Sound mining in the North : a guide to environmental regulation and best practices supporting social sustainability

Julkaistu versi

Knowledge management, innovation and big data: Implications for sustainability, policy making and competitiveness

This Special Issue of Sustainability devoted to the topic of “Knowledge Management, Innovation and Big Data: Implications for Sustainability, Policy Making and Competitiveness” attracted exponential attention of scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers from all over the world. Locating themselves at the expanding cross-section of the uses of sophisticated information and communication technology (ICT) and insights from social science and engineering, all papers included in this Special Issue contribute to the opening of new avenues of research in the field of innovation, knowledge management, and big data. By triggering a lively debate on diverse challenges that companies are exposed to today, this Special Issue offers an in-depth, informative, well-structured, comparative insight into the most salient developments shaping the corresponding fields of research and policymaking

On the role of pre and post-processing in environmental data mining

The quality of discovered knowledge is highly depending on data quality. Unfortunately real data use to contain noise, uncertainty, errors, redundancies or even irrelevant information. The more complex is the reality to be analyzed, the higher the risk of getting low quality data. Knowledge Discovery from Databases (KDD) offers a global framework to prepare data in the right form to perform correct analyses. On the other hand, the quality of decisions taken upon KDD results, depend not only on the quality of the results themselves, but on the capacity of the system to communicate those results in an understandable form. Environmental systems are particularly complex and environmental users particularly require clarity in their results. In this paper some details about how this can be achieved are provided. The role of the pre and post processing in the whole process of Knowledge Discovery in environmental systems is discussed

Development of a Methodology for the Economic Assessment of Managerial Decisions as a Factor of Increased Economic Security

The article notes that the emergence of such a phenomenon as the interdependence of security and development, the so-called security-development nexus, becomes a determinant during the development of strategic documents at all hierarchical levels. It gives relevance to the search for methodological solutions that would on a strategic level take into account any potential threats to economic security, and on a tactical level provide for pragmatic actions that are not in conflict with the strategic development vector of business entities. The authors identify the instability factors that pose a real threat to economic security. They substantiate the expediency of forming a new model of the national economy development with a focal point on new industrialization. The article factors in the most important trends in the development of the global economy that determine the strategic vector of enhancing the economic security in Russia. It is ascertained that in the conditions of new industrialization, the intellectual core of the high-tech economy sector is formed by convergent technologies (NBICS technologies). The authors offer a methodological approach to the economic assessment of managerial decisions in the context of uncertainty. They also identify methodological principles that must be taken into account in developing a modern methodology for the economic assessment of business decisions. The principles include forming a preferred reality, or the so-called “vision of the future,” the priority of network solutions as the basis for the formation of new markets; mass customization and individualization of demands, principal changes in the profile of competences that ensure competitiveness on the labor market, use of the ideology of inclusive development and impact investment that creates common values. The proposed methodology is based on the optimum combination of traditional methods used for the economic assessment of managerial decisions with the method of real options and reflexive assessments with regard to entropy as a measure of uncertainty. The proposed methodological approach has been tested in respect of the Ural mining and metallurgical complex.The article has been prepared with the support of the grant from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research № 16–06–00403 "Modelling the Motivational Potentials of the Multi-subject Industrial Policy in the Context of New Industrialization"

Sustainable management: a strategic challenge for a global minerals and metals industry

This paper refers to the concept of sustainable management as the management approach which efficiently integrates economic, environmental and social issues into the operations of the minerals and metals industries, with the aim of creating long-term benefits for all stakeholders, and securing the support, cooperation, and trust of the local community. Among many other issues, sustainable management deals with strategy, responsible project feasibility decisions, managing for operational efficiency, improved risk management, enhanced stakeholder relationships, and corporate reputation. Overall, it deals with seeking long-term competitive advantages through responsible management of environmental and social issues. An essential requirement for sustainable management is the corporate commitment to the values of sustainability, but this is not sufficient. Also essential is the development of a business culture where sustainability is a high professional and business value. Furthermore, an organizational structure with specific roles and integration mechanisms and adequate management systems are also required. Regarding business culture, a well-established business code is a necessary but an insufficient condition. Sustainable management relies on individual ethical conduct and trust to foster full participation of stakeholders and to encourage commitment among them. It allows decision making at appropriate levels in the organization and encourages individual risk-taking for continuous improvement. Without trust, social licence is not achievable. In this paper, the concept of sustainable management is introduced as the management approach that integrates a business culture, strong leadership and an organizational structure that strives for long term economics benefits through sustainability. To achieve this goal, sustainability must be vertically integrated at three organizational levels (corporate, divisional and operational) and three functional levels (strategy, planning and implementation)