Assessment of business incubators green performance: A framework and its application to Brazilian cases

The lack of proposals to evaluate the greening of business incubators or even of elementary discussions about the relations between incubators and the environment becomes apparent when researching this topic in the most prestigious scientific sources. To address this gap, this article reviews the literature on green management and smaller enterprises, business incubator performance and the greening of business incubators. This conceptual big-picture was used to identify variables relevant to the construction of a framework for assessing business incubators green performance. This framework was applied to six business incubators in Brazil. The results show the appropriated applicability of this framework. Furthermore, the empirical research led to the formulation of environmental maturity levels in order to classify business incubators performance. This paper seeks to offer a starting point for discussion and a proposal regarding the role of business incubators in a more sustainable society. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Green teams: Understanding their roles in the environmental management of companies located in Brazil

Green teams are frequently considered in the state-of-the-art literature as an essential factor for companies aiming to implement and improve environmental management approaches and practices. However, most of the available literature on green teams is conceptual and theoretical by nature. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to evaluate the main characteristics of green teams in Brazilian companies and to analyse the relationships between green teams and the maturity level of environmental management in those companies. Based on a conceptual background on corporate environmental management and green teams, a research was done in two complementary phases: a survey of 94 companies with ISO 14001 certification; and a multiple case study of four industrial companies. Survey results suggest that 82 of the studied companies have cross-functional green teams, i.e. involving various companies' departments; and 65 have functional green teams, i.e. individual department teams. The results of the case study suggest that the use of green teams is an instrument to the greening of companies with ISO 14001 in Brazil. The company with the most proactive and advanced environmental management is the same company which uses green teams more intensely. Green teams are especially necessary for implementing more technical environmental management practices, e.g. Life Cycle Assessment. Since this is one of the first studies analysing green teams, the results presented can be useful for companies and public policies aiming to implementation of environmental initiatives. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

The prevalence and prognostic significance of right ventricular systolic dysfunction in nonischemic dilated cardiomyopathy

10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.113.002518Circulation128151623-1633CIRC

Role of late gadolinium enhancement cardiovascular magnetic resonance in the risk stratification of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

10.1136/heartjnl-2013-305471Heart100231851-1858HEAR

Clinical utility and prognostic value of left atrial volume assessment by cardiovascular magnetic resonance in non-ischaemic dilated cardiomyopathy

10.1093/eurjhf/hft019European Journal of Heart Failure156660-67

Association of fibrosis with mortality and sudden cardiac death in patients with nonischemic dilated cardiomyopathy

10.1001/jama.2013.1363JAMA - Journal of the American Medical Association3099896-90