From Compliance With Environmental Regulations To Pursuit Of Environmental-Based Competitive Advantages: Mediators Of The Relationship In A SME Context

Despite the huge amount of work written about environmental practices of SMEs, what continues in the debate is the relationship between their two motivations for environmental protection: the push motivation of environmental regulation compliance and the pull motivation of pursuing competitive advantages based on the environmental protection agenda in a win-win logic. Some scholars state that environmental regulation compliance motivates SMEs to pursue opportunities that they would miss otherwise, while others claim that the conformity to regulations results in mere compliance behavior. Thus, we contribute to the literature by probing the intervening variables to uncover when and how SMEs move from a push to a pull motivation. Within the scope of our study, we consider environmental regulations that are voluntary-oriented; we also focus on the pursuit of competitiveness that is based on the development of environmental-friendly products/services. The mediators that we examine include: market expansion, monitoring of business activities, innovative capacity, and adoption of environmental behavior of suppliers. We conduct our investigation among 161 French SMEs in 2011

Trust categories and their impacts on information exchange processes in vertical collaborative networked organisations

Whereas small and medium enterprises can answer the different business challenges through cooperation within collaborative networked organisations (CNOs), human aspects constitute a fundamental issue in these networks since it is neither organisations nor information systems but people that cooperate. This paper addresses the major human aspect considered in vertical CNOs, namely trust that can significantly impact knowledge and know-how exchange as well as information sharing. A case study on Swiss Microtech, a vertical collaborative network from the industry of machining operations, is presented and discussed with respect to these issues. With the help of an analytic hierarchy process technique designed and developed, different trust types are identified, their corresponding weights are evaluated and their relationships with information sharing and exchange are discussed. The results show that the institutional perceptions of trust and its attributes in the enterprises studied are very close to each other. Furthermore, out of the five identified types, only competence, relational and contractual trust categories have a significant impact on strengthening the relationships between enterprises belonging to a vertical CNO

Interorganizational Information Systems: Systematic Literature Mapping Protocol

Organizations increasingly need to establish partnerships with other organizations to face environment changes and remain competitive. This interorganizational relationship allows organizations to share resources and collaborate to handle business opportunities better. This technical report present the protocol of the systematic mapping performed to understand what is an IOIS and how these systems support interorganizational relationships

On the classification and management of Virtual Organisation Breeding Environments

Wide variety of domains and applications have identified the need for collaboration among heterogeneous, autonomous and geographically disperse organisations. Virtual Organisations (VOs) represent a main form of network for goal-oriented and opportunity driven collaborations. Effective creation of dynamic VOs requires proper breeding environments. After introducing the base for collaborative-networked organisations, the concept of breeding environment for virtual organisations is presented, key elements of this environment are identified, and a semi-typology is established. Furthermore, the requirements for a Virtual organisations Breeding Environment (VBE) support management system are addressed, identifying its initial information/knowledge modelling needs and functionalities, towards a new generation of information systems for collaborative environments