The influence of Industry 4.0 narratives on regional path development

Industry 4.0 has become a key concept and buzzword in the global manufacturing industry. This paper argues that the concept has created an Industry 4.0 narrative that is having a decisive impact on the industry. The paper combines the literatures on the sociology of expectations and regional path development to develop an analytical framework which is employed in an analysis of the Raufoss region in Norway. We find that the expectations created by the global Industry 4.0 narrative have trickled down into national industry and innovation policies. This has resulted in the anchoring of innovation schemes, development of new educational provisions and generated technological capability building among manufacturers in the Raufoss region. In turn, we argue that these actions have enabled regional path extension.publishedVersio

Lessons learned from practice when developing a circular business model

A circular business model (CBM) does not emerge in a vacuum. The company Plasto started its CBM journey in May 2014 and has encountered some key challenges, the most important being quality standards of products made from recycled materials. Ensuring quality is crucial to establish trust in the market, and this entails technical testing and competence development among employees. Plasto has realized that working with circular material streams must be seen in a larger context, and it has chosen the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as a facilitating framework. By June 2017, the company is committed at the top-management level, and has started a strategy process based on the needs of a Circular Economy and sustainable development. The case of Plasto shows that developing a CBM occurs in close interaction with external actors, and, essentially is created through a process of learning and experimentation

Corporate sustainability in practice: An exploratory study of the sustainable development goals (SDGs)

Companies applying the sustainable development goals (SDGs) are likely to face a tension between business strategy and societal development. I develop this claim through inductive reasoning, drawing on an exploratory, and longitudinal case study of the company Plasto. The findings indicate that the SDGs framework is a well-suited platform for debating social and environmental concerns with societal stakeholders. In addition, the framework facilitates organizational learning and internal collaboration. However, actors such as customers may see the generic nature of the SDGs as irrelevant when it comes to specific business operations. Following the inductive logic, I position the findings within ongoing debates in the field of corporate sustainability. Further research should acknowledge contradictory requirements from stakeholders as a theoretical starting point. This implies that the emerging management literature on paradox theory fits well to advance insights on SDG application in a business context

Corporate Sustainability : Exploring a Case of Creating Value from Waste through a Transdisciplinary Methodology

Summary of the thesis This thesis draws from a longitudinal case study focused on the company Plasto’s effort to create value from waste. Taking place from May 2014 to April 2018, the empirical research explores the drivers and barriers of introducing recycled materials in the production of plastic components. Conceptual research has taken place in parallel and aims to engage with the scientific discourse in the field of corporate sustainability. The case study’s unit of analysis is the perceived conflicting requirement between product quality and recycling of materials. This tension has led to a process of organizational learning through which Plasto’s representatives have shared experiences in dialogue with actors from other organizations. The practical result is that the primary customer, AKVA group, has agreed to the use of recycled materials in specific product types, and the technical testing indicates that quality requirements can be fulfilled. An essential feature of the transdisciplinary approach concerns the role of interaction between practitioners and researchers. The case study exemplifies specific activity links through the relationship development between Plasto and the involved researchers. The company’s principal representative in the process has openly communicated the lessons learned, reflecting a situation where the central actors of a change process negotiate the underlying tension between quality and circularity. A theoretical implication of the findings surrounds the role of different actors in an ongoing change process. The classical stakeholder concept tends to focus on the focal firm, as represented by its managers, which underestimates dynamic relationships between individuals and groups. Thus, the thesis proposes a framework that explains the role of actor interaction and how activity links and resource ties shape realization of social and environmental concerns in business operations. The thesis asserts a transdisciplinary methodology where academics and practitioners jointly frame problems and co-create knowledge. The resulting insights lay the groundwork for further debates in the field of corporate sustainability on the role of different actors, for example, those with non-financial purpose in knowledge development. Such an approach places emphasis on the researcher’s role as a mediator between the scientific discourse and the actor-specific societal discourse

Utvikling av sirkulære forretningsmodeller. Nye forretningsmuligheter blant iKubens medlemsbedrifter.

iKuben er en tverrindustriell klyngeorganisasjon som jobber for rask og kontinuerlig omstilling hos sine medlemsbedrifter. Ved et særlig fokus på digitalisering, bærekraft og nye forretningsmodeller, ønsker iKuben å være en aktiv bidragsyter og tilrettelegger for innovasjon og økt konkurranseevne hos sine medlemsbedrifter. I kjernen av dette arbeidet er hvordan iKubens medlemsbedrifter kan utvikle bærekraftige forretningsmodeller gjennom bruk av ny teknologi, kompetanseutvikling og erfaringsdeling i nettverket. SINTEF har i samarbeid med iKuben gjennomført samtaler med tre av iKubens medlemsbedrifter. Gjennom dette har vi fått innsikt i muligheter og utfordringer knyttet til utvikling av sirkulære forretningsmodeller. Vi har sett i praksis hvilke rammer og veivalg bedrifter står overfor ved utvikling av sirkulære forretningsmodeller. Denne rapporten viser hvordan bedrifter arbeider med slike veivalg, og peker på hvordan iKuben som klyngeorganisasjon kan støtte opp om bedriftenes innovasjonsprosesser.publishedVersio

Life Cycle Assessment to Ensure Sustainability of Circular Business Models in Manufacturing

Circular business models (CBMs) represent a path for coordinating circular economy (CE) efforts. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for quantifying environmental effects of a product or a service and can therefore evaluate the environmental sustainability of CBMs. This paper explores whether LCA can act as an enabler for manufacturing companies who want to implement a CBM. Following a case-study approach, we draw on the experiences of a specific manufacturing company during the time period 2014–2021. The paper presents key lessons on the interaction between LCA and CE. The study finds that LCA—by providing quantified results on the environmental impacts of circular strategies—limits the risk of problem shifting and challenges the normative rule of closing the loop by including a set of multiple impact categories. LCA offers a common platform and encourages communication with stakeholders. These characteristics make LCA a well-suited tool for CBM development. However, the holistic perspective on environmental problems that LCA provides can also complicate CE’s clear message of ‘closing the loop’. Lastly, LCA is a tool for environmental evaluation, and with the main emphasis of CE also on environmental issues, there is high risk of neglecting social and economic aspects of sustainable development

