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CSM
in Brief
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Contact
Info
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Recent
Articles
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Links
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PhD Course
Scholars
in CSM (mainly in
Swedish)
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Master
of Sc. Projects • Conferences
¡En español, por favor!
Corporate
Sustainability Management in Brief
Research
area:
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Economics
of Corporate Sustainability Management
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Keywords
Sustainability management, environmental management,
environmental policy, sustainable investments, socially responsible investments, corporate engagement, Corporate social responsibility, industrial dynamics and history of environmental
impacts, history of environmental planning, environmental
work-science
Network
period
2000-05-15 - ongoing
Network
description
The network is one of Åbo Akademi University's largest research groups for
environmental and sustainability issues. It consists of
researchers from all areas within the institution of
Industrial Economics and Management and serves as the
institution's interface between technology, management and
the economics of environment. The network also comprises
research members outside Åbo Akademi University and Finland. To enable
sustainable development by efficient policy instruments
historic perspectives of industrial dynamics are used in
research. These long time perspectives cover economic eras
from the agrarian revolution to the presently budding
information society. Environmental management under regimes
enabling sustainability are investigated as well as the
economic efficiency in today's environmental management in
becoming eco-efficient. The environmental and sustainability
management dealt with cover matters of external environment,
social issues and work science in both corporate and
governmental organisations.
The largest research program within the CSM network is the research on Sustainable Development: the New Role of Institutional Investors. The programme founded by the Swedish foundation Mistra – the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research. The aim of the foundation is to support research of strategic importance for a good living environment. The foundation promotes research with a long-term perspective, dealing with major environmental impacts by focusing on broad-based interdisciplinary programmes. For more information on this research progamme, please turn to its website at:
Sustainable Investment research Platform - SIRP
Source
of founding
To the research on Sustainable Development: the New Role of Institutional Investors by Mistra – the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research.
To individual scientists by ABB, Ericsson, FRN, King
Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden Foundation, Malmsten Foundation,
SIDA, Sweden-Japan Foundation, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Vinnova, Jan Wallanders and
Tom Hedelius Foundation, among many others.
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Contact
information
Mail
Corporate Sustainability Management
Åbo Akademi
Domkyrkotorget 3
FI-20500 ÅBO
FINLAND
Email
If you want to contact us by email, please, go to the
Scholars
in CSM
and email the person of your interest. You may also send your email to: cerin @ kth.se.
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Recent
articles (Descending Chronological Order)
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Lars Hassel, Lars-Olle Larsson and Fredrik Ljungdahl
CSR – från risk till värde
2008
Är företagens hantering av ansvarsfrågor med bäring på exempelvis yttre miljö, arbetsmiljö och mänskliga rättigheter värdepåverkande? I denna skrift hävdas, med forskning som grund, att företagens arbete med Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, faktiskt är värdepåverkande och därför också på väg att bli en stark rörelse som näringsliv, investerare, regeringar och media börjar se som ett nödvändigt förhållningssätt.
För att överleva häftiga marknadsförändringar, allmänna ekonomiska nedgångar och generationsväxlingar i företagsledningar måste företagen fastställa och kommunicera vilka hållbara värderingar och uppföranderegler som ligger till grund för deras verksamheter. Dessutom ska företagen också redovisa hur de lever efter sina deklarerade principer. Hållbarhetsredovisningen har därför på allvar börjat etableras i de stora företagen.
Bokens författare:
Lars G. Hassel, professor i redovisning och revision vid Handelshögskolan vid Umeå Universitet, där han leder ett forskningsprogram om ansvarsfull kapitalförvaltning, företagens hållbarhetsarbete och hållbarhetsredovisning.
Fredrik Ljungdahl, Assistant Professor, Jönköping International Business School (JIBS) samt senior manager vid Öhrlings PricewaterhouseCoopers. Disputerad med den första svenska avhandlingen om miljö redovisning vid Ekonomihögskolan vid Lunds universitet 1999.
Lars-Olle Larsson, specialistrevisor vid Öhrlings PricewaterhouseCoopers, har sedan 1977 arbetat med miljö, affärsetik, kommunikation, marknadsföring och varumärkesstrategi i affärsledningar i svenska företag och koncerner och har sedan 1995 arbetat med dessa frågor i revisionsbyråbranschen.
Klicka här för att beställa. [Länk till Studentlitteratur]
Pris: 240:- inkl moms
Utgivningsår: 2008
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David Bauner
2008
Towards a sustainable automotive industry: experiences from the development of emission control systems
Doctoral thesis
From the mid-1970s and on, the contribution to air pollution of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides from gasoline passenger cars in the developed world has been reduced through co-evolution of regulation and commercial introduction of catalytic emission control technology, now part of hundreds of millions of cars, trucks and buses worldwide.
This dissertation is a disaggregated study of the global introduction of catalytic emission control technology as a measure to reduce local air pollution. The introduction of the "three-way" catalyst for gasoline passenger cars is studied for four countries. Present innovation in diesel engine emission control is studied. Technological change is analyzed regarding the process of innovation, the innovation system and its stakeholders. Results are evaluated for implications for innovation and regulatory policy for coming environmental challenges.
Automotive catalysis is an example of environmentally motivated innovation, including problem definition, public regulation, corporate market and non-market strategies, invention, variety, selection, technology transfer, mass diffusion and the ongoing coevolution of emission-abating policies and technical development.
Common denominators for successful technological or market innovations is a participatory dialogue around structured and tiered regulatory roadmaps, international competition, support by international networks and conducive local public opinion. The near-global introduction of the three-way catalyst was complex and highly dependent on local context and conditions, suggesting that any general "global" innovation and regulation strategy to address present and future local or global problems must be reviewed with an understanding of local barriers and drivers for environmentally motivated innovation.
Given the stakeholders and technical challenges of different technological regimes to mitigate climate change, it is concluded that increased fuel efficiency and the introduction of plug-in hybrids are possible trajectories for sustainable mobility.
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Pontus Cerin
2006
Bringing economic opportunity into line with environmental influence: A discussion on the Coase theorem and the Porter and van der Linde hypothesis
Ecological Economics
Volume 56, Issue 2, Pages 209-225.
Abstract
Environmental concerns and tightened environmental policy parameters have been associated with the notion of additional costs of compliance rather than with innovation and sustainability. The contrary, has also been suggested, claiming that strict environmental legislation merely serves as a catalyst for firms to retain obvious economic and environmental mutual gains–so called win–wins–laying around waiting to be collected. Such implications can be seen from the Porter and van der Linde writings, heavily criticised by Palmer et al. as being built on faulty examples. This paper supports that conclusion and uses property rights and transactions costs theories to find private incentives to explore the win–wins for those actors who have the largest potentials to diminish the pressure on our environment. By applying the Coase theorem, emphasising transaction costs and property rights, this paper argues that strong public support is needed to create private incentives for exploring economic and environmental win–win innovations. The public support suggested is to (A) extend producer responsibilities–where the same costs which may be neglected by the end consumers will, if transferred to the design owner, be viewed as a production cost–and to (B) enforce environmental public procurement. Both may be combined with a support to (C) actors (such as non-governmental organisations and consumer agencies) positioning themselves as information bridges by informing the consumers. The negative effects of asymmetric information among actors can, thereby, be diminished as well as the low interest to primarily care for the environment among common consumers.
Keywords: Property rights; Transaction costs; Asymmetric information; Environmental impacts; Sustainability incentives scheme
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Pontus Cerin
2006
Introducing Value Chain Stewardship (VCS)
International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics
Volume 6, Number 1, Pages 39-61.
