Business Commons^™

Sustainability Issue Of The Total Quality Management (Tqm) System In The Manufacturing Industry, Jesus A. Guillergan

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this research is to understand the sustainability issue of total quality management (TQM) and its effects in the manufacturing industry. Having exploratory and descriptive objectives, this research used a flexible design single case study on a water treatment company in the southeastern United States to facilitate the examination of the phenomenon using real‐life, present‐day context, and multiple perspectives from participants. The single bounded case study collected and integrated many forms of qualitative data ranging from interviews, observations, and quality‐related archived documents to answer the research questions. The results revealed that failure in sustaining the quality system in …

Climate Change And Cop26: Are Digital Technologies And Information Management Part Of The Problem Or The Solution? An Editorial Reflection And Call To Action, Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Laurie Hughes, Arpan Kumar Kar, Abdullah M. Baabdullah, Purva Grover, Roba Abbas, Daniela Andreini, Iyad Abumoghli, Yves Barlette, Deborah Bunker, Leona Chandra Kruse, Ioanna Constantiou, Robert M. Davison, Rahul De’, Rameshwar Dubey, Henry Fenby-Taylor, Babita Gupta, Wu He, Mitsuru Kodama, Matti Mäntymäki, Bhimaraya Metri, Katina Michael, Johan Olaisen, Niki Panteli, Samuli Pekkola, Rohit Nishant, Ramakrishnan Raman, Nripendra P. Rana, Frantz Rowe, Suprateek Sarker, Brenda Scholtz, Maung Sein, Jeel Dharmeshkumar Shah, Thompson S.H. Teo, Manoj Kumar Tiwari, Morten Thanning Vendelø, Michael Wade

College of Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

The UN COP26 2021 conference on climate change offers the chance for world leaders to take action and make urgent and meaningful commitments to reducing emissions and limit global temperatures to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. Whilst the political aspects and subsequent ramifications of these fundamental and critical decisions cannot be underestimated, there exists a technical perspective where digital and IS technology has a role to play in the monitoring of potential solutions, but also an integral element of climate change solutions. We explore these aspects in this editorial article, offering a comprehensive opinion based insight to a …

An Integrated Fuzzy Goal Programming—Theory Of Constraints Model For Production Planning And Optimization, Habib Zare, Mahyar Kamali Saraji, Madjid Tavana, Dalia Streimikiene, Fausto Cavallaro

Business Systems and Analytics Faculty Work

Manufacturing companies are under constant pressure to optimize the economic sustain-ability of their production systems. Production planning and optimization is a well-established strategy for considering resource constraints and improving economic productivity. This study proposes an integrated fuzzy goal planning and the theory of constraints for production planning and optimization. To this end, a hybrid Delphi–Buckley method was used to identify the relevant goals and a paired matrix questionnaire was used to determine the fuzzy weights of the goals. Furthermore, a fuzzy bottleneck detection algorithm was used to deal with the bottlenecks. A case study in the cable industry is presented …

Sustainably Feeding The World In The 21st Century, Ren Hua Ho, Husodo Angkosubroto, Oi Hian Lee

Perspectives@SMU

Managing investor expectation, exploiting low-hanging fruit, and farmer education will be key

Entrepreneurial Leadership And Sustainable Development—A Systematic Literature Review, Alexandrina Maria Pauceanu, Nada Rabie, Ayman Moustafa, Daniel Constantin Jiroveanu

All Works

The main aim of this study was to clarify the current literary inconsistencies regarding the characteristics of entrepreneurial leadership and its impact on sustainability. Additionally, another aim was to establish the framework of entrepreneurial leadership and to highlight the main gaps in the entrepreneurial leadership literature. The entrepreneurial leadership literature started to develop recently as a new leadership style that is required to fulfill the current business changes in the fourth industrial revolution. The researchers conducted a narrative literature review to assess the status of entrepreneurial leadership in academia, literature gaps, and the impact of entrepreneurial leadership on the sustainability …

Accounting For A Hopeful World, Themin Suwardy

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In a commentary, SMU Associate Provost for Postgraduate Professional Education and Associate Professor of Accounting (Practice) Themin Suwardy noted that environmental reporting has become more common in the last 10 years and that companies are embracing sustainability reporting despite the challenging myriad of seemingly different models, frameworks and regulations. He opined that the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards to be issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) will enable companies to provide comprehensive sustainability information for the global financial markets. He urged accounting professionals to embrace the development wholeheartedly and to help organisations do and report good.

