The Firm Boundary Decision for Sustainability-Focused Companies

This paper examines the vertical integration level of environmentally sustainable and non-sustainable companies. The first part develops the theoretical foundation for linking sustainability strategies to organizational structure. The second part empirically examines the vertical integration level of 144 sustainability-focused companies in 9 different industries. The results demonstrate that sustainability-focused companies in the Health Care Industry and the Industrials Industry tend to have more vertically integrated organizational structures than their industry competitors that are not pursuing such a strategy since these two industries are production oriented and they have closer relationships with their suppliers. There was no significant difference in the vertical integration level of sustainability-focused versus non-sustainability-focused companies for the other seven industries studied. Research shows the linkage between environmental strategies and vertical integration has not been thoroughly examined. This study’s results are useful to researchers and managers who are interested in corporate sustainability behavior.

A Critical Assessment of Environmental Degeneration and Climate Change

China and its population are confronted with fundamental environmental challenges, as both, environmental degeneration and the impact of climate change, exhibit critical social, economic and political implications for their future development. Among the various environmental challenges China faces, pollution issues, soil erosion, acid rain, and sea-level rise are identified. This variety of environmental issues increases the underling complexity of how best to address these challenges, especially as China’s growth strategy has the potential to exacerbate the negative impact on the environment further. The strategic decision which development strategy China will follow – a ‘growth first and clean up later’ or ‘cleaning up while growing’ – carries serious implications not only for the environmental situation in China itself, but for the global community as well.

IT-Based Classification for Supply Chain Coordination Mechanisms

Managing dependencies via coordination is an effective solution for the problems that arise from these interdependencies in supply chains. This can be practical via a set of methods called coordination mechanisms. Numerous coordination mechanisms have been discussed before in literature. This paper develops a new classification of these mechanisms on the basis of information technology (IT) impact on them. This classification proves the important role of IT in better coordinating supply chains and help managers distinguish between coordination mechanisms that are created and improved by information technology and thus lead them to have the best choice based on their infrastructures and organization type.

The Development of Synergy Model on Internal and External Suppliers for Asian Airlines Industry

This paper examines the airline industry to develop a synergy model in internal and external suppliers for Asian airlines industry. An extensive literature review is conducted to present a synergy model to develop Asian airline competitiveness, safety and service quality. The literature review is highlighted to seek the relationships between internal marketing and internal service quality and identify whether the relation of supplier can moderate them. The review reveals that a synergy model based on internal marketing, internal service quality and supplier relations can overcome the Asian industrial phenomenon, especially in maintaining the service consistency and competitiveness. This model is needed for developing airline service and safety. Research in airline business is critical, as the quality of the airline service is declining in contrast with this industry’s growth. This paper provides insight into two important suppliers needed for the success of the airline industry.

Process Analysis of Knowledge Production

This paper presents an optimized supply chain for ‘knowledge products’. Based on the traditional logistics model for academic knowledge, knowledge creation and delivery are discussed. A new framework of an optimized supply chain for ‘knowledge products’ is developed. A semi-structured interview was undertaken to capture and analyze the knowledge logistics in a traditional publishing setup. Findings include the illustration of a new optimized supply chain for the manufacturing and distribution of ‘knowledge products’. Realised benefits are discussed showing a significant reduction in total supply chain processing. Research in this domain involves the actual knowledge creators (publishing companies). Connecting knowledge delivery systems to the supplier presents challenges including information sharing and openness to accessing their systems. More challenges are discussed with implications, primarily related to commitment, partnership and re-engineering of present systems. Publishing companies still follow the same traditional supply chain for knowledge creation. They have moved towards custom publishing, but their processes remain practically the same. Publishing companies have to change their mindsets and re-engineer their processes.

Information Technology Resources Virtualization for Sustainable Development

Today, business organizations seem to be involved in the processes of sustainable development. Therefore, not only economic indicators of performance are considered but also the environmental responsibility is equally important. The environmental responsibility covers social responsibility and natural environment responsibility. The latter demands taking into account promotion of sustainable use of renewable natural resources, reducing the emissions and wastages, decrease of energy consumption. The first part of the paper includes presentation of benefits resulting from IT (Information Technology) resources virtualization, grid computing and cloud computing development. The second part contains a model of IT governance for sustainability.

Introducing Quality of Service Criteria into Supply Chain Management for Excellence

This article is focused on a sub domain of quality, namely, quality of service. Considering supply chain management, the authors believe that it is important to distinguish between a quality of product (also service) offered by producers and service providers and a quality of service which is achieved between any supplier and customer, not only a consumer, along a supply chain. Quality of product represents producer’s/service provider’s commitment and is subject of various quality certificates issued by inspection authorities. This research examines the quality of service, which is provided by a supplier to its customer along the supply chain, between any pair of chain elements fulfilling this relation, including the common retailer-consumer relation. The authors introduce measurement points into a consumer-centric supply chain model for the defined criteria and defined the method of their monitoring and overall supply chain quality of service evaluation. Finally, the authors assess the envisaged impact of the results of their measurements on supply chain excellence, providing management with an opportunity to identify weak spots.

An Improved Lightweight RFID Authentication Protocol

This study extends the vulnerability analysis of a RFID authentication protocol and offers solutions to security weaknesses through enhanced measures. Vajda and Buttyan (VB) proposed a lightweight RFID authentication protocol, called XOR. Defend, Fu, and Juels (DFJ) analyzed it and proposed repeated keys and nibble attacks to the protocol. In this paper, we identify the source of vulnerability within VB’s original successive session key permutation algorithm. We propose three improvements, namely removing bad shuffles, hopping the runs, and authenticating mutually, to prevent DFJ’s attacks, thereby significantly strengthening the security of the protocol without introducing extra resource cost.

A Closed-Loop Logistics Model for Green Supply Chain Management

Recently, with the environmental crisis, Green supply chain management (or GSCM), and in particular closed loop supply chain model, has received considerable attention by researchers. Closed loop supply chain model aims at reduction of waste and generating profit for enterprises through integrating forward and reverse logistics. Unfortunately, there is limited research on general models for closed loop supply chains in literature. In this paper, extending and enhancing previous models, a general model is proposed for closed loop supply chains using linear programming. The goal of this study is to minimize the leakage of a closed loop supply chain to avoid waste and reduce SCM costs.

Promoting Technological Environmental Innovations

This paper reviews and discusses the debate over the effectiveness of environmental regulation in promoting industrial Technological Environmental Innovation (TEI). Using the innovation-friendly regulatory principles adapted from Porter and van der Linde (1995a, 1995b), this paper demonstrates how properly designed and implemented environmental regulation (TEI promoting regulation) has played a critical role in promoting TEI in the transport industry in California and Hong Kong. In both cases, it has shown that stringent environmental regulations that send clear and strong signals for future environmental performance requirements are critical in promoting TEIs in the public transport industries. Unlike traditional command-and-control regulations, TEI promoting regulations are strongly supported by incentive and capability-enhancing measures.