Blockchain: case studies in supply chain visibility

Purpose:This paper investigates how blockchain has moved beyond cryptocurrencies and is being deployed to enhance visibility and trust in supply chains; its limitations, and potential impact. Approach: Qualitative analysis undertaken via case studies drawn from food companies using semi-structured interviews. Findings: Blockchain is demonstrated as an enabler of visibility in supply chains. Applications at scale are most likely for products where the end consumer is prepared to pay the premium currently required to fund the technology, e.g. baby food. Challenges remain in four areas: trust of the technology; human error and fraud at the boundaries; governance; consumer data access and willingness to pay. Research implications and limitations: The paper shows that blockchain can be utilised as part of a system generating visibility and trust in supply chains. Research directs academic attention to issues that remain to be addressed. The challenges pertaining to the technology itself we believe to be generalisable; those specific to the food industry may not hold elsewhere. Practical implications: From live case studies we provide empirical evidence that blockchain provides visibility of exchanges and reliable data in fully-digitised supply chains. This provides provenance and guards against counterfeit goods. However, firms will need to work to gain consumer buy-in for the technology following repeated past claims of trustworthiness. Originality: This paper provides primary evidence from blockchain use cases ‘in the wild’. The exploratory case studies examine application of blockchain for supply chain visibility.</p

Climate change and modern slavery in public procurement:Research Summary

This is a summary of the report from the project entitled: Intersecting sustainabilities: Protecting both people and planet in public sector supply chains, based on research conducted by Michael Rogerson (University of Sussex), Johanne Grosvold (University of Bath), and Kyle Alves (University of the West of England, Bristol) in partnership with London Universities Purchasing Consortium (LUPC) and Unseen UK. The project was funded through an open call for proposals for research on the links between modern slavery and climate change by the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre (Modern Slavery PEC), which in turn is funded and supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The full report can be accessed on the Modern Slavery PEC website at modernslaverypec.org/resources/climate-change-modern-slavery-public-procurement.The Modern Slavery PEC has actively supported the production of this Research Summary. However, the views expressed in this summary and the full report are those of the authors and not necessarily of the Modern Slavery PEC

Climate change and modern slavery in public procurement:Research Report

Existing links between modern slavery and climate change are becoming clearer as the need increases for a just transition to a low-carbon economy. Yet, how organisations attempt to address these risks, either separately or simultaneously, is not understood in depth. In particular, the role of public procurement, which can be a powerful method for driving responsible behaviours into public and private operations alike, remains conceptually understood but under-investigated. We sought, through this project, to address this important knowledge gap by engaging with the public procurement ecosystem. We partnered with London Universities Purchasing Consortium (LUPC) and UK modern slavery charity Unseen UK to work with those organisations and, through LUPC, with public buyers and their suppliers and risk management data platforms. We ultimately conducted over 70 hours of interviews and focus groups with professionals and consultants, including those with lived experience of the issue at those organisations. We developed recommendations for public purchasing through a study of: (i) the actions that public sector buyers are taking to manage the risks of modern slavery and climate change in their operations and supply chains; (ii) the actions that tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers to the public sector are taking to address these risks; (iii) the role of public sector purchasing consortia in managing modern slavery and climate change risks through public tendering and contract negotiations on behalf of public buyers; (iv) how and the extent to which the sustainability data platforms used by public buyers to assist in decision making and risk management work for their public sector clients. By studying the factors involved from a multi-party perspective, we intended to better understand the links between the efforts of the various stakeholders involved in responsible procurement in the public sector.Through members of LUPC and consultants introduced to us by Unseen UK, who have lived experience of modern slavery, we were able to triangulate our findings in two focus groups. In this way, we gained valuable insights from different perspectives on the findings of the study and to enhance the recommendations we were developing.Following publication of this report, we will publish a policy brief aimed at policymakers in relevant UK government departments and begin work on articles for academic journals

Accounting for human rights: Evidence of due diligence in EU-listed firms’ reporting

This paper investigates the extent and the strategies of human rights due diligence (HRDD) disclosure by the largest 100 EU-listed firms. Our work is performed at a key point in time when institutional expectations to conduct HRDD are building, allowing us to assess firms’ readiness for emerging and forthcoming legally binding regulation in the EU. To analyse corporate disclosures, we develop a scoring tool based on the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). We interpret our findings building on Oliver’s (1991) theoretical framework of firms’ strategic responses to institutional pressures, as adopted in the context of social and environmental accounting and integrated with concepts from the literature on substantive and symbolic disclosure approaches. Our contributions advance the understanding of the ways that firms are engaging with the HRDD issue and the state or level of their engagement. We reveal three key HRDD disclosure strategies: dismissal, concealment, and compliance. The presence of the dismissal category is particularly significant, implying weak engagement with HRDD for many firms in our sample. Furthermore, we find that while many firms have a talk-orientation, where they communicate a commitment to protect human rights, the extent to which disclosures are action-oriented and detail the key practice of HRDD is significantly neglected. Important implications also follow for policymakers as our results can enhance the capability of new regulation to better enforce a strategic engagement outcome