Abstract
After a decade of international negotiations to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a sufficient number of countries have ratified the Kyoto agreement. However, even with this positive development there is a formidable challenge since, according to the World Resource Institute (WRI 2004), For the most part, developed nations have failed to attain the non-binding emission reductions they committed to in the original climate treaty in 1992. Ensuring adherence to the reductions stated in the treaty by these nations may become an immense managerial task, not to mention the enforcement of sanctions. Instead of national emission targets the approach of this paper is to focus on trade within selected industry sectors – i.e. housing and transport – responsible for most of the world’s GHG emissions. This paper shows that vehicle manufacturers – the design owners – may use their information advantages to influence customers to focus on other aspects of the vehicle than costs during use. Expanding the environmental responsibility of the design owners to coincide with the area of environmental impacts will convert emissions cost into a production cost. It is indicated in this paper that when applying the estimated costs for GHG emissions to the vehicle user, strong enough incentives are not given to drive technological change, but if the responsibility is allocated to the design owner the very same additional costs will be an incentive for the designer to use its information advantage to innovate away from those emissions-rendering technologies. A value chain stewardship (VCS) is, thus, established.
Keywords: property rights - transaction costs - asymmetric information - product stewardship - design owner - value chain stewardship
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Rob Bauer, Rogér Otten and Alireza Tourani Rad
2006
Ethical investing in Australia: Is there a financial penelty?
Pacific-Basin Finance Journal
Volume 14, Issue 1, Pages 33-48
Abstract
This study provides new evidence on the performance and investment style of retail ethical funds in Australia. By applying a conditional multi-factor model and after controlling for investment style, time-variation in betas and home bias, we observe no evidence of significant differences in risk-adjusted returns between ethical and conventional funds during 1992–2003. This result however is sensitive to the chosen time period. During 1992–1996 domestic ethical funds under-performed their conventional counterparts significantly, whereas during 1996–2003 ethical funds matched the performance of conventional funds more closely. This suggests that ethical mutual funds underwent a catching up phase, before delivering returns similar to those of conventional mutual funds.
Keywords: Mutual funds; Performance evaluation; Style analysis; Ethical investments
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Pontus Cerin
2006
Permeating Information Asymmetries in Sustainability Reporting and Sustainability Investments – Swedish Perspectives.
Sumati Reddy (Ed.)
Sustainability Reporting – Concepts and Experiences.
ICFAI University Press, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India, Pages 200-228.
Abstract
Corporate voluntary reporting initiatives may be seen as one-sided petitions where the company tells its side of the story as some critics claim to be the case with the phenomena of sustainability and environmental reports. This could, if the reports are biased, pose a problem since external validation of company environmental performance and social responsibility is normally based on these reports due to lack of other information. The result could then lead to an unwanted selection of firms in sustainability indexes that may not be the companies that outperform the others on ethical issues, i.e. greenhouse gas emissions and working conditions, and lead the private investors believe they invest in something which they are not.
Keywords: Sustainability Reporting, Corporate Responsibility Reporting, Sustainable Investment, Socially Responsible Investments, asymmetric information
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Lars Hassel, Henrik Nilsson, Siv Nyquist
2005
The value relevance of environmental performance.
European Accounting Review
Volume 14, Number 1, Pages 41-61.
Abstract
This paper provides insight into how environmental information is reflected in the market value of listed Swedish companies. Using the residual income valuation model, we express market value of equity as a function of book value of equity, accounting earnings, and environmental performance, where the last variable is used as a proxy for other value-relevant information. Our research is motivated by the recommendation of the Swedish Society of Financial Analysts regarding environmental reporting. This recommendation assumes that environmental information has value relevance, since it is likely to affect the expected future earnings of listed companies. We contribute empirical findings to current debate on the relationship between environmental performance and shareholder value. The cost-concerned school argues that environmental investments represent only increased costs, resulting in decreased earnings and lower market values. The value creation school regards environmental efforts as a way to increase competitive advantage and improve financial returns to the investors. The current research finds support for the cost-concerned school, because the results indicate that environmental performance has a negative influence on the market value of firms.
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Jeroen Derwall, Nadja Guenster, Rob Bauer, and Kees Koedijk
2005
The Eco-Efficiency Premium Puzzle
Financial Analysts Journal
Volume 61, Number 2, Pages 51-63.
Abstract
Does socially responsible investing (SRI) lead to inferior or superior portfolio performance? This study focused on the concept of "eco-efficiency," which can be thought of as the economic value a company creates relative to the waste it generates, and found that SRI produced superior performance. Based on Innovest Strategic Value Advisors' corporate eco-efficiency scores, the study constructed and evaluated two equity portfolios that differed in eco-efficiency. The high-ranked portfolio provided substantially higher average returns than its low-ranked counterpart over the 1995–2003 period. This performance differential could not be explained by differences in market sensitivity, investment style, or industry-specific factors. Moreover, the results remained significant for all levels of transaction costs, suggesting that the incremental benefits of SRI can be substantial.
Keywords: Portfolio Management, Equity Strategies, Performance Measurement and Evaluation, Performance Measurement, Corporate Governance
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Pontus Cerin
Environmental Strategies in Industry
- Turning Business Incentives into Sustainability
Swedish Environmental Protection Agency Report 5455
2005
In Brief
How do firms handle environmental issues, how can their transmitted images be evaluated and what are the economic and environmental results? This report analyzes how and why various actors treat environmental aspects and concepts of sustainability.
Author/Red: Pontus Cerin
Pages var. pag - 288pp.
Price (183.38 Incl VAT) SEK 173.00
Publ 2005-05 No 91-620-5455-4 No discount
Oder Print Copy at Swedish EPA's Online Bookstore
Download 1 848 kB FREE OF CHARGE at Swedish EPA's Web Portal
Description
In this report some of the concepts, tools and instruments that firms are using to respond to the global challenge of sustainable development are being reviewed. The review is made with a critical eye and the many barriers and limitations in the use of corporate environmental management tools are revealed. By widening the scope involving a larger group of actors and stakeholders in the development and application of corporate environmental management tools and policy instruments this book contributes to more holistic theoretical development in its field.
”This work is a timely and needed contribution to the theory and practice of corporate environmental strategies, supported by relevant case studies and practical examples. I recommend this report to all those interested in sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, cleaner production and environmental policy.”
Research Professor Dr. Jouni Korhonen, Editor-in-Chief, Progress in Industrial Ecology, Inderscience Publishers
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Pontus Cerin and Staffan Laestadius
2005
Implementing Environmental Management Accounting: Status and Challenges
Arnold Tukker, Pall M. Rikhardsson, Martin Bennett, Jan Jaap Bouma and Stefan Schaltegger (Eds.)
Eco-Efficiency in Industry and Science
Springer-Verlag GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany, Volume 18, Pages 63-80.
Abstract
Three dimensions of physically based environmental accounting are indicated — regional, company and product accounting — these have developed along different paths. In the globalised and highly specialised economy of today, company activities and their services are multinational and are to a decreasing degree to be seen as a subset of regions. Consequently, these accounting practices intersect each other, on three dimensions, from micro to macro levels. Even though they are all based on physical and energy input/output (I/O) analysis the differences in terminology, structure and evaluation methods make it difficult to exchange data and use them efficiently. This paper explores several aspects of these three environmental accounting dimensions such as the control engineering tradition, the lack of adequate data and the resource consuming work as well as incompatibility, overlapping scopes and aims. The conclusion is that the three accounting dimensions are similar in construction in spite of a development in independent paths. The differences are not primarily the three-letter acronyms of the tools but the objectives and control scope used in studies. If adopting a common framework and a global all-dimensional nomenmore sustainable.
