To Greener Pastures: An Action Research Study on the Environmental Sustainability of Humanitarian Supply Chains

Purpose: While humanitarian supply chains (HSCs) inherently contribute to social sustainability by alleviating the suffering of afflicted communities, their unintended adverse environmental impact has been overlooked hitherto. This paper draws upon contingency theory to synthesize green practices for HSCs, identify the contingency factors that impact on greening HSCs and explore how focal humanitarian organizations (HOs) can cope with such contingency factors. Design/methodology/approach: Deploying an action research methodology, two-and-a-half cycles of collaboration between researchers and a United Nations agency were completed. The first half-cycle developed a deductive greening framework, synthesizing extant green practices from the literature. In the second and third cycles, green practices were adopted/customized/developed reflecting organizational and contextual contingency factors. Action steps were implemented in the HSC for prophylactics, involving an operational mix of disaster relief and development programs. Findings: First, the study presents a greening framework that synthesizes extant green practices in a suitable form for HOs. Second, it identifies the contingency factors associated with greening HSCs regarding funding environment, stakeholders, field of activity and organizational management. Third, it outlines the mechanisms for coping with the contingency factors identified, inter alia, improving the visibility of headquarters over field operations, promoting collaboration and resource sharing with other HOs as well as among different implementing partners in each country, and working with suppliers for greener packaging. The study advances a set of actionable propositions for greening HSCs. Practical implications: Using an action research methodology, the study makes strong practical contributions. Humanitarian practitioners can adopt the greening framework and the lessons learnt from the implementation cycles presented in this study. Originality/value: This is one of the first empirical studies to integrate environmental sustainability and HSCs using an action research methodology

Contingency, Irony and Morality: A Critical Review of Rorty's. Notion of the Liberal Utopia

This paper introduces Richard Rorty’s notion of the liberal ironist and his vision of a liberal utopia and explores the implications of these for philosophical questions concerning morality, as well as morality in general. Rorty’s assertions of the contingency of language, society and self are explored. Under the contingency of language, the figure of the ironist is defined, and Rorty’s conception of vocabularies is discussed. Under the contingency of society, Rorty’s definition of liberalism, his opposition of literary culture to materialist and metaphysical culture, and his notions concerning utopian politics are discussed. Under the contingency of self, Rorty’s critique of Kantian and his appropriations of Deweyan and Freudian conceptions of morality are presented. Other key factors discussed are Rorty’s theory of the separation of the private and public spheres of life and his ideas concerning cruelty and human solidarity. In this way, a critical analysis of Rorty’s proposed balance between private, ironic doubt and public, liberal social hope is presented and assessed in terms of its merit as a system of thought suited to the needs of post-metaphysical, liberal societies

Graphical Log-linear Models: Fundamental Concepts and Applications

We present a comprehensive study of graphical log-linear models for contingency tables. High dimensional contingency tables arise in many areas such as computational biology, collection of survey and census data and others. Analysis of contingency tables involving several factors or categorical variables is very hard. To determine interactions among various factors, graphical and decomposable log-linear models are preferred. First, we explore connections between the conditional independence in probability and graphs; thereafter we provide a few illustrations to describe how graphical log-linear model are useful to interpret the conditional independences between factors. We also discuss the problem of estimation and model selection in decomposable models

The Determinants of the Relationship of Corporate Social Performance and Financial Performance: Conceptual Framework

The objective of this paper is to investigate relationship between CSP and CFP using contingency perspective derived from the strategic management domain. The investigation will be done using lens of slack resource and good management theory. This study is expected to provide a new insight on the link between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance using contingency perspective as suggested in the strategic management and accounting literature, an area has not been examined in the prior studies. The result of this study can resolve the existing conflict in the literatures by developing an integrated model of the link between CSP and CFP and the notion of corporate performance which, in strategic management, is highly affected by four factors: business environment, strategy, organization structure, and control system. The model will explain in what condition the relationship of CSP and CFP is valid Keywords: Corporate social performance, corporate financial performance, slack resource theory, good management theory, contingency theory, and moderating effect