How to Create Value from a Sustainability Initiative : An exploratory case study of UN Global Compact in the Ulstein Group

From a management perspective, sustainable development concerns how to create social and environmental value in a way that also benefits economic value creation. Furthermore, managers need answers on such ?how?-questions following a prescriptive approach. In this context, further studies are needed because the empirical literature gives an unclear picture when it comes to cause-and-effect relations and managerial recommendations in general.This thesis utilizes findings from the Ulstein Group obtained during a period where the company has been evaluating membership in UN Global Compact (UN GC). UN GC is a sustainability initiative that comprises ten principles within areas of human rights, labor, the environment and anti-corruption, to which companies commit. A company that becomes a member is obligated to communicate their progress on these issues annually. The main purpose of this study was to investigate how a company can implement the UN GC principles in order to achieve long-term benefits. Using the Ulstein Group and UN GC as units of analysis, a qualitative and exploratory investigation was conducted. Seventeen semi-structured interviews were used as main source of empirical data. The study was scoped in a way that emphasized the environmental principles of UN GC along with the obligation of transparent communication. Furthermore, the implementation process was analyzed by applying a theoretical framework that emphasizes organization acceptance as a separate implementation goal. Regarding implementation of the environmental principles of UN GC, the strategies of pollution prevention and product stewardship reflect conceptual relations to increased economic value creation. The former has gained most empirical support, mainly caused by its linkages to continuous improvement and resource efficiency. The latter is product oriented and based on stakeholder integration. The findings suggest that product stewardship is successful only if the willingness to pay among customers is in place, and in the maritime industry, this seems to be missing to some extent at present. Transparent and honest communication can facilitate corporate reputation because it signals quality. However, when relieving information about failures and delays, a company must ensure that an action plan is in place and that resources are allocated in order to address the challenges. From a strategic point of view, the goal would be to convince stakeholders that the company is a proactive industry actor that learn from its mistakes. The study pinpoints that organizational acceptance is especially important when it comes to sustainability initiatives because employees will most likely have difficulties seeing business relevance and relations to their daily tasks. Therefore, it seems crucial that management first relate the new activities to existing policies within business ethics and for instance health, safety and environment in order to pinpoint relevance. Second, it is likely to achieve acceptance if employees are involved throughout the implementation process. Objectives and concrete measures should be developed using interdisciplinary groups and employees on different organizational levels. Furthermore, the findings indicate that people working towards customers or suppliers would see possible benefits more easily than those who are working closely with project deliveries and production tasks. Regarding the strategy of pollution prevention, it seems clear that concrete performance indicators must be developed in order to get successful outcome. This would also show business relevance more clearly, and hence be advantageous when aiming for acceptance among employees that work with production or other tasks linked to daily operations. However, the main point is not such indicators in themselves, but how they are introduced to the organization. Ownership is needed which again would facilitate motivation and engagement among employees. The key point is to give new activities attention and follow them up at different levels within the organization, so that value creation in practice can take place

Utvikling av sirkulære forretningsmodeller. Nye forretningsmuligheter blant iKubens medlemsbedrifter.

iKuben er en tverrindustriell klyngeorganisasjon som jobber for rask og kontinuerlig omstilling hos sine medlemsbedrifter. Ved et særlig fokus på digitalisering, bærekraft og nye forretningsmodeller, ønsker iKuben å være en aktiv bidragsyter og tilrettelegger for innovasjon og økt konkurranseevne hos sine medlemsbedrifter. I kjernen av dette arbeidet er hvordan iKubens medlemsbedrifter kan utvikle bærekraftige forretningsmodeller gjennom bruk av ny teknologi, kompetanseutvikling og erfaringsdeling i nettverket. SINTEF har i samarbeid med iKuben gjennomført samtaler med tre av iKubens medlemsbedrifter. Gjennom dette har vi fått innsikt i muligheter og utfordringer knyttet til utvikling av sirkulære forretningsmodeller. Vi har sett i praksis hvilke rammer og veivalg bedrifter står overfor ved utvikling av sirkulære forretningsmodeller. Denne rapporten viser hvordan bedrifter arbeider med slike veivalg, og peker på hvordan iKuben som klyngeorganisasjon kan støtte opp om bedriftenes innovasjonsprosesser

Clarifying the Epistemology of Corporate Sustainability

Business research is placing increasing focus on the relationship between the natural environment and the political concept of sustainable development. Within this nexus, one area, labelled ‘Corporate Sustainability’, emphasizes the interactions between economic, environmental and social values. The need to consider multiple values has contributed to a blur in the conceptual landscape. This is partly due to the fact that authors often address epistemological challenges on an implicit level. Moreover, hidden ideologies, e.g. the profit maximization paradigm, can explain the conceptual obscurity. The contribution of this article is twofold. Firstly, a conceptual framework is developed based on the dichotomy of positivism and constructivism. A relation is established between these epistemological positions and the analytic treatment of environmental and social values. The framework can be applied to increase transparency on epistemological challenges and thereby strengthening construct validity in the field. Secondly, an analysis of the most influential literature from the last 50 years shows that there is a trend of clustering theoretical positions and value constructs without any critical awareness of their philosophical assumptions. The authors hope that acknowledgement of a multi-paradigmatic approach can help to clarify the epistemology of the research area by establishing pluralism as an explicit position