Green exercise: Combined influence of environment and exercise to promote wellbeing

Exercise participation is linked to mental health and wellbeing. However, we need to identify optimal settings for promoting exercise-associated wellbeing outcomes, and for promoting exercise adherence. The literature suggests environmental settings may be important. The aim of this thesis was to rigorously test influences of environmental settings on exercise-related wellbeing outcomes. These over-arching research questions guided the experimental chapters: (i) is there an optimal green exercise environment for promoting wellbeing? (ii) When exercise is controlled, are findings consistent with previously reported psychological outcomes? (iii) Do environmental settings influence social outcomes of exercise or intentions to repeat exercise behaviours? Via field-based sampling, Chapter 3 found large proportions of affective benefits were universally obtainable across four typical green exercise environments, and suggested that the processes component of green exercise warranted further investigation; however, this method lacked control. Chapter 4 used laboratory-based methodology to control exercise and isolate the visual environment; consistent with both theory and previous research, nature environments facilitated wellbeing-related attention restoration. However, this method did not provide an accurate multisensory experience, therefore lacking ecological validity. Chapter 5 investigated methodologies for controlling the exercise component, comparing wellbeing-related outcomes of indoor versus outdoor exercise. This was important because previous research had not rigorously controlled exercise, therefore potentially confounding its findings. Results for environment-related exercise differences and affective outcomes were inconclusive. Chapter 6 merged laboratory-based methods with the indoor versus outdoor exercise paradigm, ensuring control and ecological validity. Environmental setting did not influence perceived exertion or mood; green settings promoted attention restoration and social interaction; for green exercise, social interaction predicted exercise intentions. Green exercise promotes wellbeing improvements; environmental influences on affective outcomes may be contributed to by differences in exercise performed. Independent of exercise differences, green environments promote attention restoration and social interaction during exercise, which may in turn influence exercise intentions

Broken chocolate:biomarkers as a method for delivering cocoa supply chain visibility

Purpose: This paper examines the potential of “biomarkers” to provide immutable identification for food products (chocolate), providing traceability and visibility in the supply chain from retail product back to farm. Design/methodology/approach: This research uses qualitative data collection, including fieldwork at cocoa farms and chocolate manufacturers in Ecuador and the Netherlands and semi-structured interviews with industry professionals to identify challenges and create a supply chain map from cocoa plant to retailer, validated by area experts. A library of biomarkers is created using DNA collected from fieldwork and the International Cocoa Quarantine Centre, holders of cocoa varieties from known locations around the world. Matching sample biomarkers with those in the library enables identification of origins of cocoa used in a product, even when it comes from multiple different sources and has been processed. Findings: Supply chain mapping and interviews identify areas of the cocoa supply chain that lack the visibility required for management to guarantee sustainability and quality. A decoupling point, where smaller farms/traders’ goods are combined to create larger economic units, obscures product origins and limits visibility. These factors underpin a potential boundary condition to institutional theory in the industry’s fatalism to environmental and human abuses in the face of rising institutional pressures. Biomarkers reliably identify product origin, including specific farms and (fermentation) processing locations, providing visibility and facilitating control and trust when purchasing cocoa. Research limitations/implications: The biomarker “meta-barcoding” of cocoa beans used in chocolate manufacturing accurately identifies the farm, production facility or cooperative, where a cocoa product came from. A controlled data set of biomarkers of registered locations is required for audit to link chocolate products to origin. Practical implications: Where biomarkers can be produced from organic products, they offer a method for closing visibility gaps, enabling responsible sourcing. Labels (QR codes, barcodes, etc.) can be swapped and products tampered with, but biological markers reduce reliance on physical tags, diminishing the potential for fraud. Biomarkers identify product composition, pinpointing specific farm(s) of origin for cocoa in chocolate, allowing targeted audits of suppliers and identifying if cocoa of unknown origin is present. Labour and environmental abuses exist in many supply chains and enabling upstream visibility may help firms address these challenges. Social implications: By describing a method for firms in cocoa supply chains to scientifically track their cocoa back to the farm level, the research shows that organizations can conduct social audits for child labour and environmental abuses at specific farms proven to be in their supply chains. This provides a method for delivering supply chain visibility (SCV) for firms serious about tackling such problems. Originality/value: This paper provides one of the very first examples of biomarkers for agricultural SCV. An in-depth study of stakeholders from the cocoa and chocolate industry elucidates problematic areas in cocoa supply chains. Biomarkers provide a unique biological product identifier. Biomarkers can support efforts to address environmental and social sustainability issues such as child labour, modern slavery and deforestation by providing visibility into previously hidden areas of the supply chain

Organisational responses to mandatory modern slavery disclosure legislation: A failure of experimentalist governance?