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Gary Cunningham and Jean Harris
2005
Towards a Theory of Performance Reporting in Achieving Public Sector Accountability: A Field Study. Public Budgeting & Finance Journal.
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Gary Cunningham and Lars Hassel
2004
Psychic Distance And Budget Control Of Foreign Subsidiaries. Journal of International Accounting Research. Volume 3, Number 2.
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Gary Cunningham and Lars Hassel
2004
Budget Effectiveness in Multinational Corporations: A Systems Fit Approach. Journal of Global Buisiness Research. Volume 1, Number 1, pp. 61-74.
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Pontus Cerin and Peter Dobers
(Eds.)
The Contribution of Sustainable Investments to Sustainable Development, Progress in Industrial Ecology, An International Journal (PIE)
2004:Sept.
Call for Papers!
Submission deadline Sept. 1, 2005.
Being the linchpin in the increasingly globalised economy, the financial sector has the potential to play a key role in the international struggle towards Sustainable Development (SD) by steering today’s but also tomorrow’s resource usage. Increasingly, initiatives are taken by actors in the financial community to not only regard the fiduciary responsibility of investors, but also to incorporate wider concerns of ethical, social and environmental character.
Sustainable Investments (SI), among numerous denominations, are investments that combine the investors’ fi-nancial needs and the investment’s societal and environmental impacts. This investment segment has grown to a non- negligible size during the last decade and has found many advocators within as well as outside the invest-ment community such as academics, analysts, investors, NGO’s and fund trustees. The common promotion of SI’s is by merely stressing their financial performance in comparison to mainstream investments, neglecting to emphasise the environmental and social performance of such investments.
A contributing factor for this may be due to the difficulties for companies to extract quantifiable data, despite existing reporting and assessment initiatives. Another issue obstructing a clear view on the societal contribution of SI’s is the fundamental question of who is to decide what is ethical and sustainable. To what degree are the ethical considerations of institutional and mutual funds coherent with the views of investors and society in gen-eral?
The main objective of this special issue is to survey the SI phenomenon today, detecting and discussing present opportunities and obstacles, and importantly, to find roads for improvements, enhancing the imperative role that SIs can play in financing operations that lead to improved environmental and social performances in concert with a thriving economy.
For further information, download the full call, or contact Pontus Cerin. More information is available on the PIE journal hompage at the Inderscience publisher's Internet site.
The call is also available in erroneous Chinese, Japanese and Spanish.
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Peter Dobers and Lars Strannegård
(Eds.)
Sustainability and Design.Business Strategy and the Environment
2004:June
Call for Papers!
Submission deadline June 1, 2004.
The starting point for this special issue is the role of sustainability and design in a world of abundance. We call for reflective and concept-driven papers on sustainability, design and consumption. We seek papers that scrutinize the aesthetic, emotional, communicative, social and identity-related aspects of the consumption of products and services. We invite papers from many different disciplines such as, for instance, architecture, design, management, city planning, marketing, ethics, or organization studies. We are interested in how norms and ideals, that connect or disconnect sustainability and design, have changed over time, and thus, how sustainability and design can be understood in a general context.
For further information, download the full call above, or contact Peter Dobers.
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Pontus Cerin
Turning Corporate Behaviour into Sustainability: Challenges of Environmental Strategies in Industry
2004:February
Doctoral Thesis
Main supervisor:
Professor Staffan Laestadius, Dept. of Industrial Economics and Management, Royal Institute of Technology
Co-supervisors:
Associate Professor Peter Dobers, Dept. of Industrial Economics and Management, Royal Institute of Technology
Professor Gunnar Eliasson, Dept. of Infrastructure, Royal Institute of Technology
Discussant:
Professor Stefan Schaltegger, Universität Lüneburg
Committee:
Ph.D. Magnus Enell, Corporate Manager Sustainable Development ITT Flygt AB
Adjunct Professor Hans Lundberg, Mälardalen University
Professor Nigel Roome, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Reviewer:
Associate Professor Pall Rikhardsson, Århus Business School
Unlike the situation a few decades ago, today in the first years of the 21st century environmental concerns have spread to many groups of society. Even the formerly stubborn resistance pockets in industry have turned around 180 degrees, advocating the greening of industry. In this new agenda: industry is sometimes perceived as the socially responsible guardian of society and actors within industry and Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) continually reinforce each other’s trustworthiness. Notwithstanding this progress major leaps in environmental improvements have failed to appear. This thesis contributes to an understanding of how and why actors treat environmental aspects and the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development. The phenomenon of corporate environmental concerns, both empirically and theoretically, is critically analysed. How do firms handle environmental issues internally, how do external actors evaluate firms’ transmitted images and what are the economic and environmental results? It is indicated in the papers constituting the thesis that a discrepancy exists between what firms state in their external communications compared to the real environmental and economic outcomes from their organisations’ operations. There exists, however, also a tendency of blind faith in firms’ statements among actors that for a living inform the public about industry’s societal commitment. As such, sustainability indexes may – due to erroneous selection criteria in the indexes – appear as environmental ideals, leading environmentally conscious customers to invest in large and dirty firms. The voluntary stage which the environmental and sustainable reporting is faced with ought to receive policy support to make reportees report consistently from year to year and comparable to other reporters. Moreover, in order to retain the environmental and economic win-win situations laying around to be picked up by firms as advocators of win-wins have claimed since the mid 1990’s, and nothing much has happened yet, the papers in the thesis argue for policy actions that will take transactions costs into consideration by signing property rights responsibility – e.g. to emit – to those actors who can use the resources most efficiently, turning the problem of open access into a production factor. Then the firms can receive private economic benefits for innovating societal improvements. The papers in the thesis suggest, hence, to delimit the need and possibilities for decouple corporate external information and to promote innovative activities for a better environment by increased public support in extended responsibility, public procurement as well as to spread environmental information to actors that have deficient knowledge of such. One can always call for companies to act more or less altruistic for the benefit of our environment, as is often done, but we have to recall that the common consumer has in many cases proven not to be willing to promote such solutions, nor the companies providing services to them. Consumers, hence, have to take an active position in the rôle of voters, influencing politics to take a stance by the powerful means of the public to promote innovations that are beneficial to society as a whole.
KEYWORDS: Asymmetric Information, Corporate Environmental Reports, Corporate Social Responsibility, Environmental Management, Environmental Policy, Information Bridges, Opportunistic Behaviour, Public Procurement, Property Rights, Sustainability Indexes.
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Rob Bauer, Nadja Guenster and Rogér Otten
2004
Emperical evidence on corporate governance in Europe: The effect on stock returns, firm value and performance
Journal of Asset Management
Volume 5, Number 2, Pages 91-104.
Abstract
This paper analyses whether good corporate governance leads to higher common stock returns and enhances firm value in Europe. Throughout, this study uses Deminor Corporate Governance Ratings for companies included in the FTSE Eurotop 300. Following the approach of Gompers et al. (2003, 'Corporate Governance and Equity Prices', Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118, 107–55), portfolios are built consisting of well-governed and poorly governed companies and their performances are compared. The impact of corporate governance on firm valuation is also examined. The results show a positive relationship between these variables and corporate governance. This relationship weakens substantially after adjusting for country differences. Finally, the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance is analysed, as approximated by net profit margin and return on equity. Surprisingly, and contrary to Gompers et al. (2003), a negative relationship is found between governance standards and these earnings-based performance ratios for which possible implications are discussed.
