scholarly journals Is Innovation a Driver of Sustainability? An Analysis from a Spanish Region

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 9286
Author(s):  
Alicia Llorca-Ponce ◽  
Gregorio Rius-Sorolla ◽  
Francisco J. Ferreiro-Seoane
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Environmental Certification ◽  
Environmentally Sensitive ◽  
Employment Generation ◽  
Financial Profitability ◽  
Spanish Region

1. Background. It is well-known that innovation contributes to economic growth, improves productivity and enables competitive advantage. However, beyond these matters, it would be of interest to know what role innovation plays in relation to sustainability. This paper focuses on whether innovation is a driver of sustainability in its three dimensions: social, economic and environmental. 2. Methods. The study was conducted with companies in the Valencian community (Spain) to analyze whether they significantly contribute to sustainability as innovators. Economical sustainability was assessed based on economic and financial profitability; social sustainability was assessed by employment generation. To determine whether companies contributed to environmental sustainability, we considered those which, apart from a reputation (“label”) in innovation, had some kind of environmental certification. 3. Results. Our results indicate that innovative companies are more profitable and generate more employment. However, there are no differences in terms of performance and employment generation between innovative companies and those that are also environmentally sensitive. 4. Conclusion. Innovation is a driving force of economic and social sustainability in the studied area, but environmental sensitivity is not a driver for economic and social sustainability.

scholarly journals Environmental and Social Sustainability in UK Construction Industry: a Systematic Literature Review

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Fotios Misopoulos ◽  
Vicky Manthou ◽  
Zenon Michaelides
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Construction Industry ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Sustainable Construction ◽  
Community Sustainability ◽  
Bottom Line

Research on sustainability in the construction industry is common in construction journals addressing the potential adverse effects conventional practices have in the construction community. Sustainability is addressed through the environmental, social and economic impacts in literature and researchers and practitioners always drive the need for an equal attention on these three dimensions, but not so successfully at present. Sustainability covers a broad content with various suggested approaches arising from different countries all over the world. Previous studies have investigated sustainable construction issues as a global concept and in individual developed countries such as the US, Australia, and China. The aim of this research is to investigate the extent of coverage, by academia, of the sustainability concept in UK construction industry, with a focus on the environmental and social aspects of sustainability, based on the Triple Bottom Line framework. The researchers conducted a systematic literature review, searching relevant articles with predefined criteria in two major bibliographical databases, which offer great coverage of the existing academic journals in social sciences. The study utilised the PRISMA reporting approach and the search resulted in thirty-one suitable articles. The findings revealed that environmental sustainability receives much more attention than social sustainability. Added emphasis is given to green buildings and materials used. Government regulations seem to be the leading driver for adopting sustainable practices, while lack of knowledge/awareness of sustainable best practices is the leading challenge.

scholarly journals The Moderating Effects of Social-Sustainability on Corporate Characteristics’ Relationship with Environmental-Sustainability Reporting

2018 ◽  
pp. 22-32
Author(s):  
Dr.Alhassan Haladu
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Sustainability Reporting ◽  
Moderating Effects ◽  
Effective Tax Rate ◽  
Tax Rate ◽  
Audit Firm ◽  
Environmentally Sensitive ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Simple Average

Due to the greater influence of sustainability issues on today’s global matters, this research observed how social-sustainability could influence the relationship between specific firm characteristics of firm age, audit firm, effective tax rate and environmental-sustainability disclosure. This area is a very wide gap that is yet to be fully explored especially as it affects developing economies. In this study, the researcher covers the entire environmentally sensitive sector of the Nigerian economy with 67 companies chosen as sample size for the study. Measurement of the dependent and moderating variables was done through simple average disclosure index (SADI) which, isthe simple average of the total disclosure made on individual elements under these two observations. The framework and model of the study were built on the moderating effects of social-sustainability on the relationship between specific corporate characteristics and environmental-sustainability reporting. Using Stata13 the study tests for the level of disclosure of environmental-sustainability, types, direction, and impacts of the relationships between the specific corporate characteristics and environment-sustainability reporting; and the significance of the influence of the relationship. The results show among other things that a positive and significant relationship exists between firm age, audit firm & effective tax rate, and environmental-sustainability reporting. Furthermore, it was discovered that high environmentally sensitive elements such as biodiversity & wastes, effluents, product impacts and environmental management department; have lower disclosure rates compared to lower environmental elements like materials used and energy consumed.

scholarly journals Assessment of City Sustainability Using MCDM with Interdependent Criteria Weight

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pingtao Yi ◽  
Weiwei Li ◽  
Danning Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
The Other ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Weighted Averaging ◽  
Economic Sustainability ◽  
The Social ◽  
Iowa Operator ◽  
Assessment Results

