Sustainability and firm performance : evidence from corportate and farm level

This thesis approaches the question of sustainability and firm performance. In the contemporary business model, firm performance measurement must take into account not only economic profits, but also environmental and social issues, in order to ensure the sustainable development of the firm. By using advanced methodological approaches and exploring sustainability through a holistic view, this thesis contributes significantly to sustainability performance literature. Three specific objectives have been fulfilled through three papers that constitute the main body of the present thesis. The first article aims to answer whether profitable business is compatible with balanced sustainability by investigating the relationship between the economic, social, environmental and governance performance for a sample of global firms. A canonical vine (C-vine) copula is used for this purpose. Results show the existence of a fairly strong positive relationship between economic, social and environmental performance. The corporate governance dimension is shown to have a weak relationship with the rest of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions. Important policy implications are derived from these results. The second paper investigates the relationships among performance dimensions associated with corporate social responsibility focusing on the U.S. electric utility sector. Results of a statistical copula approach suggest that economic performance of utilities is compatible with environmental, social, and governance performance. The CSR model has the potential to help U.S. electric utilities become better corporate citizens while also obtaining higher economic profits. The third paper investigates farms’ stochastic production technology as the interaction of three-main types of sub-technologies that govern, respectively, the production of agricultural commodities, environmental pollution, and social outputs of agricultural activities. The model is empirically implemented through a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. The empirical application is based on a survey of Catalan arable crop farms. On average, we find our sample farms to display high technical and social performance, while they show relatively poor environmental performance.Esta tesis aborda la cuestión de la sostenibilidad y el rendimiento de la empresa. En el modelo de negocio contemporáneo, la medición del rendimiento de la empresa debe tener en cuenta no solo las ganancias económicas, sino también las cuestiones ambientales y sociales, para garantizar el desarrollo sostenible de la empresa. Mediante el uso de enfoques metodológicos avanzados y la exploración de la sostenibilidad a través de una visión holística, esta tesis contribuye significativamente a la literatura sobre la sostenibilidad. Tres objetivos específicos se han cumplido a través de tres documentos que constituyen el cuerpo principal de la presente tesis. El primer artículo tiene como objetivo responder si el negocio rentable es compatible con la sostenibilidad equilibrada, mediante la investigación de la relación entre el desempeño económico, social, medio-ambiental y de gobernanza de una muestra de empresas globales. Un modelo canónico de viña de copulas (C-vine) se usa para este propósito. Los resultados muestran la existencia de una relación positiva bastante fuerte entre el desempeño económico, social y ambiental. Se muestra que la dimensión de gobernanza corporativa tiene una relación débil con el resto de las dimensiones de la responsabilidad social corporativa (RSC). Importantes implicaciones de política se derivan de estos resultados. El segundo articulo investiga las relaciones entre las dimensiones de desempeño asociadas con la responsabilidad social corporativa que se centran en el sector de servicios eléctricos de los EE. UU. Los resultados obtenidos del análisis de las cópulas sugieren que el desempeño económico de las empresas eléctricas es compatible con el desempeño ambiental, social y de gobernanza. El modelo de la RSC tiene el potencial de ayudar a que los servicios eléctricos de los EE. UU. Se conviertan en mejores ciudadanos corporativos mientras se logran mayores beneficios económicos. El tercer trabajo investiga la tecnología de producción estocástica de las explotaciones agrícolas como una interacción de tres sub-tecnologías que gobiernan, respectivamente, la producción de productos agrícolas, la contaminación ambiental y los productos sociales de las actividades agrícolas. El modelo se implementa empíricamente a través de un modelo de Análisis Envolvente de Datos (DEA). La aplicación empírica se basa en una encuesta de explotaciones de cultivos en la región de Cataluña. En promedio, encontramos que nuestras explotaciones muestran un alto desempeño técnico y social, mientras que muestran un desempeño ambiental relativamente pobre

Valuing social sustainability in agriculture: An approach based on social outputs' shadow prices

Interest in sustainability has gained ground among practitioners, academics and policy-makers due to growing stakeholders' awareness of environmental and social concerns. This is particularly true for agriculture. However, relatively little research has been conducted on the quantification of social sustainability and the contribution of social issues to the agricultural production efficiency. This paper proposes a framework based on state-contingent outputs to compute shadow prices of social outputs. Our methodological approach is based on the directional distance function and illustrated using a farm-level dataset from a sample of Catalan arable crop farms in 2015. Our results indicate that in the sample of 180 farms included in the analysis, efficiency scores are relatively high for the three alternative states of the nature considered in our state-contingent analysis. In addition, our findings show that social outputs' shadow prices are positive, indicating that producing more social outputs is considered as great value to the farm. For the efficient farms, the social outputs' shadow prices are contingent upon on the state of nature, in a way that social outputs' shadow prices increase with the improvement in crop growth conditions. These results have implications in terms of EU farm payment redistribution.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

The multi-item capacitated lot-sizing problem with setup times and shortage costs

International audienceWe address a multi-item capacitated lot-sizing problem with setup times and shortage costs that arises in real-world production planning problems. Demand cannot be backlogged, but can be totally or partially lost. The problem is NP-hard. A mixed integer mathematical formulation is presented. Our approach in this paper is to propose some classes of valid inequalities based on a generalization of Miller et al. [A.J. Miller, G.L. Nemhauser, M.W.P. Savelsbergh, On the polyhedral structure of a multi-item production planning model with setup times, Mathematical Programming 94 (2003) 375–405] and Marchand and Wolsey [H. Marchand, L.A. Wolsey, The 0–1 knapsack problem with a single continuous variable, Mathematical Programming 85 (1999) 15–33] results. We also describe fast combinatorial separation algorithms for these new inequalities. We use them in a branch-and-cut framework to solve the problem. Some experimental results showing the effectiveness of the approach are reported

