The impact of the dimensions of green supply chain management practices on corporate performance

Global warming, carbon emissions and the depletion of natural resources have heralded significant changes in the way organizations produce and deliver products and services. Within this context the greening of supply chains has gained the attention of practitioners in many countries. In some countries, for example, carbon taxation has been introduced as a mandatory requirement. However, the implementation of green supply chain management practices and the impact of these practices on corporate performance are still in a nascent stage. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) faces many challenges including increased energy consumption, the depletion of natural resources and the generation of significant waste and Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. Indeed, the UAE’s total GHG emissions increased by 100 million tCO2e between 2007 and 2012 (MoEW, 2015). In addition electricity consumption, which depends mainly on fossil fuel for its generation, has increased at a rate of 8% annually during the same period. Business organizations, through their operational activities, are responsible for a large proportion of these environmental challenges. For example, GHG emissions from the manufacturing sector in the UAE accounted for 16.7% of total GHG emissions in 2012. It was also found that 53.3% of the plastic bags produced annually in the UAE were non-biodegradable (MoEW, 2015). These issues indicate the need to investigate green supply chain implementation across UAE organizations in order to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of implementing green supply chain management practices on corporate performance. Consequently, the aim of this research was to explore green supply chain management (GSCM) practices and their relationship to corporate performance (CP). The major research objective was to answer the question: What is the impact of implementing green supply chain management practices on corporate performance? The research specifically examines the impact of implementing a set of green supply chain management practices; including ecodesign, green purchasing, environmental cooperation and reverse logistics, on different dimensions of corporate performance. This includes environmental, operational, economic and social outcomes. The methodology used in this research is mainly deductive in nature, however, following a survey employed to collect quantitative data from ISO 14001 certified and none certified manufacturing firms in the UAE, a qualitative phase was introduced to enhance the quantitative results. Thus, a sequential mixed methods approach was introduced by following the quantitative phase with a qualitative research phase that involved collecting interview data from a selected sample of those firms that responded to the quantitative survey. This phase was designed to gain a deeper understanding of why the quantitative study found that some green practices failed to have an impact on some of the corporate performance dimensions. While the research presents mixed outcomes, some green supply chain practices were found to have no impact on any performance dimensions such as eco-design, while other practices had an impact on a single dimension, for example, environmental cooperation which was found to have a positive impact on operational performance but not on any other performance dimensions. Similarly reverse logistics was found to only impact the social performance of the firm, while green purchasing was found to be a key green supply chain practice because it can improve both operational and economic performance. This study adds to the body of knowledge by identifying barriers to the implementation of a number of green supply chain practices. For example; this study identifies barriers to implementation of a number of green supply chain practices while highlighting the value of a mixed methods approach in green supply chain research. It contributes to business practice by presenting a stakeholder understanding of the relationship between the implementation of different green supply chain practices and corporate performance, including the level of adoption that may identify the most appropriate GSCM practices needed to reach the optimum performance level. A series of recommendations are also provided for firms interested in improving their footprint and their environmental performance while implementing green supply chain practices

Productive, Unproductive and Destructive Entrepreneurship: A Theoretical and Empirical Exploration

Drawing on Baumolís concepts of productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship and relevant amendments, this thesis aims to contribute to the entrepreneurship literature by developing a conceptual framework which allows operationalising the concepts for empirical assessment. Furthermore, using data from longitudinal survey, author makes one of the first attempts to address the concepts empirically. The results provide with support for the conceptual framework highlighting the importance to shift the focus from firmsí activities to output on both, venture and societal levels, short and long term, when concepts are addressed empirically. Overall findings suggest that productive entrepreneurs are those who are less involved in behaviour such as tax avoidance or illegal business and show a higher level of entrepreneurial orientation.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64372/1/wp917.pd

A Survey on Economic-driven Evaluations of Information Technology

The economic-driven evaluation of information technology (IT) has become an important instrument in the management of IT projects. Numerous approaches have been developed to quantify the costs of an IT investment and its assumed profit, to evaluate its impact on business process performance, and to analyze the role of IT regarding the achievement of enterprise objectives. This paper discusses approaches for evaluating IT from an economic-driven perspective. Our comparison is based on a framework distinguishing between classification criteria and evaluation criteria. The former allow for the categorization of evaluation approaches based on their similarities and differences. The latter, by contrast, represent attributes that allow to evaluate the discussed approaches. Finally, we give an example of a typical economic-driven IT evaluation

Building creative confidence in idea management processes to improve idea generation in new product development teams

This is a scoping paper that aims to establish effective practices and key players in the domain of Idea Management. The paper defines Idea Management as the generation, evaluation and selection of ideas. The purpose of the paper is to map the current landscape of methodologies and tools in order to identify gaps and support the development of a framework to enhance creative confidence in idea management. The study has two key research questions: (i) what factors are influencing current idea generation practices and (ii) what tools and approaches exist for idea generation. This will help identify how creative confidence can influence the idea generation processes. Creative confidence is the capability to come up with breakthrough ideas, associated with the bravery to perform. If stimulated in the right way with a valuable framework, its impact on employees’ performance is significant in improving team members’ innovation performance and quality of ideas