The Capital Economic Circle is an important planning project in China. Sustainability is a key factor for the long-term development of the Capital Economic Circle. In this paper, we investigated the sustainability of 13 cities in the Capital Economic Circle using three dimensions: economy, society, and environment. The induced ordered weighted averaging (IOWA) operator was used for the aggregation of criteria data. The order-inducing variable in the IOWA operator was measure by the correlation degree of a criterion and all the other criteria. Criteria with larger order-inducing values were given more weight as they provided more support for the development of other criteria. The assessment results indicate that the sustainable development of most of the cities, except for Beijing and Tianjin, is poor, with performance values below 0.5. By comparing the development using three dimensions, it was found that poor performances of economic sustainability were the main reason for this. Additionally, all of the cities showed a sound momentum of sustainable growth even though the sustainable levels of most of the cities were not high. In terms of sustainable development across the three dimensions, the cities had the highest levels of environmental sustainability. The social sustainability of the cities, except for Beijing and Tianjin, was better than their economic sustainability. However, more than half of the cities (accounting for 53.8%) showed a decline in social sustainability, especially for Zhangjiakou, which had the highest degree of decline of 4.00%. Some suggestions have been provided on the basis of the main assessment results. For example, Beijing should invest more in education as well as further easing transportation pressure. There is room for further improvement of the social and environmental sustainability of Tianjin. The other cities should focus on developing economic sustainability as well as preventing the decline of social sustainability.

scholarly journals Sustainability Requirements of Digital Twin-Based Systems: A Meta Systematic Literature Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 5519
Author(s):  
Rui Carvalho ◽  
Alberto Rodrigues da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Product Life Cycle ◽  
Data Communication ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Digital Twin ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Reducing Costs

Sustainable development was defined by the UN in 1987 as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, and this is a core concept in this paper. This work acknowledges the three dimensions of sustainability, i.e., economic, social, and environmental, but its focus is on this last one. A digital twin (DT) is frequently described as a physical entity with a virtual counterpart, and the data, connections between the two, implying the existence of connectors and blocks for efficient and effective data communication. This paper provides a meta systematic literature review (SLR) (i.e., an SLR of SLRs) regarding the sustainability requirements of DT-based systems. Numerous papers on the subject of DT were also selected because they cited the analyzed SLRs and were considered relevant to the purposes of this research. From the selection and analysis of 29 papers, several limitations and challenges were identified: the perceived benefits of DTs are not clearly understood; DTs across the product life cycle or the DT life cycle are not sufficiently studied; it is not clear how DTs can contribute to reducing costs or supporting decision-making; technical implementation of DTs must be improved and better integrated in the context of the IoT; the level of fidelity of DTs is not entirely evaluated in terms of their parameters, accuracy, and level of abstraction; and the ownership of data stored within DTs should be better understood. Furthermore, from our research, it was not possible to find a paper discussing DTs only in regard to environmental sustainability.

scholarly journals Sustainability in Participatory Sports Events: The Development of a Research Instrument and Empirical Insights

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6034
Author(s):  
Ine Hugaerts ◽  
Jeroen Scheerder ◽  
Kobe Helsen ◽  
Joris Corthouts ◽  
Erik Thibaut ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
Research Instrument ◽  
Sports Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
Development Goals

The United Nations (UN) considers sports as an important enabler of sustainable development. The popular and fast-growing Participatory Sports Event (PSE) sector can play an important role in this regard, however, research that measures and reports sustainability in PSEs is scarce. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to construct and validate a research instrument based on the UN’s sustainable development goals, and to examine sustainability in PSEs. To this end, an online survey was administered among a representative sample of 303 PSE organisers, located in Flanders, Belgium. A confirmatory factor analysis affirmed the social, economic and environmental dimensions of the instrument and provided evidence for its validity and reliability. The results reveal significant discrepancies between the three dimensions, with a noticeable lower score for environmental sustainability compared to social and economic sustainability. Furthermore, challenges are highlighted in the field of the civil society sector and in walking sports events. The findings also indicate that large-sized events are more likely to be sustainable. The current study can act as a foundation for future research on sustainability in PSEs and can assist PSE organisers and policymakers to increase the sustainability-related performance of the sector.

scholarly journals Institutional-Political Scenarios for Anthropocene Society

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Hoffman ◽  
P. Devereaux Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Institutional Theory ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Change Mechanisms ◽  
Main Change

Natural scientists have proposed that humankind has entered a new geologic epoch. Termed the “Anthropocene,” this new reality revolves around the central role of human activity in multiple Earth ecosystems. That challenge requires a rethinking of social science explanations of organization and environment relationships. In this article, we discuss the need to politicize institutional theory as a means understanding “Anthropocene Society,” and in turn what that resultant society means for the Anthropocene in the natural environment. We modify the constitutive elements of institutional orders and a set of main change mechanisms to explore three scenarios around which future Anthropocene Societies might be built—Collapsing Systems, Market Rules, and Cultural Re-Enlightenment. Simultaneously, we use observations from the Anthropocene to expose limitations in present institutional theory and propose extensions to remedy them. Overall, this article challenges organizational scholars to consider a new paradigm under which research in environmental sustainability and social sustainability takes place.

scholarly journals Seeing environmental injustices: the mechanics, devices and assumptions of environmental sustainability indices and indicators

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Requena-i-Mora ◽  
Dan Brockington
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Environmental Performance Index ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Global North ◽  
Distributional Conflicts ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Sustainability Indices