Keywords: corporate governance, asset pricing, equity returns, firm value, performance attribution, profitability ratios
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Pontus Cerin
2004
Where is corporate social responsibility actually heading?
Progress in Industrial Ecology, An International Journal (PIE)
Volume 1 - Issue 1/2/3, Pages 307 - 330.
Abstract
A discrepancy is indicated between the emergence of environmentalism and the sustainability agenda, and accomplished environmental improvements. Despite the increasing number of success stories, environmental and social progress is not keeping up to the same advancement pace. The enormous information asymmetries among actors in society and the dangerous circularity of rating and selection of firms may well obstruct the changing of the State of the World. Sustainability indexes may lead to investments in twice as much greenhouse gas emissions per turnover which is probably the opposite of what the environmental conscious individual investors have in mind. Thus, actions that diminish the need for image building are suggested. The scope of corporate environmental and social responsibility should be extended to better coincide with the actor who has the largest potentials to make a change, including governmental bodies by strengthened environmental and social public procurement – that is to Walk the Talk themselves.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility; corporate environmental responsibility; hijacking environmentalism; information asymmetries; sustainability indexes; environmental image building.
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Rob Bauer, Jeroen Derwall and Roderick Molenaar
2004
The Real-Time Predictability of the Size and Value Premium in Japan
Pacific-Basin Finance Journal
Volume 12, Number 5, Pages 503-523.
Abstract
Our study examines whether the short-term variation in the Japanese size and value premium is sufficiently predictable to be exploited by a timing strategy. In the spirit of Pesaran and Timmermann (1995), we employ a dynamic modeling approach in which we explicitly allow for permutations among the determinants in order to mitigate typical data-snooping biases. Using a base set of candidate predictor variables, we perform an in-sample estimation of all economically sensible models. Subsequently, a 'best' model is determined according to a selection criterion. However, whereas most studies use in-sample model selection criteria, we introduce an out-of-sample training period to select our models. We then implement our strategy in a second-stage out-of-sample period: the trading period. All stages re-occur on a monthly basis via a rolling window framework. The results confirm sufficient predictability under lower transaction cost levels. Under high transaction costs scenarios it is more difficult to obtain incremental benefits.
Keywords: Size premium, value premium, recursive modeling, model selection, style switching, real time predictability
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Pontus Cerin
Sustainability Hijacked by the Sociological Wall of Self-Evidence
Corporate Social Responsibility and
Environmental Management, forthcoming.
2003 Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons
The today commonly applied structuring of sociological theories – Burrell and Morgan’s four-fielder (1979) – in the environmental and sustainability agenda may, unfortunately, serve as a platform for the advocators of leaving business alone to realise win-win solutions by themselves – that is obstructing change by encouraging business as usual. The reason, for this hijacking of environmentalism, is a dichotomisation of regulation and radical change along an axis describing the nature of society. By instead focusing on power along the society continuum, the tool describing sociological theory enables policy thought that promotes a societal change towards increased sustainability.
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David Bauner
The introduction of the
Automotive catalytic converter in Chile, Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Volume 37, Part 2, pp.157–200
2003:May
The large basin which houses Santiago de Chile has suffered from environmental problems
ever since wood-burning stoves came into wide-spread use. These problems have worsened as
motorized vehicles became a regular part of the urban scene. Following the first democratic
elections in the Republic of Chile after 18 years of military rule, the regional Special
Commission for Decontamination of Chile's capital, Santiago, was formed in 1990. The issue
of regulating passenger cars emissions was one of the first initiatives on the commission's
agenda, empowering a group of consultants and administrators to set up a structure for the
transition in legal, economic and commercial terms. The regulatory proposal was presented to
the ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications in 1991. Some vehicle importers,
predominately Japanese, saw the potential market and teamed up with fuel distributors. In
April 1992, the first car with a catalytic converter was sold as unleaded gasoline became
available, and from September 1 the same year the approved decree required every new car in
the capital regions to be equipped with a catalytic converter. Chile thus introduced the
automotive catalytic converter in little more than one year. In most other nations sporting
similar emission level requirements, especially car producing countries, this process have
taken half a decade or more
This paper deals with the diffusion of technology to curb automotive emissions in Santiago de
Chile in the beginning of the 90:s. The strategic aim of the project of which this paper is the
first publication is to interpret some important examples of societal dynamics to show and
discuss how environmentally motivated innovations and technologies are managed in different
corners of the world. It is argued that the critical factors for this process was the effective and
efficient adoption and adaptation of foreign technology, policy and market space, Chile's
common understanding of the need to reduce emissions and prevalent strong economic growth
permitting widespread car (ownership and) renewal.
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Pontus Cerin and Staffan Laestadius
The Efficiency of becoming Eco-Efficient
Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal
Volume 14, Issue 2, pp. 221-241.
2003:May © MCB University Press Ltd.
At Emerald journal page:
[Abstract]
[Full text]
[PDF]
The 1990’s has been characterised by a rapid growth in corporate environmental
management and analyses. The aim of the paper is to examine the environmental outcome
and corporate economic benefits from this work in industry in general – the efficiency of
becoming eco-efficient. This is done by using a dominant player in the telecom industry,
Ericsson which also is prominent in their environmental work, as a case study from 1997 to
2002. In the late 1990’s a gap is indicated, in the paper, between the needs of company units
financing environmental studies and the research scope used by the environmental experts,
initiating the work. The environmentally motivated life-cycle studies have not improved
ongoing design projects towards eco-efficient offerings. Corporate product units need time
and cost effective procedures and guidelines to enable front-end design. As a consequence,
resources for life-cycle assessments (LCA) have decreased while materials declarations still
goes on, having a role as a front-end design instrument. Now after the turn of the millennium
the hitherto experimental mode in environmental tools for analyses, LCA, has evolved into a
method for stakeholder communication of both life cycle environmental impacts for individual
products as well as for the entire life cycle impacts of the whole product portfolio of the
corporation. LCA’s play a role in design projects, exclusively as a back-end design tool, by
having improved the design guidelines used.
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Getachew Assefa
Towards a systematic approach for Technology Assessment by combining Material Flow Analysis, Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing - Abstract
2003:Feb
Licentiate Thesis
Organisation: EcoEffect
Technology assessment (TA) is one of the tools developed in early 1970s to provide indications of the impacts of technologies. TA continued in its institutional form until the US Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was closed down in 1995, twenty three years after its establishment by the US Congress. One of the reasons for OTA's closure was related to methodological deficiencies both at the conceptual and tactical level.
Solving the methodology problem of TA requires a multifaceted effort. At the conceptual level, the three dimensions of sustainability (ecological, economic and social) could be used as a framework for TA. In addressing the problem at the tactical level, combining different systems analysis tools and concepts is important. This thesis is particularly about using a tool that combines Material/Substance Flow Analysis (MFA/SFA), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) in TA applications.
The combination of MFA/SFA, LCA, and LCC addresses the ecological and economic dimensions of TA. A specific tool that has such combination of MFA/SFA, LCA, and LCC is the Swedish ORWARE model.
The pros and cons of the combinations of these tools generally, and particularly within the ORWARE platform are discussed using illustration from research applications.