Purpose: This paper investigates how organisations are responding to mandatory modern slavery disclosure legislation. Experimentalist governance suggests that organisations faced with disclosure requirements such as those contained in the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 will compete with one another, and in doing so, improve compliance. The authors seek to understand whether this is the case. Design/methodology/approach: This study is set in the UK public sector. The authors conduct interviews with over 25% of UK universities that are within the scope of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 and examine their reporting and disclosure under that legislation. Findings: The authors find that, contrary to the logic of experimentalist governance, universities' disclosures as reflected in their modern slavery statements are persistently poor on detail, lack variation and have led to little meaningful action to tackle modern slavery. They show that this is due to a herding effect that results in universities responding as a sector rather than independently; a built-in incapacity to effectively manage supply chains; and insufficient attention to the issue at the board level. The authors also identity important boundary conditions of experimentalist governance. Research limitations/implications: The generalisability of the authors’ findings is restricted to the public sector. Practical implications: In contexts where disclosure under the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 is not a core offering of the sector, and where competition is limited, there is little incentive to engage in a “race to the top” in terms of disclosure. As such, pro-forma compliance prevails and the effectiveness of disclosure as a tool to drive change in supply chains to safeguard workers is relatively ineffective. Instead, organisations must develop better knowledge of their supply chains and executives and a more critical eye for modern slavery to be combatted effectively. Accountants and their systems and skills can facilitate this development. Originality/value: This is the first investigation of the organisational processes and activities which underpin disclosures related to modern slavery disclosure legislation. This paper contributes to the accounting and disclosure modern slavery literature by investigating public sector organisations' processes, activities and responses to mandatory reporting legislation on modern slavery.</p

Enhanced Mediterranean water cycle explains increased humidity during MIS 3 in North Africa

We report a new fluid inclusion dataset from northeastern Libyan speleothem SC-06-01, which is the largest speleothem fluid inclusion dataset for North Africa to date. The stalagmite was sampled in Susah Cave, a low-altitude coastal site, in Cyrenaica, on the northern slope of the Jebel Al-Akhdar. Speleothem fluid inclusions from the latest Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4 and throughout MIS 3 (∼67 to ∼30 kyr BP) confirm the hypothesis that past humid periods in this region reflect westerly rainfall advected through the Atlantic storm track. However, most of this moisture was sourced from the western Mediterranean, with little direct admixture of water evaporated from the Atlantic. Moreover, we identify a second moisture source likely associated with enhanced convective rainfall within the eastern Mediterranean. The relative importance of the western and eastern moisture sources seems to differ between the humid phases recorded in SC-06-01. During humid phases forced by precession, fluid inclusions record compositions consistent with both sources, but the 52.5–50.5 kyr interval forced by obliquity reveals only a western source. This is a key result, showing that although the amount of atmospheric moisture advections changes, the structure of the atmospheric circulation over the Mediterranean does not fundamentally change during orbital cycles. Consequently, an arid belt must have been retained between the Intertropical Convergence Zone and the midlatitude winter storm corridor during MIS 3 pluvials

Cerebral Arterial Asymmetries in the Neonate: Insight into the Pathogenesis of Stroke

Neonatal and adult strokes are more common in the left than in the right cerebral hemisphere in the middle cerebral arterial territory, and adult extracranial and intracranial vessels are systematically left-dominant. The aim of the research reported here was to determine whether the asymmetric vascular ground plan found in adults was present in healthy term neonates (n = 97). A new transcranial Doppler ultrasonography dual-view scanning protocol, with concurrent B-flow and pulsed wave imaging, acquired multivariate data on the neonatal middle cerebral arterial structure and function. This study documents for the first-time systematic asymmetries in the middle cerebral artery origin and distal trunk of healthy term neonates and identifies commensurately asymmetric hemodynamic vulnerabilities. A systematic leftward arterial dominance was found in the arterial caliber and cortically directed blood flow. The endothelial wall shear stress was also asymmetric across the midline and varied according to vessels&rsquo; geometry. We conclude that the arterial structure and blood supply in the brain are laterally asymmetric in newborns. Unfavorable shearing forces, which are a by-product of the arterial asymmetries described here, might contribute to a greater risk of cerebrovascular pathology in the left hemisphere