1,720,985 research outputs found
Exploring the role of lean thinking in sustainable business practice
No full textA large and growing body of literature has explored corporate environmental sustainability initiatives and their impacts locally, regionally and internationally. While the initiatives provide examples of environmental stewardship and cleaner production, a large proportion of the organisations considered in this literature have ‘sustainable practice’, ‘environmental stewardship’ or similar goals as add-ons to their core business strategy. Furthermore, there is limited evidence of organizations embracing and internalising sustainability principles throughout their activities, products or services. Many challenges and barriers impede outcomes as whole system design or holistic approach to address environmental issues, with some evidence to suggest that targeted initiatives could be useful in making progress. ‘Lean management’ and other lean thinking strategies are often put forward as part of such targeted approaches. Within this context, the authors have drawn on current literature to undertake a review of lean thinking practices and how these influence sustainable business practice, considering the balance of environmental and economic aspects of triple bottom line in sustainability. The review methodology comprised firstly identifying theoretical constructs to be studied, developing criteria for categorising the literature, evaluating the findings within each category and considering the implications of the findings for areas for future research. \ud
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The evaluation revealed two main areas of consideration: \ud
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- a) lean manufacturing tools and environmental performance, and; \ud
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- b) integrated lean and green models and approaches. \ud
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However the review highlighted the ad hoc use of lean thinking within corporate sustainability initiatives, and established a knowledge gap in the form of a system for being able to consider different categories of environmental impacts in different industries and choose best lean tools or models for a particular problem in a way to ensure holistic exploration. The findings included a specific typology of lean tools for different environmental impacts, drawing from multiple case studies. \ud
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Within this research context, this paper presents the findings of the review; namely the emerging consensus on the relationships between lean thinking and sustainable business practice. The paper begins with an overview of the current literature regarding lean thinking and its documented role in sustainable business practice. The paper then includes an analysis of lean and green paradigms in different industries; and describes the typology of lean tools used to reduce specific environmental impacts and, integrated lean and green models and approaches. The paper intends to encourage industrial practitioners to consider the merits and potential risks with using specific lean tools to reduce context-specific environmental impacts. It also aims to highlight the potential for further investigation with regard to comparing different industries and conceptualising a generalizable system for ensuring lean thinking initiatives build towards sustainable business practice
Achieving cost effectiveness through adopting sustainability measures: Case study from the Sri Lankan tyre industry
No full textWith the urge for manufacturing efficiency and waste reduction, sustainable business practice has evolved over last few decades as an aspiration for many industries. Despite constant attention on 'sustainability' it is still unclear on how exactly the tyre manufacturers could holistically embed sustainability measures to their business operations. This paper provides pathways and measure to achieve cost effectiveness drawing on findings from an in-depth case study in the Sri Lankan tyre industry. The findings of this paper will guide industrial practitioners to adopt sustainability measures in their business and optimise environmental outcomes on their business efforts and expenditure.No Full Tex
Investigating the role of residual food waste recycling in closing the loop: Case study from the 2018 Commonwealth Games, Australia
No full textEvery year in Australia, household, commercial and industry sectors generate more than 5 million tonnes of food waste, with the majority of it ending up in landfills that are costly to run and diminishing in availability. Furthermore, landfilled food waste in Australia is estimated to result in nearly 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over the year it takes to decompose. These figures highlight the significant need to address the greenhouse gas contribution of food waste. There are substantial precedents globally of the resource recovery industry reducing the volumes of food waste ending up in landfill, effectively ‘closing the loop’ on the flow of nutrients from – and back to – the soil. There are also significant precedents of doing so in ways that contribute to the ‘circular economy’, where selling products containing composted food waste reduces the environmental footprint of cities, creates local jobs and fosters new and diversified industries to collect, transfer, process waste. In achieving the target of reducing food waste by 40 per cent by 2020 in Australia, the industry would also be addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12 ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’. Reflecting on this context and opportunity for improvement, this paper presents the findings of a research project to assess food waste recycling on the north-east coast of Australia in South East Queensland, specifically through evaluating a major residue food waste recycling initiative during the 2018 Commonwealth Games (Gold Coast). More than 6,500 participants from 71 Commonwealth Games Associations participated in the event requiring 18,000 meals per day. With more than 1.2 million visitors and global broadcasting, such events raise awareness about environmental stewardship and local actions for global impact. This research used stakeholder theory to provide a theoretical lens to the study. The research methods comprised contextual literature review, stakeholder interviews including event attendees, and field observations. Data was gathered over 6 weeks including pre and post stages of the games. Questions related to desire, challenges and opportunities in engaging with food waste recycling programs were included. The authors conclude the success of the 2018 Commonwealth games event in ‘walking the talk’ of a clean game, achieving a clean food waste stream and providing an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the potential for recycling food waste into a high-quality saleable product. Furthermore, innovative and streamlined practices for managing the transfer and processing of food waste demonstrated proof of concept for South East Queensland. This research provides evidence for key stakeholders such as local councils, food suppliers/vendors and the local community, to promote the value of creating high-quality food-waste streams for collection and processing, linking large-scale food waste recycling to job creation and environmental benefit. The authors propose a stakeholder engagement model arising from the research, that can immediately assist stakeholders in engaging in food waste recycling practices. The paper is valuable as a globally relevant, local example of sporting entities, commercial food enterprises, the waste industry and government all working together to realise substantial environmental, economic and social outcomes.Full Tex
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Exploring the role of lean thinking in sustainable business practice
No full textA large and growing body of literature has explored corporate environmental sustainability initiatives and their impacts locally, regionally and internationally. While the initiatives provide examples of environmental stewardship and cleaner production, a large proportion of the organisations considered in this literature have ‘sustainable practice’, ‘environmental stewardship’ or similar goals as add-ons to their core business strategy. Furthermore, there is limited evidence of organizations embracing and internalising sustainability principles throughout their activities, products or services. Many challenges and barriers impede outcomes as whole system design or holistic approach to address environmental issues, with some evidence to suggest that targeted initiatives could be useful in making progress. ‘Lean management’ and other lean thinking strategies are often put forward as part of such targeted approaches. Within this context, the authors have drawn on current literature to undertake a review of lean thinking practices and how these influence sustainable business practice, considering the balance of environmental and economic aspects of triple bottom line in sustainability. The review methodology comprised firstly identifying theoretical constructs to be studied, developing criteria for categorising the literature, evaluating the findings within each category and considering the implications of the findings for areas for future research.Full Tex
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