The quantitative nature of the component tools enhances both measuring and understanding issues addressed. MFA/SFA-based TA simplifies recognition of potential accumulation of toxic substances or depletion of resources. The advantage that LCA is established among decision makers, and has international standard and established platform for methodological development and harmonisation places a TA having LCA as a component in a good position. Use of LCC in a TA tool reinforces the economic assessment capability of the latter with considerations of both internal and external costs.
ORWARE has the merit of providing quantitative, even-handed, and holistic analysis with a well structured result presentation. Its basic limitation is related to the difficulty of describing technologies that do not exist at commercial scale in terms of material and energy flows. Using the analogy of a three-legged stool, the limitations of MFA/SFA, LCA, and LCC have an effect on the performance of ORWARE as a TA tool.
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Lena Danius
Data uncertainties in material flow analysis. Local case study and literature survey. - Abstract
2002:Dec
Licentiate Thesis
Organisation: Industrial Ecology
The aim of this thesis is to discuss and analyse the influence of data uncertainties with regard
to the reliability of material flow analysis (MFA) studies. MFA, as a part of environmental
systems analysis, is a method belonging to the research field of industrial ecology and more
specifically industrial metabolism. As such, the method strives at giving a holistic view of the
complex world we live in, in order to reduce negative environmental impact. Among other
things, MFA studies have been proposed to be useful for priority setting and following up in
municipalities.
Serving as a starting point is a local case study of flows of nitrogen in a Swedish municipality,
Västerås. The case study has been performed using the ComBox-model. The years studied are
1995 and 1998. The main sectors in society emitting nitrogen to water were identified as the
agricultural and household sectors. The dominating sectors emitting nitrogen to air were
identified as the agricultural, transport and infrastructure sectors.
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Pontus
Cerin
Characteristics of environmental reporters
on the OM Stockholm Exchange
Business Strategy and the Environment, Volume 11, Issue 5, pp.
298-311.
2002:September Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons
[Preprint]
At Wiley journal page:
[Abstract]
[PDF]
External validation of company environmental performance is normally based on corporate environmental reports, due to the lack of other information. Critics of these reports, however, claim that these are no more than public relations exercises, consisting mainly of wordy de-scriptions and glossy pictures. It is therefore important to turn the spotlight on the real charac-ter of the companies behind the reports. Less than 10% of the companies listed on the OM Stockholm Exchange, however, provide documented environmental reports on the Internet (DERI) annually. The highest DERI percentages are found among those industry sectors that began reporting some ten years ago. Data from the Dow Jones Country Index Sweden shows that DERI producers have an average market capitalisation some six times greater than non-producers. Moreover, the DERI producers emitted twice as much CO2 per turnover as the non-DERI producers’. The fact that less than half of the companies on the OM Stockholm Exchange presented CO2 emission data somewhat weakens the conclusions on emissions. The fact 60% of the DERI producers could not provide complete CO2 emission data for their companies does say something concrete about the usefulness of current DERIs as a tool for externally determining company environmental performance characteristics.
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Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder
Ethical issues of global marketing: avoiding bad faith in visual representation
European Journal of Marketing, Volume 36, Issue 5/6, pp.
570 - 594.
2002:May © MCB University Press Ltd.
At Emerald journal page:
[Abstract]
[PDF]
This paper examines visual representation in marketing communication from a distinctive, interdisciplinary perspective that draws on ethics, visual studies and critical race theory. An ontological approach is offered as an alternative to phenomenologically based approaches in marketing scholarship that use consumer responses to generate data. Suggests ways to clarify complex issues of representational ethics in marketing by applying a semiotically-based analysis that places ontological identity at the center of societal marketing concerns. Analyzes representations of the exotic Other in disparate marketing campaigns, including advertising, tourist promotions and music, as examples of bad faith marketing strategy. Music is an important force in marketing communication, yet marketing studies have rarely considered music and its visual representations as data for inquiry. Feels that considering visual representation within marketing from an ontological standpoint contributes additional insight into societal marketing and places global marketing processes within the intersection of ethics, aesthetics and representation.
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Lennart Karlson
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) - a Sustainable Management Tool? - The cover essay
2002:May
Licentiate Thesis
Supervisor: Staffan Laestadius
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool to study the potential environmental impacts of goods and services over their life cycles. The aim of this thesis is to analyse and discuss the relevance, efficiency and sustainability of the LCA tool in industrial organisations. Management control and accounting theories have been analysed to identify parallels and similarities between LCA and other management activities and tools.
Industrial users perceive LCA as a relevant but not enough cost efficient tool. The LCA tool do not seem to be enough integrated in operational activities or linked to other established management tools. Two major tasks have to be dealt with if LCA should become a sustainable tool in industry, first to improve the efficiency of the LCA tool and secondly to define the role of LCA from a management control perspective. The demand for ecological information in varying management control situations should be the point of departure irrespective of improvement actions taken. The efficiency of the LCA tool could be enhanced in different ways. One route is to "build away" the drawbacks, e.g. through further developing inventory databases making the resource demanding inventory analysis phase more efficient. It is however important to not underestimate the costs related to these databases. Another opposite route is to develop LCA into an easy to use and resource efficient tool aimed for coarse
judgements with the option to conduct more complete assessments when necessary. These two alternatives are not necessarily in opposition to each other, and both could be explored in parallel. The role of LCA in management control is however the most critical aspect to elucidate and the large base of experiences from other management control ambitions, as e.g. management accounting could be used in this work.
A new application aimed to control the life cycle environmental impacts on inter firm level is suggested. The application is based on economic theory and provides business incentives that could serve as one driving force towards a more sustainable society.
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Pontus
Cerin
Communication
in Corporate Environmental
Reports
Corporate Social Responsibility and
Environmental Management, Volume 9, Issue 1, pp.
46-66.
2002:March Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons
[Preprint]
At Wiley journal page:
[Abstract]
[PDF]
Since the beginning of the 1990s the number of
companies producing environmental reports have
increased considerably, a rise that now has
plateaued. Some critics claim environmental reports
are merely an exercise in public relations. This
study describes the ascent of and the motives
behind corporate environmental reporting and
examines the extent to which the messages
communicated in environmental reports correlate
with the messages contained in corresponding annual
reports and actual corporate behaviour. The
indicated praxis of steering attention away from
environmental problems - a by-pass solution - can
involve providing contradictory information to
various stakeholders. This article looks into
third-party verification impacts on the credibility
of environmental reports and calls for stricter
reporting rules. The paper also discusses how
eco-efficiency and sustainability demands placed on
the scope of environmental reporting could enhance
the sustainability of this reporting phenomenon, by
for example doing away with merely limiting reports
to company-judicial borders.
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Nikodemus Solitander and Gyöngyi Kovács
Corporate Environmental Management: A Blueprint for Categorising Environmental Policies
2002:March
Working paper in Corporate Geography and Logistics, Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Helsinki, Finland.
Today environmental management is not a question of whether to implement it or not, rather it has become a question of how to implement it. Environmental management has become a systematic cyclical process that spans the entire organisation from top-management to shop floor workers. Environmental strategies are set in order to be the framework of the environmental visions and aims. This framework then sets the boundaries for more tactical and operational goals and measures. In order to achieve these goals a company has a wide range of conceptual environmental management strategies and tools at its disposal. The overall aim of the study is to identify corporate environmental policies and tools, and to categorise them either on a strategic, tactical or operational level. It also clarifies how the decision-making sequence can be described in environmental management, and it develops a sequential model for a hierarchical timeframe in environmental decision-making.