Situating the Next Generation of Impact Measurement and Evaluation for Impact Investing

In taking stock of the landscape, this paper promotes a convergence of methods, building from both the impact investment and evaluation fields.The commitment of impact investors to strengthen the process of generating evidence for their social returns alongside the evidence for financial returns is a veritable game changer. But social change is a complex business and good intentions do not necessarily translate into verifiable impact.As the public sector, bilaterals, and multilaterals increasingly partner with impact investors in achieving collective impact goals, the need for strong evidence about impact becomes even more compelling. The time has come to develop new mindsets and approaches that can be widely shared and employed in ways that will advance the frontier for impact measurement and evaluation of impact investing. Each of the menu options presented in this paper can contribute to building evidence about impact. The next generation of measurement will be stronger if the full range of options comes into play and the more evaluative approaches become commonplace as means for developing evidence and testing assumptions about the processes of change from a stakeholder perspective– with a view toward context and systems.Creating and sharing evidence about impact is a key lever for contributing to greater impact, demonstrating additionality, and for building confidence among potential investors, partners and observers in this emergent industry on its path to maturation. Further, the range of measurement options offers opportunities to choose appropriate approaches that will allow data to contribute to impact management– to improve on the business model of ventures and to improve services and systems that improve conditions for people and households living in poverty.

Intrusiveness, Trust and Argumentation: Using Automated Negotiation to Inhibit the Transmission of Disruptive Information

The question of how to promote the growth and diffusion of information has been extensively addressed by a wide research community. A common assumption underpinning most studies is that the information to be transmitted is useful and of high quality. In this paper, we endorse a complementary perspective. We investigate how the growth and diffusion of high quality information can be managed and maximized by preventing, dampening and minimizing the diffusion of low quality, unwanted information. To this end, we focus on the conflict between pervasive computing environments and the joint activities undertaken in parallel local social contexts. When technologies for distributed activities (e.g. mobile technology) develop, both artifacts and services that enable people to participate in non-local contexts are likely to intrude on local situations. As a mechanism for minimizing the intrusion of the technology, we develop a computational model of argumentation-based negotiation among autonomous agents. A key component in the model is played by trust: what arguments are used and how they are evaluated depend on how trustworthy the agents judge one another. To gain an insight into the implications of the model, we conduct a number of virtual experiments. Results enable us to explore how intrusiveness is affected by trust, the negotiation network and the agents' abilities of conducting argumentation

Energy Efficiency in the ICT - Profiling Power Consumption in Desktop Computer Systems

Energy awareness in the ICT has become an important issue. Focusing on software, recent work suggested the existence of a relationship between power consumption, software configuration and usage patterns in computer systems. The aim of this work was collecting and analysing power consumption data of general-purpose computer systems, simulating common usage scenarios, in order to extract a power consumption profile for each scenario. We selected two desktop systems of different generations as test machines. Meanwhile, we developed 11 usage scenarios, and conducted several test runs of them, collecting power consumption data by means of a power meter. Our analysis resulted in an estimation of a power consumption value for each scenario and software application used, obtaining that each single scenario introduced an overhead from 2 to 11 Watts, which corresponds to a percentage increase that can reach up to 20% on recent and more powerful systems. We determined that software and its usage patterns impact consistently on the power consumption of computer systems. Further work will be devoted to evaluate how power consumption is affected by the usage of specific system resource

Core Indicators for Determinants and Performance of Electricity Sector in Developing Countries

Since the early 1990s, substantial resources and effort have been spent on implementing market-oriented electricity reform in developing countries. Important sectoral, economic, and social dimensions are involved in electricity reform, but empirical analysis and evaluation have been of limited use for testing the economic rationale of reform and policy advice. This may partly be attributed to a lack of generally accepted and measured indicators for monitoring progress, impact and performance, unlike areas such as health, education, environment, sustainable development. In this paper we propose a set of indicators as a first step towards filling this gap and developing a coherent framework for studying electricity reform in developing countries covering resource and institutional endowments, key reform steps, market structure, performance, and various impacts.The World Bank Electricity Research Programme and the CMI Electricity Project (IR-45

PASSING THE TORCH: NEXT-GENERATION PHILANTHROPISTS | 2017 BNP PARIBAS INDIVIDUAL PHILANTHROPY REPORT

The millennial generation is defined by the emergence of technologies that have transformed the way in which they communicate, act and, perhaps most importantly, view the world. Affluent millennials engaged in philanthropy are relying on a host of new tools available today, including social media and data analytics, to advance environmental and social goals. But for those engaged in family foundations which were established generations before them, there are considerations of family legacy. This report takes a closer look at the motivations and actions of millennials involved in their family foundations, which were created with some of the wealth amassed by high-net-worth individuals and families over the years. The research explores how this generation is striking a balance between the seemingly opposing forces of family legacy and innovation in philanthropy in order to make a measurable impact through their family foundations