Environmental Innovations in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

Supporting and accelerating the adoption and diffusion of environmental innovations amongst small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is a major challenge to environmental policy makers. Research suggests that whilst SMEs possess high flexibility, their innovative capacity may be limited to incremental changes within their existing technology system and network. Twenty case studies examining the innovation adoption process in SMEs in four sectors and in five countries within the ENVIS project (commissioned by the EU) revealed great variety in factors driving this process. Findings indicate that this variation can be attributed to the character of the environmental innovation, the specific business opportunity, the regulatory setting and pressure experienced by the sector. Based on these findings an analytical framework is suggested, whereby the environmental innovative capability of SMEs is conceived as the result of an interplay between the competencies, the network relations and the strategic orientation of the company (the 'dynamic triangle'). This indicates that policy to support SME's adoption of environmental innovations has to take an integrated form, i.e. addressing and developing competence, networks and strategic orientation of SMEs simultaneously whilst remaining systemic and context sensitive.     

Environmental Innovations in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

Supporting and accelerating the adoption and diffusion of environmental innovations amongst small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is a major challenge to environmental policy makers. Research suggests that whilst SMEs possess high flexibility, their innovative capacity may be limited to incremental changes within their existing technology system and network. Twenty case studies examining the innovation adoption process in SMEs in four sectors and in five countries within the ENVIS project (commissioned by the EU) revealed great variety in factors driving this process. Findings indicate that this variation can be attributed to the character of the environmental innovation, the specific business opportunity, the regulatory setting and pressure experienced by the sector. Based on these findings an analytical framework is suggested, whereby the environmental innovative capability of SMEs is conceived as the result of an interplay between the competencies, the network relations and the strategic orientation of the company (the 'dynamic triangle'). This indicates that policy to support SME's adoption of environmental innovations has to take an integrated form, i.e. addressing and developing competence, networks and strategic orientation of SMEs simultaneously whilst remaining systemic and context sensitive.     

玩兴氛围、创造性过程投入对突破性创新行为的跨层次影响

创新是企业生存与发展的基础，玩兴有利于激发员工创新行为。立足于中国本土化情境，以心流理论为基础，基于44名团队主管及237名下属配对数据，探讨个体玩兴对员工突破性创新行为的作用机制和边界条件，检验创造性过程投入的中介作用以及玩兴氛围的跨层次调节作用。研究发现：个人玩兴对员工突破性创新行为有显著直接影响；创造性过程投入在个人玩兴与突破性创新行为之间起完全中介作用；玩兴氛围正向调节个人玩兴与创造性过程投入之间的关系，个人玩兴通过创造性过程投入对员工突破性创新行为的中介作用被玩兴氛围所调节。该研究结论对工作场所中的玩兴管理以及激发员工突破性创新行为具有一定借鉴意义。     

A categorical modeling approach to analyzing new product adoption and usage in the context of the building-materials industry

A high proportion of non-adopters is prevalent in any market where the product under consideration is relatively new or has a low acceptance rate. This results in a low proportion of adopters in a representative sample. In adoption or product usage modeling such high proportion of zeros in the dependent variable may be addressed by zero-inflated models, by modeling the product adoption and usage as a function of two latent processes. This paper considers a zero-inflated ordinal-probit model for investigating adoption and usage of innovative wall-cavity insulation materials among residential homebuilders in the US. This study assumes a three-step adoption process of innovative housing materials, namely, trial adoption, intermediate adoption and complete adoption. The study uses 5757 responses from a combined ‘Annual Builder Practices Survey’ dataset comprising ten cross-sectional yearly surveys, undertaken by the NAHB Research Center, from 1996 to 2005. The research results indicate that though a higher proportion of large firms are more likely to adopt innovative insulation material, they continue using established products while slowly increasing their use of the innovative material over time. However, when smaller homebuilders adopt an innovative insulation material, it replaces the existing product from their material usage portfolio at a faster rate.     