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Marjo Hyödynmaa
Miljöledning i byggföretag - Motiv, möjligheter och hinder
2002:March
Licentiate Thesis
Supervisors: Jan Forslin and Monica Bertilsdotter
Målet med denna studie har varit att belysa byggföretagets
miljöutveckling och dess roll i miljöutvecklingen i stort. Studierna
inriktades mot miljöledning och frågor om avfallshanteringen. Syftet
har varit att ge en vägledning för byggföretag att utveckla sitt
miljöarbete och denna studie tar ställning till frågorna
om byggföretag kan påverka på återvinningen av byggavfall och
om miljöledningen är lämplig att tillämpa i byggföretag?
Ledningssystem, miljöledning, miljöutveckling i samhället och
avfallsfrågor i byggbranschen undersöktes inledningsvis genom
litteraturstudier. Resultatet visar att miljöledning som
ledningskoncept grundar sig på tidigare ledningssystem och använder
liknande ledningsrutiner som bl.a. kvalitetsstyrning. Trycket i
samhället gör att miljöledning sprids till näringslivets alla sektorer.
De empiriska studierna genomfördes i samverkan med byggföretag och
avfallshanteringsföretag inom Stockholmsområdet. I studierna
undersöktes möjligheter och hinder att utveckla miljöledning och
källsortering samt hanteringsmetoder, som användes för byggavfall i
avfallsanläggningar inom området. Datainsamlingen pågick vid två
tidsperioder, 1995 och 2000. De använda forskningsmetoderna var
intervjuer, frågeformulär, besiktning på byggarbetsplatser samt
genomgång av tryckt material. Resultatet tyder på att återvinningen av
byggavfall har trots allt inte utvecklats som förväntat, även om
källsorteringen har blivit allmänt spridd. Uppföljningen har varit
problematisk därför att byggavfallsmängderna inte har registrerats
enligt avfallstyp, även om byggavfall utgör den största delen av avfall
som hamnar till deponi. Byggföretagen började med källsorteringen på
riktigt i mitten av 1990-talet. En väl planerad källsortering visade
sig vara ekonomiskt fördelaktig att genomföra och källsorteringen
utvecklades väl framför allt i större byggföretag. Källsorteringen var
också ett bevis att miljöhänsyn påverkade företagets miljöprofil
positivt. Miljöledningssystem däremot blev aktuellt i slutet av
1990-talet i de större byggföretagen. Miljölagstiftningen ökade
fortlöpande och beställare och samhället började kräva allt bredare
miljöhänsyn. De större byggföretagen kunde svara på utmaningar och
utveckla miljöledningssystem för att driva miljöarbetet på systematiskt
sätt. Miljöledningen utvecklades väl i företag där företagsledningen
betraktade den som främjande för affärerna. Slutsatsen är, att
sorteringen vid källan är nödvändig för att mängderna byggavfall som
hamnar till deponi skall kunna minskas. Miljöinformation, rådgivning
och uppföljning på byggarbetsplatserna behöver ökas för att få
källsorteringen att fungera. Resultat från återvinningen måste följas
upp och rapporteras för att behålla motivationen i företagen.
Miljöledningen har betraktats som en del av företagsledningen i större
byggföretag, där miljöanpassningen har visat sig öka företagets
miljöprofil och vara främjande för affärerna. Miljöledningssystem har
betraktats som ett bra verktyg att driva miljöskyddsarbetet i
företagen. De mindre byggföretag däremot har inte haft resurser för att
satsa på miljöutvecklingen och satsar på miljöhänsyn enbart enligt
lagstiftningen eller beställarens miljökrav.
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Pontus
Cerin and Lennart Karlson
Business incentives for sustainability: a property
rights approach
Ecological Economics, Volume 40, Issue 1, pp. 13-22.
2002:January Copyright (c) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
[Preprint]
At Elsevier journal page:
[Abstract]
[Full text]
[PDF]
Public and private demands for sustainable
development put pressure on firms to develop
strategies that include environmental concerns.
Environmental effects from products often appear as
externalities, outside the legal boundary of the
producing company. These companies often possess
the best competence to optimise the total life
cycle environmental performance of its products.
They are, however, neither obliged nor stimulated
enough by policy incentives to do so from a
sustainable development perspective. The policy
instruments used today are mostly of a
control-and-demand type, i.e. they do not create
sufficient incentives to go further than hedging
over set requirements. Environmental concerns and
tightened environmental policy parameters have
mostly been associated with the notion of
additional costs and thus a restriction on economic
performance. However, since the mid 1990s, several
papers have called for corporate win-win situations
as well as instruments giving up-stream incentives
for change, but not enough abatement of
environmental impacts have emerged in reality.
Perhaps this is due to the lack of proper
connection between economic theory on the one hand,
and incentive advocating articles and instruments
on the other. We propose a concept for trading of
product life cycle (PLC) emission rights, based on
property rights and transaction cost theories
considering the problem with asymmetric information
over the value chain. The initial financial impacts
from such PLC instruments are shown to be
significant for the system provider, since
emissions ñ and resource use ñ become
production costs. This provides economic incentives
to take an increased responsibility for information
flow as well as initiatives for product
innovations.
Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest have chosen to review this article, April 2002:
http://www.ictsd.org/weekly/02-04-03/resources.htm
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Gary Cunningham, Scott Eriksen and Francisco Lopez
2002
Measuring and Creating Value at ENDESA - A Teaching Case. Management Accounting Quarterly. Volume 17.
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Gary Cunningham and Jean Harris
2001
A heuristic Framework for Accountability of Governmental Subunits
Public Management Review
Volume 3, Number 2, Pages 145 - 165.
Abstract
New public management rhetoric calls for greater accountability of activities of governmental subunits in order to enhance effectiveness. This call focuses on results control as a universal approach that is perceived to bring the benefits of private-sector management to the public sector. While this claim has exploratory merit, a theoretical framework is needed to assess the processes by which accountability leads to effectiveness. This article builds such a framework. Public-sector and private-sector literatures are reviewed and integrated. This review suggests that singular, universal approaches to control are not appropriate nor desirable. Instead, using a systems/configuration approach, which is ideally suited to the complexity of governmental organizations, profiles of four different types of governmental subunits are constructed along with the control approaches that ideally may lead to effective performance in each. This framework is a heuristic device that expands the knowledge and theory of accountability in government organizations and can guide future research.
Keywords: Accountability Effectiveness Management Control New Public Management Performance Measures Performance Reporting
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Peter
Dobers, Lars Strannegård and Rolf Wolff
Knowledge
Interests in Corporate Environmental
Management
Business Strategy and the Environment,
Volume 10, Issue 6, pp. 335-343.
2001: November Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons
We know from earlier studies that corporate
environmental management is a young discipline, not
yet integrated in general management and
organization studies, but that researchers take an
increasing part in the ongoing scientific
conversation. However, the underlying knowledge
interests characterizing the field of corporate
environmental management is yet empirically
unsubstantiated. One way to find out what elements
make up the field is to analyse the contents of the
most influential writings in the field. The present
article identifies the 10 most cited works in
Business Strategy and the Environment in 1992 -
2000 and explores the content of these texts. We
conceptualise a typology for analysing corporate
environmental management theory and formulate a
characterization of the dominating knowledge
interests. Our findings show that the theoretical
fundament of corporate environmental management
lacks a hermeneutic knowledge interest.
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Michael McCrae and Henrik Nilsson
2001
The explanatory and predictive power of different specifications of the Ohlson (1995) valuation models
European Accounting Review
Volume 10, Number 2, Pages 57 - 65.