Contingency Factors and the Technology-Performance-Relationship in Start-ups

This study identifies the pace of technological development and market heterogeneity as crucial environmental conditions shaping start-ups' performance when commercializing radical technologies. Using a unique dataset that combines survey and patent data for 85 technology-based start-ups, we found that technological radicalness has a positive effect on performance when the development pace in a start-up's technological field is high. Contrarily, under heterogeneous market conditions, technological radicalness diminishes a start-up's performance. The results emphasize that the impact of technological radicalness on start-ups' performance is context specific. Overall, these findings contribute to a better understanding of when technological radicalness represents an asset or a liability for technology-based startups

SVD, discrepancy, and regular structure of contingency tables

We will use the factors obtained by correspondence analysis to find biclustering of a contingency table such that the row-column cluster pairs are regular, i.e., they have small discrepancy. In our main theorem, the constant of the so-called volume-regularity is related to the SVD of the normalized contingency table. Our result is applicable to two-way cuts when both the rows and columns are divided into the same number of clusters, thus extending partly the result of Butler estimating the discrepancy of a contingency table by the second largest singular value of the normalized table (one-cluster, rectangular case), and partly a former result of the author for estimating the constant of volume-regularity by the structural eigenvalues and the distances of the corresponding eigen-subspaces of the normalized modularity matrix of an edge-weighted graph (several clusters, symmetric case)

Contingency Factors of Virtual Organizations’ Emergence

Business organizations are permanently influenced by contingency factors which generate profound changes in their emergence, structures and forms. Globalization, technological progress, and changes in society are foundations of networked organization emergence. In the actual economic, social and technological contexts, progress assumes interdependence of many contingency factors that are in mutual interaction. The organizations integration in virtual organizations generates positive effects through which organizations become competitive and cope with the dynamics and turbulence of the business environment. Progress in areas such as networks of communications, telecommunications, information technology and social changes are preconditions for the emergence of the knowledge-based society and of the interconnected society in which new structures emerge that allow business activities and processes to unfold in a collaborative manner. The integration of organizations, especially of small and medium-sized enterprises, into networks of organizations, has become an important goal in the current economic environment, as the organizations are striving to become more competitive, to build skills and have access to know-how. To cope with changes and complexity of business sectors, the organizations seek to become more competitive by developing new business models, strategies and governance principles, processes, internal structures based on new organizational capabilities and resources. The identification and analysis of contingency factors of the emergence of virtual organizations are issues that can highlight the distinctive features of virtual organizations compared to other organizational forms, but also the differences between them and other network-type structures.virtual organizations, networked organizations, organizational structures, collaborative structures

Method of planning construction projects, taking into account risk factors

This paper presents an original method of planning construction projects, taking into account the influence of potential risk factors. The method is called the Method of Construction Risk Assessment (MOCRA). According to this method, first the material-financial plan of a project (a construction project in the example provided) is analyzed. Then risk factors are identified, taking into account the project’s specificity. The end result of this stage is a list of risk factors. In the third stage the risk is reduced or minimized where possible. Finally, the specified risk factors are quantified, which is a difficult task. The effectiveness of the risk assessment depends on how thoroughly this task is carried out. Since point scale assessment of risk does not appeal to engineers, in MOCRA quantified risk is allocated in the material-financial plan. Thanks to this, one can prepare contingency plans, i.e. plans (action variants) to be implemented when particular risk factors occur. Having completed the project, one can use MOCRA to check the accuracy of the assessment (forecast) and select the best contingency action variant, whereby the method’s effectiveness in planning future projects is improved.risk, scheduling, construction project

Fast Algorithm for N-2 Contingency Problem

We present a novel selection algorithm for N-2 contingency analysis problem. The algorithm is based on the iterative bounding of line outage distribution factors and successive pruning of the set of contingency pair candidates. The selection procedure is non-heuristic, and is certified to identify all events that lead to thermal constraints violations in DC approximation. The complexity of the algorithm is O(N^2) comparable to the complexity of N-1 contingency problem. We validate and test the algorithm on the Polish grid network with around 3000 lines. For this test case two iterations of the pruning procedure reduce the total number of candidate pairs by a factor of almost 1000 from 5 millions line pairs to only 6128.Comment: HICC