Transport and CO2: Productivity Growth and Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the European Commercial Transport Industry

In the last decades transport activities persistently increased in the EU27 and were strongly coupled to growth in gross domestic product. Like most production processes, they are inevitably linked with the generation of environmentally hazardous by-products, such as CO₂ emissions. This leads to the question of how to promote a sustainable transport sector that meets both environmental protection targets and economic requirements. In this context, the objective of this paper is to compare the CO₂-sensitve productivity development of the European commercial transport industry for the period between 1995 and 2006. We calculate a Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index to investigate the effects of country-specific regulations on productivity and to identify innovative countries. Our results show a high variation in the CO₂-sensitive productivity development and a slight productivity decrease on average. Efficiency losses indicate that the majority of the countries were not able to follow the technological improvements induced by some innovative countries.     

长三角区域一体化背景下的环保投融资创新机制研究

在对长三角地区生态环境保护投资规模、结构、地区分布、不同主体投资情况进行分析的基础上,识别当前存在的问题,包括投资总量不足、投融资渠道及规模拓展空间有限、投资效率亟待提升等。从加大财政资金保护力度、推行政府和社会资本合作模式、拓宽生态环境项目投资回报机制、创新绿色金融制度等方面提出建议,以期构建适应长三角区域一体化生态环境共保联治格局要求的环保投融资创新机制。     

Man and automation: Instinct of Workmanship,nigntmare of vanishing routine and Agony of forced creativity

Stewart Udall’s environmental book,The Quiet Crisis and the Next Generation, and the preponderant use of the word “trade-off” in environmental work motivate this paper. Udall’s book is a history of increasing awareness about environmental quality and business activity becomes a topic of increasing concern. Elementary economics typically emphasizes the inevitability of trade-offs. Thus far, and perhaps consequently, society’s approach to solving environmental problems has been adversarial. Adversaries solve problems by fighting to determine who will win and lose in the trade-offs. This paper suggests a different emphasis in our elementary microeconomics material, an emphasis focusing more on choices in which all parties win, choices which are therefore consistent with a non-adversarial approach to our growing environmentla problems. This paper introduces the “apparent trade-off.”     

平台型领导对员工主动创新行为的跨层次影响

员工创新能力决定企业生存和长远发展,企业管理者领导风格对员工创新行为具有重要影响,平台型领导者个人魅力在影响下属行为方面具有积极作用,有助于促进员工主动创新行为。基于社会交换理论和社会学习理论,构建平台型领导与员工主动创新行为跨层次影响模型。对24个团队211人样本进行实证分析,研究发现：平台型领导对团队学习涌现、创造性自我效能感和主动创新行为具有显著正向促进作用;创造性自我效能感在平台型领导与主动创新行为之间发挥跨层次中介作用;团队学习涌现在平台型领导与主动创新行为之间发挥跨层次中介作用。研究结果有助于揭开平台型领导影响员工主动创新行为的“黑箱”,并为企业管理者激励员工日常创新活动提供借鉴和指导。     

Technology-based environmental health risks in developing nations

This paper addresses two questions: 1) To what extent are developing nations vulnerable to technology- related environmental health risks? 2) To what extent does the export of hazardous technologies and products contribute to overall levels of environmental health risk in developing nations? The paper focuses on three major types of environmental health risks: the failure of large-scale technological systems; the use or misuse of consumer goods, mechanical devices, and chemicals; and industrial emissions of toxic substances. In addition, three categories of hazardous exports are examined: hazardous products (e.g., pesticides), hazardous production processes (e.g., asbestos processing), and hazardous wastes (e.g., chemical and radioactive waste). The paper concludes that technology-based environmental health risks pose a significant public health problem in most developing nations, even when compared to much larger public health problems such as tropical and gastrointestinal diseases. Technology-based risks are growing in number and frequency. If developing and developed nations continue their current policies, these risks will grow at a significantly greater rate.     

The Effect of Off-farm Work on the Intensity of Agricultural Production

Changes in agricultural production methods have been associated with environmental pressure and a loss of natural habitats. This paper explores the extent to which farmer participation in off-farm work (an increasing phenomenon in most developed countries) changes the intensity of agricultural input use focusing, in particular, on fertilizer and crop protection product use. A sample selection model that accounts for both unobserved heterogeneity between farms and the potential simultaneity between farm operations and hours worked off-farm is estimated for 2,419 farms in England and Wales. The econometric evidence indicates that the input intensity of products which have well-established links to environmental damage can increase as well as decrease. The results suggest that that fertilizer intensity may decline as off-farm labor increases while the use of crop protection per hectare increases as off-farm work increases.     