Corporate Sustainable Development. Revisiting the Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility Dimensions

With rising stakeholder concerns over sustainable development, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become key for the business community, moving the business model beyond financial performance to a new voluntary paradigm based on natural resource conservation, social welfare, stakeholder engagement and economic performance. This article aims to answer whether profitable business is compatible with balanced sustainability by investigating the relationship between the economic, social, environmental and governance performance for a sample of global firms. A canonical vine (C‐vine) copula is used for this purpose. Results show the existence of a fairly strong positive relationship between economic, social and environmental performance. The corporate governance dimension is shown to have a weak relationship with the rest of the CSR dimensions. Important policy implications are derived from these results. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environmentinfo:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Le systeme de formation et la dynamique des entreprises artisanales dans la wilaya de bejaia

Le modèle de développement adopté par l’Algérie, en s’appuyant sur le choix de l’industrie lourde et de l’Etat entrepreneur, laissait peu de place au secteur privé et particulièrement à la petite entreprise. L’essoufflement de ce modèle de développement au milieu des années 80 - qui s’est traduit par la crise de l’emploi - a conduit à l’adoption de nouveaux choix économiques et sociaux accordant plus d’intérêt à l’initiative privée notamment dans le secteur de la PME et de l’artisanat. C’est dans ce contexte que s'inscrit notre article qui s’intéresse à la question de la relation de l’artisanat avec le système de la formation professionnelle dans la wilaya de Bejaia. L’enquête de terrain a mis en évidence un problème de formation dont souffre le secteur de l’artisanat et particulièrement celui de l’artisanat traditionnel.Mots clés : Algérie, Bejaia, Artisanat, Savoir-faire, Formation professionnelle, Territoire, Secteur informel

The effect of salinity gradient and heavy metal pollution on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community structure in some Algerian wetlands

Algerian natural wetlands suffer from anthropogenic disturbances due to industrial development and urbanization. This study was designed to draw attention to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) distribution and community assemblages following heavy metal and salinity concentrations in two wetlands subjected to domestic and industrial effluents. Rhizospheric soil and roots of 18 plant species were collected in two wetlands along a decreasing salinity gradient. The results showed that 72.72% of plant species exhibit an association within arbuscular mycorrhizas (AM), and 36.36% a dual association between AM and dark septate endophytes (DSE). A total of 33 AMF morphospecies were distinguished on the basis of morphological criteria dominated by taxa belonging to Glomeraceae and Acaulosporaceae. Soil contamination was investigated by determining metallic trace elements (MTE) (Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, Cr and Zn) using an atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Values of the pollution index revealed wetlands that were particularly polluted by lead. Two˗way ANOVA showed significant variations in metal content among sampling locations and transects. Principal component analysis showed that species richness, and mycorrhizal frequency were slightly affected by MTE. This opens possibilities for their utilization in polluted soil remediation

Lagrangean based lower bounds for a multi-plant lot-sizing problem with capacity constraints

2pInternational audienceThe paper addresses a multi-item, multi-plant lot-sizing problem with capacity restrictions. A set of facilities (plants) is available for producing some items. For each period of a discrete planning horizon, a demand is de ned for each pair of item and plant. The problem consists in producing all the demands such that the total production, inventory, setup and transfer costs is minimized. Setup production times are considered as well as capacity constraints on the production. Moreover, transfers between plants are allowed, however, the total transferred quantity between each pair of plants is upper bounded as well as the total inventory at each plant for a given period. The problem considered is NP-hard. We quote the work of Sambivasan and Yahya that describes some Lagrangean-based heuristics to solve a relaxed version of the problem where no transfer and storage capacities are considered. In the present work, we propose a Lagrangean lower bound on the optimal cost value of the problem based on the decomposition of the problem into Facility Location and Multi-Commodity Flow problems

Dominance inequalities for scheduling around an unrestrictive common due date

The problem considered in this work consists in scheduling a set of tasks on a single machine, around an unrestrictive common due date to minimize the weighted sum of earliness and tardiness. This problem can be formulated as a compact mixed integer program (MIP). In this article, we focus on neighborhood-based dominance properties, where the neighborhood is associated to insert and swap operations. We derive from these properties a local search procedure providing a very good heuristic solution. The main contribution of this work stands in an exact solving context: we derive constraints eliminating the non locally optimal solutions with respect to the insert and swap operations. We propose linear inequalities translating these constraints to strengthen the MIP compact formulation. These inequalities, called dominance inequalities, are different from standard reinforcement inequalities. We provide a numerical analysis which shows that adding these inequalities significantly reduces the computation time required for solving the scheduling problem using a standard solver.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figures and 4 table

Mixed integer formulations using natural variables for single machine scheduling around a common due date

34 pages, 10 figuresWhile almost all existing works which optimally solve just-in-time scheduling problems propose dedicated algorithmic approaches, we propose in this work mixed integer formulations. We consider a single machine scheduling problem that aims at minimizing the weighted sum of earliness tardiness penalties around a common due-date. Using natural variables, we provide one compact formulation for the unrestrictive case and, for the general case, a non-compact formulation based on non-overlapping inequalities. We show that the separation problem related to the latter formulation is solved polynomially. In this formulation, solutions are only encoded by extreme points. We establish a theoretical framework to show the validity of such a formulation using non-overlapping inequalities, which could be used for other scheduling problems. A Branch-and-Cut algorithm together with an experimental analysis are proposed to assess the practical relevance of this mixed integer programming based methods