Abstract
Accounting-based valuation studies of US firms tend to support Ohlson's proposition that residual income and book value numbers have information content in explaining observed market values. But European evidence also suggests that the conservative/ liberal orientation of accounting tradition can produce significant national differences in associations between accounting performance measures and stock prices - in earnings behaviour, coefficient values and parameter sensitivity. We address these issues from an equity valuation perspective using Swedish data to assess the additional information content of Ohlson's information dynamics and analysts' forecasts in relation to market valuations in a more conservative accounting environment than the US. The study compares the explanatory and predictive power of Ohlson's (1995) residual income model (RIV) with a linear information dynamics version (LIM) that specifies both residual income and non-accounting information as autoregressive processes. Both versions are applied with, and without, future performance expectations from non-accounting sources (analysts' forecasts). As with US evidence, we find that the inclusion of analysts' forecasts improves both (i) cross-sectional correlations with current prices for both RIV and LIM models and (ii) the predictive power of RIV models in relation to future annual cross-sectional stock returns. The contribution of linear information dynamics is significant but varies across approaches. We also find significant differences between Swedish and US firms in earnings behaviour and associations between accounting numbers and market equity prices
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Pontus Cerin and Peter Dobers
Who
is Rating the
Raters?
Corporate Environmental Strategy,Volume 8,
Issue 2, pp. 95-97.
2001:September Copyright (c) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
At Elsevier journal page:
[Abstract]
[Full text]
[PDF]
The growing interest in the industrialised world to
invest according to sustainability criteria has
resulted in numerous sustainability funds. The
probably best known sustainability index, Dow Jones
Sustainability Group Index (DJSGI), has been
presented in a previous issue of Corporate
Environmental Strategy, however lacking a necessary
critical perspective. In the article, the
methodology underlying the DJSGI is said to have a
consistent framework. In a recent study we have
highlighted the elements upon which the DJSGI is
based and have found evidence that there might be
factors other than mere sustainability factors that
make up the seemingly superior market performance
of DJSGI. The aim of this response is to briefly
present these factors.
Pontus Cerin and Peter
Dobers
What does the Performance of the Dow Jones
Sustainability Index Tell Us?
Eco-Management and Auditing,Volume 8, Issue
3, pp. 123-133.
2001:July Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons
At Wiley journal page:
[Abstract]
[PDF]
The Dow Jones Sustainability Group Index (DJSGI) is
really a family of indexes used to identify and
track the performance of sustainably-run companies.
When the DJSGI was introduced in September 1999, it
was claimed to outperform the more generalised Dow
Jones Global Index (DJGI) in respect to market
capitalisation growth. Corporations, NGOs and
governmental agencies often refer to the DJSGI for
illustrating that integrating economic,
environmental and social factors into the
operations and management of a company increases
shareholder value and business activity
transparency. The DJSGI is also used by global
corporations to legitimise the efforts they put
into sustainability. However, there are no studies
carried out to date that illuminate the business
activity transparency of the DJSGI. This study
investigates the structure and transparency of the
DJSGI compared with the DJGI. The results of this
study show that the DJSGI focuses more on the
technology sector than the general DJGI does. The
average market capitalisation value of companies
listed in the DJSGI was found to be two-and-a-half
times the corresponding average for those listed in
the DJGI. This raises some legitimate questions.
Does the superior performance of the DJSGI reflect
the greater efforts DJSGI companies put into
sustainability, or a dependence on asymmetric
distributions in company sectors, world regions or
market capitalisation? This paper therefore
endeavours to illustrate the transparency of the
DJSGI.
The intention of these two articles is to create a
debate regarding sustainability indexes, making
them transparant in their own work in making
companies strive towards sustainability issues
transparant to the outside world. By doing so we
believe that the value of these indexes will
strengthen in the long run.
Some articles that write about these scientific
papers and refer to them are:
LifeWorth's atricle "Money fashions change" refer to e.g. Cerin-Dobers, G. Soros and Prof. Hopkins October-December, 2001:
http://www.new-academy.ac.uk/Research/Review_2001/fashions.html
Ecology vs Economy by Prof. (of Finance and Management) Yoku Beppu at Teikyo University, Japan (in Japanese):
http://isis.main.teikyo-u.ac.jp/CD/DOCUMENT/0200180C.HTM
Pick of the month article in Tomorrow March
2001:
http://www.tomorrow-web.com/feature/feature_mar01.html
This article is also available at the SAM Group in PDF:
http://www.sam-group.com/SAM_pdf/SAM_in_the_media/english/20010401_tomorrow_djsgi.pdf
Password protected article in Business and the
Environment:
http://www.cutter.com/bate/fulltext/2001/04/bate0104b.html
Reprint of Miljöledaren - Prominent
environmental newsletter in Sweden (In Swedish)
cer-dob-ml-djsi.pdf
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Arne
Kaijser
Redirecting
infrasystems towards sustainability. What can we
learn from
history?
2001:July
YYYY, Ongoing revision
One of the most fundamental societal changes in the
Western World in the past two centuries has been
the introduction and expansion of a number of large
technological systems for transportation,
communication, energy and water supply, and sewage
and garbage collection. A common characteristic of
these systems is that they facilitate movements of
different kinds; of people, goods and information.
Furthermore, they provide services that are
publicly accessible and which fulfil a basic
function in society. I will use the term
infrastructural systems, or shortly just
infrasystems, to denote these systems.
It
is the strong historic legacy of infrasystems that
is the point of departure of this article. I
believe that a prerequisite for redirecting
infrasystems towards sustainability is an
understanding of their developments in the past and
of their influence on settlement patterns. The
purpose of the article is to contribute to such an
understanding. The article covers a very broad
topic and is therefore of a rather general nature.
I try to highlight some patterns and mechanisms
that I believe are particularly important, and for
pedagogic reasons I use a number of examples as
illustrations. The structure of the article is as
follows. First a short introduction to the research
field is given and some characteristics of
infrasystems are presented. The following section
focuses on the dynamics of infrasystems, analysing
the factors and mechanisms that have contributed to
their development in the past. The third section
briefly outlines the impacts of infrasystems on
society at large and especially on settlement
patterns. The last section is devoted to a
discussion of what lessons we can learn from
history about the possibilities for redirecting
infrasystems in the future.
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Staffan
Laestadius and Lennart Karlson
Eco-efficient
products and services through LCA in
R&D/design
2001:June
Environmental Management and Health
Increasing demand for sustainable development
during the last decades has expanded the scope of
corporate responsibility to include environmental
issues in all levels of operations. A number of
different environmental management tools have been
developed and implemented in companies. One
important question is whether the resources spent
in environmental management tools are used in an
optimal way. Another question is if these resources
give more eco-efficient products as well as
increased competitiveness. The aim of this paper is
to analyse whether, and to what extent, the
environmental management tool LCA is perceived as
efficient within ABB. The conclusions to be drawn
from this study are somewhat contradictory. On the
one hand the technical, economic and environmental
benefits from current use of the LCA tool seem to
be very modest and LCA activities seem not to be
integrated in normal operational activities, nor
have they been used frequently in product
development projects. On the other hand, there is a
very positive opinion about the applicability and
future use of the LCA tool. In fact a majority of
the respondents believe that the LCA tool will stay
and can be useful in the future.
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Helena Greijer, Lennart Karlson, Sten-Eric Lindquist and Anders Hagfeldt
Environmental aspects of electricity generation from a nanocrystalline dye sensitized solar cell system
Renewable Energy, Volume 23, Issue 1,
pp. 27-39.
