Does sustainable development lead to sustainability?

The shortcomings and contradictions of the present understanding of sustainable development as a concept and a strategy suggest that the very idea of sustainable development must be subjected to the most thorough-going reevaluation. In rejecting simplistic versions of sustainable development strategy, this paper offers the strategy of sustainable cities both as an alternative strategy and as a catalyst to long-term global sustainability. In so doing, it seeks not to replace all components of the strategy of sustainable development but instead to place them within a restructured strategic framework locating the design and building of sustainable cities at its centre.     

Futures sustainability

This article presents a strategic framework to guide public policy with respect to very long-term futures. The framework is based upon three fundamental principles. Threats to meeting the principles are assessed. Integrated planning responses to overcoming the threats are proposed. Significant changes in economic, political and social theory and organization required to support the strategic responses are discussed. It is argued that human civilization would need to pass through the mythic ‘singularity’ on the path to futures sustainability.     

经济回暖的可持续性之思

当前最重要的是在促进中小企业、民间投资和消费等方面加大力度,不一定需要国家投入太多的钱,需要的是国家推出一批比较强有力的改革措施。     

马蔚华冷静面对全面开放

近日《中华人民共和国外资银行管理条例》的颁布让本来就是热门话题的中外资银行如何竞争的讨论更趋白热化,招商银行马蔚华也多次在公开场合被媒体及有关人士问及中资银行如何应对、招行如何应对的问题。在喊了多年的“狼来了”后,当“狼”真来到“家门口”时,马蔚华表示中资银行已冷静面对,外资银行的确会带     

医治中小企业融资顽疾

众所周知,关注中小企业,并不仅仅在于企业自身,更重要的是它背后占比高达80％的社会就业岗位,是它能带来巨大的就业量和GDP数据提升效应。     

Future sustainability and images

Ambitions for sustainable development invariably lead to pondering the future, because sustainability issues require a future oriented transition of existing, unsustainable systems and practices. Working towards transition requires thorough experimentation with a broad range of innovation projects. However, in the public arena, many such projects are met with stereotypical images, which influence their innovative potential in often unpredictable ways. What is the role of multiple images in complex sustainable development issues, and what are promising approaches to deal with their associated problems? We report current insights from selected cases from TransForum, a large-scale innovation programme toward transition of Dutch agriculture. Our preliminary results show that that simple images can cause a disregard of complexity and that a negative societal image can stifle a project's innovative potential. Images need to me monitored and managed to increase the future potential of innovation projects. Visualisation techniques may foster taking complexity into account in an innovation project. Furthermore, increasing image awareness can help a project to adapt more effectively to existing societal discourses and the images embedded in them. Finally, fostering effective transition requires the creation of new, enticing, images, that do justice to the ambition for transition.     

Letter from the oasis: Helping engineering students to become sustainability professionals

Sustainability scientists call for education that produces ‘sustainability professionals’, who understand the need for sustainability and can work towards it. However, students often have very different ideas, usually based on an expectation of continued unlimited economic growth. This paper, based on research with large, diverse, first year engineering cohorts, argues that a reflective process and on-line support can contribute to a learning oasis—a supportive environment that encourages students to leave their cultural and intellectual comfort zones. In these circumstances, most students will engage with the personal and professional challenges of what it means to be Globo sapiens, a wise global citizen and global sustainability professional for an increasingly complex century.¹     

The determinants of corporate sustainability performance

This paper investigates the factors that drive high levels of corporate sustainability performance (CSP), as proxied by membership of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index. Using a stakeholder framework, we examine the incentives for US firms to invest in sustainability principles and develop a number of hypotheses that relate CSP to firm‐specific characteristics. Our results indicate that leading CSP firms are significantly larger, have higher levels of growth and a higher return on equity than conventional firms. Contrary to our predictions, leading CSP firms do not have greater free cash flows or lower leverage than other firms.     

A pragmatist approach to transdisciplinarity in sustainability research: From complex systems theory to reflexive science

The importance of questioning the values, background assumptions, and normative orientations shaping sustainability research has been increasingly acknowledged, particularly in the context of transdisciplinary research, which aims to integrate knowledge from various scientific and societal bodies of knowledge. Nonetheless, the concept of reflexivity underlying transdisciplinary research is not sufficiently clarified and, as a result, is hardly able to support the development of social learning and social experimentation processes needed to support sustainability transitions. In particular, the concept of reflexivity is often restricted to building social legitimacy for the results of a new kind of ‘complex systems science’, with little consideration of the role of non-scientific expertise and social innovators in the design of the research practice itself.The key hypothesis of the paper is that transdisciplinary research would benefit from adopting a pragmatist approach to reflexivity. Such an approach relates reflexivity to collective processes of problem framing and problem solving through joint experimentation and social learning that directly involve the scientific and extra-scientific expertise. To test this hypothesis, the paper proposes a framework for analysing the different types of reflexive processes that play role in transdisciplinary research. The main conclusion of the analysis is the need to combine conventional consensus-oriented deliberative approaches to reflexivity with more open-ended, action-oriented transformative approaches.     

The potential of integrated reporting to enhance sustainability reporting in the public sector

This paper examines the influence of integrated reporting (IR) on the sustainability reporting practices of a state-owned enterprise through a content analysis of their reports and interviews with report preparers. The findings show a steady increase in the quantity and quality of sustainability disclosures. In 2012, the organization chose to adopt the IR framework in order to enhance sustainability reporting for all stakeholders. The IR process resulted in a more balanced disclosure of material aspects of sustainability. However, while IR has the potential to enhance public sector sustainability reporting, inter-generational equity issues were ignored.     