An evolutionary model of recycling and product lifetime extension

This paper presents a model-based analysis of the development and diffusion of so-called ‘green’ products, i.e. those which are easily recyclable and which have a long lifetime. We address this problem by developing an evolutionary simulation model to identify the impact of the environmental R&D strategies of business firms on the economy and the environment. The simulation results show that R&D investment both in product recyclability and in product lifetime extension can be positive for the firm. Adopting such a strategy means that the firm can then market green products, which provides it with a competitive advantage on firms investing mainly in product recyclability whatever consumers' preferences. From an environmental point of view, the diffusion of green products will reduce both waste flows in the economy and pressure on virgin resources. However, diversifying R&D investment to develop both product recyclability and lifetime can mean slowing down the flow of recycled materials and may lead to even greater quantities of unrecycled waste. Our results suggest introducing regulation policies aiming at encouraging firms to invest both in product recyclability and lifetime in order to benefit from their complementarities. Furthermore, simulations show that it should be better to direct environmental policies on firms' environmental innovation strategies than on demand attributes because significant changes in these strategies would provide much more radical environmental changes.     

The noisy crisis and all those trade-offs

Stewart Udall’s environmental book,The Quiet Crisis and the Next Generation, and the preponderant use of the word “trade-off” in environmental work motivate this paper. Udall’s book is a history of increasing awareness about environmental quality and business activity becomes a topic of increasing concern. Elementary economics typically emphasizes the inevitability of trade-offs. Thus far, and perhaps consequently, society’s approach to solving environmental problems has been adversarial. Adversaries solve problems by fighting to determine who will win and lose in the trade-offs. This paper suggests a different emphasis in our elementary microeconomics material, an emphasis focusing more on choices in which all parties win, choices which are therefore consistent with a non-adversarial approach to our growing environmentla problems. This paper introduces the “apparent trade-off.”     

Disruptive technology roadmaps

Disruptive technologies create growth in the industries they penetrate or create entirely new industries through the introduction of products and services that are dramatically cheaper, better, and more convenient. These disruptive technologies often disrupt workforce participation by allowing technologically unsophisticated individuals to enter and become competitive in the industrial workforce. Disruptive technologies offer a revolutionary change in the conduct of processes or operations.Disruptive technologies can evolve from the confluence of seemingly diverse technologies or can be a result of an entirely new technological investigation. Existing planning processes are notoriously poor in identifying the mix of sometimes highly disparate technologies required to address the multiple performance objectives of a particular niche in the market. For a number of reasons, especially the inability to look beyond short-term profitability, and the risk/return tradeoff of longer term projects, it is suggested that current strategic planning and management processes promote sustaining technologies at the expense of disruptive technologies.We propose a systematic approach to identify disruptive technologies that is realistic and operable and takes advantage of the text mining literature. This literature-based discovery process is especially useful in identifying potential disruptive technologies that may require the input from many diverse technological and management areas. We believe that this process holds great potential for identifying projects with a higher probability of downstream success. Further, we suggest a process to take the identified potential disruptive technology from the “idea stage” through to the development of a potentially feasible product for the market. This second stage makes use of workshops and roadmapping to codify the ideas of technological and management experts, who were identified in the literature-based discovery stage. Our goal is to describe and explain the pragmatic steps suggested by our innovative and practical process.The proposed process could identify technologies whose eventual development and application to specific problems would generate innovative products. The goal is to isolate technologies that have the potential to redefine an industry, or alternatively, have the potential to create an entirely new industrial setting. Use the text-mining component of literature-based discovery to identify both the technical disciplines that are likely candidates for disruptive technological products, and experts in these critical technical and managerial disciplines. While we know that this is but one way to investigate nascent disruptive technologies we feel it is imperative that the representatives of these potentially critical technical disciplines are included in the roadmap development process, either as implementers or as consultants.Every firm is looking for “the next great thing”. Literature-based discovery offers a starting point for identifying at least a portion of the major contributory technical and managerial disciplines necessary for potential disruptive technologies and discontinuous innovations. Combining literature-based discovery with a practical workshop/roadmap process dramatically enhances the likelihood of success.     