2001:May Copyright (c) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
At Elsevier journal page:
[Abstract]
[Full text]
[PDF]
A Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, of a nanocrystalline dye sensitized solar cell (ncDSC) system has been performed, according to the ISO14040 standard. In brief, LCA is a tool to analyse the total environmental impact of a product or system from cradle to grave. Six different weighing methods were used to rank and select the significant environmental aspects to study further. The most significant environmental aspects according to the weighing methods are emission of sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide emission was selected as the environmental indicator depending on the growing attention on the global warming effect. In an environmental comparison of electricity generation from a ncDSC system and a natural gas/combined cycle power plant, the gas power plant would result in 450 g CO2/kWh and the ncDSC system in between 19¯47 g CO2/kWh. The latter can be compared with 42 g CO2/kWh, according to van Brummelen et al. "Life Cycle Assessment of Roof Integrated Solar Cell Systems, (Report: Department of Science, Technology and Society, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, 1994)" for another thin film solar cell system made of amorphous silicon. The most significant activity/component contributing to environmental impact over the life cycle of the ncDSC system is the process energy for producing the solar cell module. Secondly comes the components; glass substrate, frame and junction box. The main improvement from an environmental point of view of the current technology would be an increase in the conversion efficiency from solar radiation to electricity generation and still use low energy demanding production technologies. Also the amount of material in the solar cell system should be minimised and designed to maximise recycling.
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Pontus Cerin and José-Ignacio Ramírez
Use and Need for Environmental Analyses at Ericsson Corporate and
Site Levels
2000:January
A chapter in Miljösystemanaly och miljöledning, Eds. Fredrik Burström and Björn Frostell, Royal
Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden, pp.45-81.
Ericsson,
a major international telecom and datacom company, has an effect
on the environment through its activities and products. In consequence,
some of Ericsson's stakeholders require the company to lower its
environmental impact and to deliver solutions that help to reduce
global resource consumption and emissions detrimental to nature.
This paper examines the environmental work at two different levels
at Ericsson. The corporate organization as well as the environmental
one at Ericsson and the site level environmental organization at
the Kumla cellular mobile phones manufacturing site is presented.
Thereafter, the information needed to perform environmental management,
according to three levels: regulatory, company environmental policy
and sustainability demands, is discussed. Subsequently, a brief
description of some tools for environmental systems analysis is
pre-sented, and their applicability in general and within Ericsson
is discussed. Finally, from the above investigations and discussions,
it is concluded that: Ericsson is well advanced concerning Regulatory
Societal and Environmental Policy De-mands. Ericsson has not explicitly
taken up an approach, which would satisfy the information required
for a sustainable development. Probably a combination of LCA (Life
Cycle Assessment) supported by MFA (Material Flow Analyses) will
be able to supply an adequate measure of progress toward sustainability
within Ericsson. · When estimating a measure of sustainability the
choices of system boundaries and environmental aspects may be as
important as the analysis methodology chosen. To receive maximum
benefits, the environmental performance information gathered must
to a much greater extent be incorporated into a corporate management
system, which then will lead Ericsson to continuously check and
act upon the information gathered.
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Chris Durden, Lars Hassel and David Upton
1999
Cost Accounting and Performance Measurement in a Just-in-Time Production Environment
Asia Pacific Journal of Management
Volume 16, Number 1.
Abstract
There are normative statements in the literature, backed up by case observations and anecdotal evidence, which indicate that manufacturing companies operating just-in-time (JIT) production management systems should also change their cost accounting systems and place greater reliance on non-financial performance indicators. This study provides empirical evidence suggesting that JIT manufacturing companies which have made some degree of modification to their costing system demonstrate higher performance than JIT companies which have not made changes. The results also suggest that greater use of non-financial performance indicators is associated with higher performance irrespective of the production management system adopted.
Keywords: Just-in-time - cost accounting change - con-financial performance measures
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Mohan Lal and Lars Hassel
1998
The joint impact of environmental uncertainty and tolerance of ambiguity on top managers' perceptions of the usefulness of non-conventional management accounting information
The 4th Nordic Workshop on Interorganizational Research
Scandinavian Journal of Management
Volume 14, Issue 3, Pages 259-271.
Abstract
This study investigates the effects of environmental uncertainty, organizational size, and tolerance of ambiguity of managers on the perceived usefulness of information characteristics of management accounting systems (MAS). An overall measure of usefulness based on the four non-conventional MAS information characteristics of scope, timeliness, level of aggregation, and information for integration were selected based on previous MAS studies (Chenhall and Morris, 1986, The Accounting Review 61, 16–35). Tolerance of ambiguity was introduced as a moderator between environment and information usefulness because information is an important individual resource which makes individuals value information differently depending on the context. Size was included as a surrogate for organizational complexity to further test the strength of the person-environment interaction on information usefulness. The usefulness of MAS information is seen to be affected by interaction patterns between the individual, organizational and environmental levels. Data from 64 managers of New Zealand manufacturing companies suggests that managers of large firms with high tolerance of ambiguity perceive non-conventional MAS information to be most useful when the environment is uncertain.
Keywords: Management accounting systems; information usefulness; personality; environmental uncertainty
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Arne
Kaijser
In Swedish
Att
tämja naturen. De nederländska
vattensystemens utveckling under tusen
år
1997:Sept.
Pär Blomkvist och Arne Kaijser (red.), Den
konstruerade världen. Tekniska system i
historiskt perspektiv (Stockholm: Symposion
bokförlag, 1998),
pp. 299-322.
Huvudsyftet med denna uppsats är att beskriva
och analysera hur invånarna i
Nederländerna under en period av tusen
år har blivit allt skickligare i att
behärska vattenflöden, och hur de
därigenom också i grunden omformat
landskapet de lever i. Två aspekter av detta
skeende kommer särskilt att belysas. Den
första gäller det dynamiska samspel som
ägt rum mellan människa och natur. De
komponenter som människor byggt för att
styra vatten har i många fall fått
oväntade ekologiska konsekvenser, vilket
tvingat människorna att utveckla kraftfullare
medel för att styra vattenflöden, vilket
gett nya oväntade konsekvenser, och så
vidare. Den andra aspekten gäller
förutsättningarna för innovationer
och teknikspridning inom de nederländska
vattensystemen. Jag vill försöka visa att
Nederländerna kännetecknades av en
hög grad av "institutionell mångfald"
inom ett relativt litet geografiskt område
och att detta befrämjade utvecklingen av nya
lösningar.
Uppsatsen
har också ett mer generellt syfte,
nämligen att belysa de ekologiska effekterna
av stora tekniska system i allmänhet. De
nederländska vattensystemen utvecklades
efterhand till stora komplexa system av
infrastrukturkaraktär, eller vad jag
föredrar att kalla infrasystem. Under de
två senaste seklerna har utbyggnaden av
infrasystem i form av bl.a. kanaler,
järnvägar, gasverk, vatten- och
avloppssystem, elsystem, vägar och flygsystem
haft mycket omfattande ekologiska effekter.
Infrasystemen har använts som redskap för
att "tämja naturen", dels indirekt genom att
infrasystemen gjort åtråvärda
naturresurser åtkomliga för
exploatering, dels direkt när t.ex.
vattenflöden i naturen har omdirigerats
för att generera elkraft, bevattna
jordbruksmark eller distribuera dricksvatten. Att
öka insikterna om hur utbyggnaden av stora
tekniska system kan ge upphov till ekologiska
effekter är en angelägen men hittills
till stor del försummad forskningsuppgift.
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