A New Approach to Measuring Financial Contagion

This article proposes a new approach to evaluate contagion infinancial markets. Our measure of contagion captures the coincidenceof extreme return shocks across countries within a region andacross regions. We characterize the extent of contagion, itseconomic significance, and its determinants using a multinomiallogistic regression model. Applying our approach to daily returnsof emerging markets during the 1990s, we find that contagionis predictable and depends on regional interest rates, exchangerate changes, and conditional stock return volatility. Evidencethat contagion is stronger for extreme negative returns thanfor extreme positive returns is mixed.     

Give up Your Seat to a Lady

Little Johnny said to his mother “Mom, when I was on the bus with Daddy this morning, he told me togive up my seat to a lady.”     

抢抓危中之机 加快经营转型——《中国工商银行2009-2011年发展战略规划》2009年度执行情况评述

2009年,中国工商银行全行上下围绕三年规划提出的战略转型思路和提升竞争力的总体目标要求,沉着应对金融危机和经济波动的挑战,扎实执行规划各项战略部署,坚定不移推进结构调整和经营转型,深化体制机制改革,准确把握市场机遇,积极应对竞争挑战,稳步推动业务发展,三年规划各项战略构想和工作安排得到顺利执行,经营成果好于预期.     

On the timescales of sustainability and futurability

Sustainability has a plethora of ambiguous definitions, partly because there are no consistent timescales acceptable to all interested authors. Co-evolutionary processes between the anthroposphere and the biosphere offer an alternative to sustainability and hence the timescales could be examined by a simple systems analysis. We consider a system of anthropospheric food energy demand and entropy production to evaluate the timescales of sustainability at past technological revolutions in the anthroposphere. Our analysis suggests that each of technological revolutionary steps, the Neolithic/Agricultural, Industrial, and Information Revolutions, has forced the sustainability timescale to decrease by an order of 2. However, we suggest that the minimum timescale of the most recent sustainability is 100-400 years, which is longer than that implied by other sustainability indices (∼100 years). The recently emerged concept of ‘futurability’, an ideal form of sustainability, could help seek futurable states of human-environment interactions beyond the next few hundred years.     

Technology and the transition to environmental sustainability : The problem of technological regime shifts

The present environmental problems call for more environmentally benign technology. This article examines the possibilities of achieving radical change in technology like a shift away from hydrocarbon-based energy technologies. We provide an explanation as to why such a change is likely to be a gradual and slow process. Radical technologies often have long development times and require for their operation special skills, infrastructure and all kinds of institutional changes (organizational changes, regulation, new ideas and values etc). Furthermore, the short-term costs are likely to be high as the new technologies have not yet benefited from dynamic scale and learning effects (that result in cost reductions per unit of output and evolutionary improvements in the technology). The article also provides some answers as to how it is possible for firms with restricted technological capabilities to bring about a shift into a new technological regime—emphasizing the importance of early market niches, available knowledge that may be used, institutional support, and the role of expectations. Finally, niche management is examined as a way of managing the transition towards a more environmentally sustainable energy system.     

挑战与机遇,JCB将更加坚定地开拓中国市场

2008,脚踏实地走自己的路 2008年对于中国来说无疑是不平凡的一年,而JCB在这一年中洗去铅华,稳扎稳打,进一步扩大与各大银行的合作,为广大持卡人提供了更加细分更加贴心的服务.     

Exploring the use of online corporate sustainability information

Whilst the supply, exclusivity and prominence of online corporate sustainability information has increased in recent years, comparatively little is known about what information is used by whom. This paper explores which user groups access online corporate sustainability information, and assesses the relative use of sustainability reports and other forms of social and environmental information disseminated on corporate Websites. To collect the necessary empirical data, the paper analyses 4,652,471 successful requests for information made by the users of 10 UK FTSE 350 corporate Websites.The paper finds that the majority of requests for online sustainability information originate from the reporting company indicative of an inward focus to sustainability reporting. In examining access to different online information sets, distinct profiles of corporate Website users begin to emerge. Requests from employees, private individuals, ISPs and consultants represent the vast majority of the online sustainability reporting audience and the corporate Website in general. Contrastingly, a professional financially-orientated profile of users characterised by professional investors, creditors, accounting firms and lawyers make significantly more use of the Annual Report but significantly less use of sustainability reporting information and other online disclosures.Although prior literature notes how companies have yet to utilise the potential of the online medium in disseminating corporate sustainability information, disclosures are found to attract approximately a tenth of all corporate Website requests. Environmental and ethical disclosures outside the Annual Report are the most popular sources of online corporate sustainability information whilst ‘standalone’ Sustainability and/or Ethics Reports attract comparatively few requests.     

No-arbitrage up to random horizon for quasi-left-continuous models

This paper studies the impact, on no-arbitrage conditions, of stopping the price process at an arbitrary random time. As price processes, we consider the class of quasi-left-continuous semimartingales, i.e., semimartingales that do not jump at predictable stopping times. We focus on the condition of no unbounded profit with bounded risk (called NUPBR), also known in the literature as no arbitrage of the first kind. The first principal result describes all the pairs of quasi-left-continuous market models and random times for which the resulting stopped model fulfils NUPBR. Furthermore, for a subclass of quasi-left-continuous local martingales, we construct explicitly martingale deflators, i.e., strictly positive local martingales whose product with the price process stopped at a random time is a local martingale. The second principal result characterises the random times that preserve NUPBR under stopping for any quasi-left-continuous model. The analysis carried out in the paper is based on new stochastic developments in the theory of progressive enlargements of filtrations.