Sustainable Programs

According to the study of Louw (2013, p. 56), UNESCO calls for educational sustainable development in the coming 10 years with the four main goals identified in relation to education, that is, rethinking and revising education from nursery school to university to include a clear focus of current and future societies on the development of knowledge, skills, perspectives and values related to sustainability. In order to fulfill the needs of UNESCO and increase the employability of learners, this chapter focuses on demonstrating the way to link the delivery of a module in an undergraduate programme to develop learners' interest in internet learning with global partnership for developing higher order thinking skills, e.g. problem-solving and solution-seeking skills, and to raise educators' awareness of generating new business via internet-learning.

Role of HRM in Sustainable Organisational Development

This chapter explores the role Human Resource Management plays to support sustainable organisation development by controlling and managing valuable resources including employees of the organisation. The chapter presents the concept of sustainable organisation development as vital and important requirement to survive the competition in the current financial era. This chapter explains that sustainable development could enable organisations to overcome current market problems as well as achieve their goals. The chapter proposes that HRM can play a crucial role in developing strategic leadership and management capabilities and thus promote economic, social and environmental forms of sustainable development.

Technological Forecasting of Sustainable Products

The purpose of the work described in this chapter is to analyze the eco-innovations about hybrid cars. The data collection method consisted of a technological forecast. The research was carried out on the patent base Derwent Innovations Index from Web of Science. The United States is the leader in the ranking of hybrid car patents. However, countries such as Japan, China and Germany demonstrated a considerable increase. This study contributes toward other studies that focus on the acceleration of decisions in applications for inventive patents and aims to identify new technologies which can be quickly used by the productive sector and universities stimulating the licensing and encouraging the innovation in many countries.

Cloud Integration for Effective Delivery of IT Services

Cloud computing is a state-of-the-art Internet technology being recently adapted by enterprises. The cloud computing models are implemented by business to improve existing practices. With improvement in the standards of the Web and affordability of mobile devises, the customer has accepted the online way of shopping. Cloud computing has been extensively used to deliver e-commerce, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). E-commerce models have undergone considerable changes in order to attract customers online. This chapter showcases the requirement of e-commerce model to integrate cloud computing technology. This chapter puts forward cloud computing applications for E-commerce, CRM and ERP by describing the significant characteristics of the cloud. For enterprises to bring into play cloud based e-commerce, CRM and ERP, certain significant issues need to be handled. These issues are the points of discussion in the chapter. In addition, the chapter introduces big data framework for building efficient e-commerce framework.

Cloud Manufacturing towards Sustainable Management

Nowadays, most manufacturing companies have realized the importance of collaboration between dispersed factories, different suppliers, and distributed stakeholders. Cloud computing is an evolution of the Internet; it does not just change the technology, but also enables collaborative innovation. Cloud manufacturing (CM) is another form of networked manufacturing. It provides common and standard manufacturing services by cloud logic and principle. In this chapter, a new concept is suggested based on the fundamental theory and key technologies of CM. Cloud Future Factory, which is intended to manage a matrix-type organizational structure, focuses on improving communication in lean manufacturing. This case company has dispersed production lines and business departments. Therefore, it's very necessary to introduce an efficient and dynamic information integration platform. This chapter leads to a different way of thinking for using the cloud manufacturing concept in different formations. CM is not just suitable for small and medium sized enterprises, but also fits large size companies.

Could Cultural Sustainability Improve Organisational Sustainability in Cloud Environments?

This chapter provides an explorative analysis of cultural factors critical to the sustainable organisational developments within cloud environments. The chapter examines how businesses could improve their sustainability by creating sustainable cultures. The chapter debates sustainability issues such as the relationship between organizational culture and sustainable organisational developments. The chapter provides a list of key areas for creating a sustainable culture, for instance, the Change readiness assessment, Leadership and management support, Stakeholder involvement, and Education, as well as Communication. The chapter also discusses organizational culture and the close relationships between culture and sustainability. The chapter examines the relationships when creating sustainability culture and the key factors that will influence the change process.

Organisational Sustainability Role in Supply Chain Best Practices

This chapter is targeted at identifying the relationship of supply chain best practices and organisational sustainability. Another objective of this chapter is to identify the definition of SC best practices and its level of adoption by SMEs. The findings of this research suggest a linear link between SC best practices and the benefits it has on firms; it also identified that the definition of SC best practice is endlessly evolutionary and sometimes circumstantially subjective. The research has moreover shown that the level of knowledge management plays a wider role on the effectiveness of SC best practices within a firm.

An Approach for Assessment of the Success of Cloud Systems Usage in Innovation

This chapter demonstrates an approach for assessment of the success of cloud systems usage in innovation on the basis of system abilities to differentiate between the various knowledge characteristics required for the innovation. The chapter also discusses the various success factors of cloud system for global innovation. The aim of this research is to demonstrate how cloud computing impacts in an organisation. This research also identifies the contributions of cloud computing to a modern organisation. Furthermore, several challenges which providers of Cloud System services are facing are presented. Problems in the process of implementation of cloud computing are found out which need to be settled in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of organisational innovation.

Performance Improvement in Cloud Based Supply Chains

This chapter summarises the findings on how improvement in the performance of the supply chain processes could assist the company becoming innovative. Through this report it is consistently held that improvement in the performance of the supply chain processes assists the company in becoming innovative.

Strategies for Evaluating Cloud System Providers during the Transformation of Businesses

This chapter takes a comprehensive look at the strategies and mechanisms developed for evaluating cloud services during business transformation. During business transformation, enterprises need to make decisions that would have long lasting impacts on the performance and profitability of the businesses. One of the important decisions business leaders are required to make is whether to own and manage their own IT infrastructure or outsource them from a public cloud provider. Due to the attractiveness of cloud computing, there are many cloud providers in the market creating a confusion in the minds of the customers who to select. Hence it is necessary to use proper strategies and mechanisms to evaluate the performance and the suitability of the service providers in meeting the customer requirements. This chapter takes an in depth look at some of the strategies, frameworks, mechanisms and tools proposed by researchers for evaluating cloud services in the literature with reference to their applicability, suitability, advantages and disadvantages.