At the heart of any colonization project, and therefore any move to de-colonize, are ways of seeing nature and society, that then allow particular ways of governing each. This is plainly visible in a number of tools that exist to measure progress towards (or regress from) environmental sustainability. The tools use indices and indicators constructed mostly by environmental scientists and ecologists. As such, they are not neutral scientific instruments: they reflect the worldviews of their creators. These worldviews depend on three dimensions: the values they prioritize, the explanatory theories they use and the futures they envision. Through these means different tools produce conflicting notions of the sustainability of our economies and societies. In this article, we shed light onto the theoretical and epistemological assumptions that lie behind key international sustainability indices and indicators: the Environmental Performance Index,Domestic Material Consumption, Material Intensity, the Material Footprint, the Carbon Footprint, the Ecological Footprint and CO2 emissions (territorial). The variables included in these indices, the way they are measured, aggregated and weighted all imply a particular way of understanding the relationships between economy, society and environment. This divergence is most clearly visible in the fact that some indices are negatively correlated with each other. Where one index might plot growing environmental sustainability, another shows its decline. Our results highlight that those devices and the theories informing them are particularly interesting for way how colonialism is materialized. Some of these measurements hide the material roots of prosperity and the ecological (and economic) distributional conflicts exported to the poorer countries by the global North, and others show how its production and consumption levels are reliant upon a socio-ecological 'subsidy' imposed on Southern countries. These subsidies represent injustices that present a primafacie case for decolonizing indices and indicators of environmental governance.

Green Organizational Culture: An Exploration of Dimensions

2021 ◽  
pp. 097215092110498
Author(s):  
Priyanka Aggarwal ◽  
Tanuja Agarwala
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Organizational Culture ◽  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Discriminant Validity ◽  
Questionnaire Development ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Sustainable Competitive Advantage ◽  
The Impact

Awareness of environmental issues and stakeholder expectations has led organizations to be concerned about the impact of their products, processes and packaging on the natural environment. Environmental sustainability has become an essential tool for the competitive advantage of firms. Organizations need to bring about cultural transformation to sustain competitive advantage. This orientation has brought green organizational culture to centre stage as firms seek to institutionalize and incorporate environmental focus throughout the organization. The belief that integrating environmental concerns with organizational culture should result in sustainable competitive advantage mandates that firms measure the extent of ‘greening’ of the culture. Literature review reveals that ‘green organizational culture’ has begun to receive attention in recent years. However, a standardized and empirically validated instrument is not available for measuring the extent to which green values are internalized throughout the firm. The present study aims to fill this gap by developing a questionnaire to study green organizational culture (GOC). The model proposed by Harris and Crane (2002 , Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol. 15, pp. 214–234) is used as a basis for questionnaire development. A two-stage method of structural equation modelling in AMOS 23 is employed for data analysis. Exploratory factor analysis in SPSS reveals three dimensions of the construct measured by two items. Confirmatory factor analysis confirms the factor structure. The instrument satisfies the conditions of convergent and discriminant validity and the model fulfils the criteria for model fitness. Measurement of green organizational culture has important implications for creating and reinforcing greening through human resource policies and practices.

scholarly journals Simulating Urban Land Expansion in the Context of Land Use Planning in the Abuja City-Region, Nigeria

GeoJournal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evidence Chinedu Enoguanbhor ◽  
Florian Gollnow ◽  
Blake Byron Walker ◽  
Jonas Ostergaard Nielsen ◽  
Tobia Lakes
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Planning ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Urban Land ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Sensitive Areas ◽  
Environmentally Sensitive Areas ◽  
City Regions ◽  
Environmentally Sensitive

Abstract In the Global South, including the Sub-Saharan African city-regions, the possible future urban expansion patterns may pose a challenge towards improving environmental sustainability. Land use planning strategies and instruments for regulating urban expansion are faced with challenges, including insufficient data availability to offer insights into the possible future urban expansion. This study integrated empirical data derived from Geographic Information Systems, Remote Sensing, and surveys of experts to offer insights into the possible future urban expansion under spatial planning scenarios to support land use planning and environmental sustainability of city-regions. We analyzed the spatial determinants of urban expansion, calibrated the land cover model using the Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network and Markov, and developed three scenarios to simulate land cover from 2017 to 2030 and to 2050. The scenarios include Business As Usual that extrapolates past trends; Regional Land Use Plan that restricts urban expansion to the land designated for urban development, and; Adjusted Urban Land that incorporates the leapfrogged settlements into the land designated for urban development. Additionally, we quantified the potential degradation of environmentally sensitive areas by future urban expansion under the three scenarios. Results indicated a high, little, and no potential degradation of environmentally sensitive areas by the future urban expansion under the Business As Usual, Adjusted Urban Land, and Regional Land Use Plan scenarios respectively. The methods and the baseline information provided, especially from the Adjusted Urban Land scenario showed the possibility of balancing the need for urban expansion and the protection of environmentally sensitive areas. This would be useful to improve the environmental sustainability of the Sub-Saharan African city-regions and across the Global South, where insufficient data availability challenges land use planning.

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