency perspective. It takes into consideration that some form of agency is needed, that is, “someone” who takes decisions and acts. Sustainable entrepreneurs are discussed as those agents who align their new or existing business models with sustainability innovations in order to be successful in business and to create value with and for stakeholders. The second perspective is the systems perspective, which acknowledges that business models are always embedded within sociotechnical contexts through which, for example, public policies, private financing, or stakeholder interests influence whether and how business models can be developed. The agency and systems perspectives are integrated in the so‐called business model mediation space. This theoretical notion embraces the decisions and activities pursued by sustainable entrepreneurs as they align their business models with sustainability innovations on the one hand and the influence of environmental contingencies, barriers, and stakeholders from the sociotechnical context on the other hand. The paper concludes with propositions for future research derived from the BMfSI framework.     

Sustainable entrepreneurship and sustainability innovation: categories and interactions

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework to position sustainable entrepreneurship in relation to sustainability innovation. The framework builds on a typology of sustainable entrepreneurship, develops it by including social and institutional entrepreneurship, i.e. the application of the entrepreneurial approach towards meeting societal goals and towards changing market contexts, and relates it to sustainability innovation. The framework provides a reference for managers to introduce sustainability innovation and to pursue sustainable entrepreneurship. Methodologically, the paper develops an approach of qualitative measurement of sustainable entrepreneurship and how to assess the position of a company in a classification matrix. The degree of environmental or social responsibility orientation in the company is assessed on the basis of environmental and social goals and policies, the organization of environmental and social management in the company and the communication of environmental and social issues. The market impact of the company is measured on the basis of market share, sales growth and reactions of competitors. The paper finds conditions under which sustainable entrepreneurship and sustainability innovation emerge spontaneously. The research has implications for theory and practitioners in that it clarifies which firms are most likely under specific conditions to make moves towards sustainability innovation. The paper makes a contribution in showing that extant research needs to be expanded with regard to motivations for innovation and that earlier models of sustainable entrepreneurship need to be refined. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

中英文商业广告的批评性话语分析

批评性话语分析是一种全新的语篇分析方法。以中英文商业广告为语料,通过批评性话语分析可以揭示广告中隐含的意识形态意义,并说明广告在向人们传达商品信息的同时,如何通过隐藏的意识形态不自觉地影响消费者的生活观念,达到引导大众消费行为的目的。     

Oligopolies with (Somewhat) Environmentally Conscious Consumers: Market Equilibrium and Regulatory Intervention

We consider a horizontally differentiated duopoly where consumers care about the product's “greenness.” Firms can be asymmetric: they may differ in the product's intrinsic value and may also differ in their chosen level of greenness. We examine the choice of greenness and the implications of various policy interventions. We show that (i) the choices of product greenness are strategic substitutes, (ii) the high‐intrinsic quality firm produces the greener product, (iii) the low‐quality firm's greenness may increase with the cost of its provision or decrease with consumer willingness to pay for it, (iv) a minimum quality standard (MQS) leads the greener firm to lower its environmental quality and can even reduce average quality, (v) greenness is underprovided even if consumers fully internalize the externality, and (v) an MQS can reduce welfare if the greenness of the high‐quality firm exceeds the MQS, even when environmental quality is underprovided. The effects of policy interventions on profits differ qualitatively across polices and firms: A firm that lobbies for one type of intervention may lobby against another similar one, and a firm may lobby for an intervention while its competitor may lobby against it. A subsidy for the development costs of a green product can financially hurt both firms.     

What motivates the adoption of green restaurant products and services? A systematic review and future research agenda

Issues regarding green restaurants have received significant scholarly and practitioner attention in the last decade, particularly concerning why consumers adopt green restaurants. Although several reviews exist on green hospitality, a comprehensive review of the literature on consumers' green restaurant adoption is currently lacking. The following systematic literature review examines 50 research studies published on the consumer adoption of green restaurant services to address this gap accordingly. Through a detailed content analysis, the research profile and thematic analysis are presented. The review further identifies four key thematic foci: (a) consumer behavior variables studied, (b) antecedents internal to the consumer, (c) antecedents due to the perception of external factors, and (d) moderators. Limitations and gaps from each of the themes are offered with potential future research questions. The novelty of the review lies in the development of a “green restaurant adoption research framework” that cuts across multiple theoretical perspectives to summarize why consumers adopt green restaurant services.     

Driving the electric bandwagon: The dynamics of incumbents' sustainable innovation

Given that entire industries face sustainability challenges, it is important to understand the dynamics that lead “firms‐in‐an‐industry” to engage in sustainable product innovation. To provide more insight into the question of how innovation activities spread from individual firm action to an industry‐wide engagement, this paper examines the automobile industry and the development of electric vehicles (EVs). The analysis covers automobile incumbents over a crucial decade for EV development in the industry, focusing on the different strategic motives that especially the so‐called “first movers” used to justify their earlier engagement. We find that EVs became a core pillar of the incumbents' technology strategies through a combination of coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures. Yet, the strategic motives to engage in EVs stayed poles apart between different companies. The insights from our study are relevant for those interested in the diffusion of sustainable product innovation and in incumbent behaviour in sustainability transitions.