PROJECT EVALUATION AND RESOURCE SUSTAINABILITY

This paper outlines a procedure for embodying the principle of resource sustainability in evaluating projects that use significant amounts of natural resources. In this analysis, sustainability requires maintaining the productivity of the resource used over time, either by renewing the resource or by investing its depletion in other capital assets. The basis of a project's evaluation is its net present social value (NPSV), including resource depletion as a social cost. The social cost of depletion is the amount that must be saved and reinvested annually to accumulate a fund that will yield a perpetual annual income equal to the net output lost by resource depletion. By treating resource depletion as a social cost in calculating NPSV, projects causing a high rate of resource depletion receive a relatively low valuation compared with projects causing less resource depletion. Resource depletion includes environmental damage caused by constructing and operating a project, as well as the direct consumption of natural resources.
Several problems arise in reinvesting depletion to preserve the value of a resource base. One major problem relates to the substitutability of man-made capital for natural resources. The conclusion of the analysis here is that society must invest a substantial amount of resource depletion in: (i) replenishing renewable resources, (ii) increasing product output per unit of resource used, or (Hi) increasing the end-use efficiency of resource-intensive products.     

Enterprise Resource Planning and the Price of Efficiency: The Trade Off Between Business Efficiency and the Innovative Capability of Firms

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) business software offers the integration of business functions and can reduce data collection and processing duplication efforts. It has become one of the most successful products in the world. For many firms such as Microsoft, Owens-Corning, ICI, UBS and Procter & Gamble, it has changed the way they work (see Gartner, How Procter & Gamble runs its global business on SAP, CS-15-3473, Research Note, 25 February 2002). The market leaders in this highly lucrative business-to-business market are SAP, Oracle, Baan and PeopleSoft. This paper reviews the ERP and innovation management literature in order to shed light on the potential problems that may exist in rigid ERP systems. It seems there is increasing evidence that firms fail to obtain the benefits of these investments within the anticipated timeframes (B. dos Santos and L. Sussman, Improving the return on IT investment: the productivity paradox, International Journal of Information Management, vol. 20, No. 6, 2000, pp. 429-440). Moreover, and possibly of greater concern is the affect on the firm's innovative ability. Especially in some creative working environments where previously autonomous and creative individuals are now being restricted to what's on offer via 'pull-down' menus.     

Network of Collaborations for Innovation: The Case of Biotechnology

The ‘life science’ revolution related to the development of biotechnology affects many different markets. In the pharmaceutical business new drugs are continuously developed, tested, and submitted to governmental institutions for the required approval. In the agricultural business the so-called ‘green revolution’ is well under way with many new products designed in order to appeal to farmers or to consumers. The increasing pace of introduction of new biotech products—particularly drugs and agrochemical (Ag) foods—leads firms to look for collaborations in the different phases of the introduction process. Basing on an empirical study conducted on a sample of 27 organisations involved in the process of introduction of biotech products, the paper aims at comparing and contrasting the nature and the processes involved in inter-institutional collaborations occurring at various stages of new product development and commercialisation of new biotech products (particularly drugs and Ag foods).     

产品平台开发项目的选择和规划方法

企业的竞争优势是产品快速响应市场,可以采用产品平台策略来快速满足顾客的差异化需求。产品平台的开发方式包括变型指标设计、关联指标设计、标准化设计、模块化设计和配置设计,因此会产生大量的针对产品平台开发的项目。有的项目涉及到开发方式的一种,而有的项目涉及到开发方式的几种。传统的基于企业能力平衡以及收益分析的项目选择、排序、资源分配模式,已经无法适应快速变化的企业内外部环境。在产品平台开发项目中,企业需要一种新的项目选择和规划方法：既能满足各个项目的资源需求,又能体现公司的战略目标,并且在5年规划期内围绕每年平均预算费用上下波动。     

中国生态环境类社会组织专业人才培养研究

在“绿色发展”日益成为社会共识的背景下,中国生态环境类社会组织已在环境保护事业中占据一席之地。目前,中国生态环境类社会组织普遍存在人才队伍短缺、结构不合理、专业化程度不高等问题,而专业人才培养和队伍建设是组织可持续发展的保障。以中国代表性生态环境类社会组织为研究对象,采用质性研究方法,对专业人才培养意义、主要工作、缺失原因及培养对策进行探讨和归纳,从现阶段中国生态环境类社会组织自身视角构建了专业人才培养理论框架。