Implementing industrial sustainability: the research issues in technology management

This paper ties together issues in the implementation of industrial sustainability and the contribution that technology management research has to offer. The idea of sustainability seems to be slowly attracting more attention. Discussion occurs not only amongst world governments, academics and NGOs, but also in industry. Industrial sustainability now appears to be moving up the management agenda in many organisations. Corporate reputation and shareholder value may be at stake for organisations which cannot demonstrate a rational position on sustainability. However, despite this increasing awareness, in practice there are a number of barriers to the implementation of industrial sustainability ideas. For a start, it is unclear what industrial sustainability means in practical terms. The business case for implementation is often built on individual conviction or motivational case examples, rather than being grounded in solid theory with associated frameworks, guidelines and tools. Particular challenges facing organisations include the choice of appropriate product and process technologies, lifecycle valuation techniques, changing employee and other stakeholder mindsets, and possibly most importantly, creating a new business model altogether. In light of these issues, this paper sets out to review the contribution that technology management research can make towards the effective implementation of industrial sustainability. Considerations include the cross‐functional and cross‐organisational issues of implementation – bringing together various business units and functions within a company, and the many players in a supply chain, with the goal of improving environmental, social and economic performance in parallel. There is a need to develop new methods for technology valuation which integrate the concept of triple bottom line accountability and existing technology strategy in organisations could be extended, to include the wider set of values that underpin the concepts of industrial sustainability. The critical research needs for this to be achieved are identified.     

Linking transportation and population health to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in transportation injury: Implications for practice and policy

In both developing and advanced economies, it is commonly believed that lower income and minority populations are disproportionately at risk of being injured or killed in a motor vehicle crash, especially as pedestrians. However, this risk is rarely quantified with information about exposure. We argue that a combined transportation–population health framework is one way to quantify, and therefore prioritize, equity considerations in transportation safety decision-making. We illustrate this approach with an analysis that compares age-adjusted fatal and nonfatal injury rates per 100 million person-trips by race/ethnicity and sex for motor vehicle occupants, bicyclists, and pedestrians. We found that, per trip, whites are equally safe as pedestrians and motor vehicle occupants, whereas other racial and ethnic groups for whom we have data are less safe when they walk. In addition, black/African-American female motor vehicle occupants and pedestrians have higher inpatient injury risk than female travelers of other races and ethnicities (for whom we had sufficient data). Such differences in transportation injury risk by race and ethnicity warrant deeper analysis to understand the underlying reasons, such as whether certain groups of travelers are exposed to qualitatively different hazards when they travel. We discuss frameworks for including information about injury disparities in decision-making.     

The Impact of Coupled and Decoupled Government Subsidies on Off-Farm Labor Participation of U.S. Farm Operators

With the 1996 Farm Act, the United States introduced payments that were designed to be "decoupled." Labor allocation choices are likely to be affected by receipt of payments, and income from off-farm jobs has been the major source of income for most farm households for sometime. This article examines whether the 1996 change has affected the off-farm labor participation of farm households. We conclude that the observed increase in off-farm participation of farm operators who received payments was not the result of the 1996 policy change. Government payments, whether coupled or decoupled, have a negative effect on off-farm labor participation.     

International Investment Agreements and the Escalation of Private Power in the Global Agri-Food System

Journal of Business Ethics - Using food regime analysis, this paper critically analyzes how corporate actors amass, secure and apply power in the global agrifood system through International...     

Environmental management systems: an alternative marketing strategy for sustainability

The purpose of the paper is to shed light on the extent to which environmental management systems such as ISO 14000 standards influence marketing efforts. By examining firms who prefer ISO 14000 standards against those who do not, this research provides a platform for understanding their significance when applied to marketing and seeks to improve environmental marketing strategies. The study empirically tests whether statistically significant differences exist between the two groups on a set of marketing variables. The study uses hierarchical clustering Ward’s method and measurement using squared Euclidean distances to determine the two groups. Discriminant analysis (DA) was used to classify each of the observations into selected groups; and test differences between these groups. Stepwise DA identified customer satisfaction as the best marketing predictor. This research indicates that green market-driven solutions for responsible consumption work best when it is consumer-driven, and consumers derive satisfaction from those results. The results adopts the view that investing in IS0 14000 standards is also highly beneficial for the wider applicability of developing strategies that would help firms make better decisions in marketing.     

Being appropriately professional: the interaction between professionalism,ICT and knowledge transfer

This article examines how professionalism impacts on the interaction and knowledge transfer of professionals within open plan workspaces and between distributed workplaces when using ICT. Knowledge is key to the system of professions and the power of professionals. At the same time, professional work requires professionals to behave in an appropriate and professional‐like manner, and this includes sharing knowledge with colleagues. Yet, the ideology of professionalism is changing. Alongside, professionals are working differently, including across distributed workplaces and often interacting via ICT. These shifting contexts make understanding the interaction between professionalism, knowledge transfer and ICT crucial. Drawing on Goffman's work, particularly his exposition of interaction rituals, interviews with accountants reveal that when using ICT, the professional framework of interaction – what can be said, who has the right to speak and who is the audience – meets appropriateness in sometimes contradictory ways, potentially limiting the growth and propagation of knowledge.     

The probability evaluation game: an instrument to highlight the skill of reflexive listening

This paper describes the development of the Probability Evaluation Game (PEG): an innovative teaching instrument that emphasises the sophistication of listening and highlights listening as a key skill for accounting practitioners. Whilst in a roundtable format, playing PEG involves participants individually evaluating a series of probability terms and then calling out their evaluations amongst fellow players who have done the same. When listening to peers’ responses, any difference in evaluation of the same term confronts players with the knowledge that without skilled, reflexive listening conversations are dangerous playgrounds of miscommunication. The PEG presents a valuable learning opportunity where the potential impact of this issue for accounting and business world can be discussed. This paper details how PEG was developed, its format and how it has been used with students and accounting practitioners. Furthermore emergent, and often intriguing, learning points are discussed and related to accounting and the workplace more generally.     

Front-label health claims: when less is more

Growing global attention has been directed toward labeling the ingredients, processing methods, and health claims of food. Accompanying this attention is an interest in how consumers process or understand the information on such labels. This article examines how the length of a front-label claim influences the nutritional beliefs and evaluation of a product when used in combination with complete back-label information. The results indicate that the presence of a shorter health claim on the front of the package (in combination with a more complete claim on the back) leads a person to generate more attribute-specific thoughts about the product and fewer general evaluative thoughts compared to longer health claims. These shorter health claims also led to more favorable beliefs about the product and to a more positive image of the product. This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for policy makers, consumers and researchers.     

Direct Evidence of Non-trading on the London Stock Exchange

The extent of non-trading is shown to be much greater in the UK than in the more heavily researched US equity markets. Over the period 1975 to 1995 we find that almost 44% of all stocks in our sample failed to trade on the last day of a given month, a figure which is significantly higher than for stocks in the US (see Foerster and Keim, 1993). In this paper we investigate the relationship between the non-trading of UK stocks and the autoregressive and seasonal behaviour of UK stock returns. In addition, we find that stocks are much more likely to be recorded as not having traded on the last day of the month in the period prior to April 1981 than after this date. We trace this result to a reporting requirement change on the London Stock Exchange and investigate whether the change has any real implications for systematic risk estimates over this period. We also find that alternative methods for calculating betas, in the presence of thin trading, are very sensitive to stock size and to non-trading.