Dynamic Interplay Of Environmental Sustainability And Corporate Reputation: A Combined Parametric And Nonparametric Approach, He-Boong Kwon, Jooh Lee, Laee Choi

Rohrer College of Business Faculty Scholarship

For decades, research on the relationship between environmental sustainability and firm performance focused on determining whether the effect of the former on the latter was positive or negative. That potentially controversial approach had driven mainstream research to ask two focal questions: Does it pay to be green? and Does it cost to be green? Recent papers have explored a curvilinear effect (i.e., U-shaped and inverted U-shaped) by tackling another question: When does it pay to be green? These efforts, however, have either oversimplified the complex linkage between these two things into a linear relationship or confined the complexity within a …

Investing For The Future, Saker Nusseibeh

Perspectives@SMU

Even if you don’t believe in climate change, shifting consumer and governmental attitudes make businesses that prioritise sustainability more profitable

Sustainable Investment Across Generations, Darren Teo, Elaine Teo, Jansen Phee, Mitch Reznick, Reshma Lalvani Sujan, Ronil Sujan

Perspectives@SMU

Children that follow in a successful company’s founder's footsteps are paying more attention to sustainability

Managing Reputation, Sustainability, And Self Interest: The Case Of Ceo Remuneration In The United States And The Importance Of Being Earnest, Ernest H. Hall, Jooh Lee

Rohrer College of Business Faculty Scholarship

Executive compensation has long been a lightning rod of interest in the popular press and frequently makes the headlines . It seems that everyone has an opinion on the subject, with most demanding an end to inflated compensation packages . Depending on whether you are a member of the C suite or not will likely skew your opinion on the matter. Given that the CEO is the most visible manifestation of the company to the outside world it is common to fixate on the way in which they are being compensated. However, after all of the research that has been …

Business Families As Stewards Of Sustainability, John Cheng, Ankesh Shahra, Cynthia Handriani Wijaya, Louise Dudley

Perspectives@SMU

The drive to preserve the business for future generations makes family-owned enterprises especially suited to sustainability initiatives. Embracing ESG frameworks will help measure their effectiveness

Future Proofing: Changing Tourism Education To Change Business Practices, Maria Della Lucia Ph.D., Frederic Dimanche Ph.D.

TTRA Canada 2021 Conference

Introduction: This paper addresses the TTRA Canada conference sub-theme “Future-Proofing: Learning from Today to Build Back Tomorrow.” The pandemic has accelerated discussion about the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of tourism, social equity, workers’ dignity, as well as the long-term climate crisis. Tourism and the pandemic have led to a series of discussions about whether tourism can indeed be sustainable (e.g., Benjamin et al., 2020). The fact that the tourism industry has been the economic activity that was the most affected by the pandemic feeds this discussion (Della Lucia, Giudici, & Dimanche, 2021) . The sector has shown that it …

One Step Back, Two Steps Forward, One Destination’S Path To Tourism Recovery., Eleanor Anderson

TTRA Canada 2021 Conference

One step back, two steps forward, one destination’s path to tourism recovery.

2021 TTRA Canada Virtual Conference. October 13-15, 2021

Submitted July 21, 2021 Virtual Presentation Length 15 minutes

Keywords: Tourism, Covid-19, Recovery, Destination, Sustainability, Cape Breton

Introduction

Cape Breton Island, on Canada's east coast, has long been lauded by travel media as a tourist destination of choice, including being recently named as the #1 Island in North America by Conde Nast Traveler and the #1 Island in Canada during the 2020 and 2021Travel & Leisure World’s Best Awards.

Cape Breton’s economy is heavily dependent on the employment and revenue …

Does The Importance Of Environmental Issues Within An Industry Affect The Relationship Between Lean Operations And Corporate Financial Performance?, Andrew S. Manikas, James R. Kroes, Benjamin P. Foster

IT and Supply Chain Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Lean operations and environmental sustainability have been generally accepted to be complementary activities, although prior studies have not found consistent relationships between these factors and corporate financial performance. It has been proposed that these inconsistent findings might be due to industry-specific differences in sustainability. Thus, this study examines: (i) whether the level of leanness in companies is related to the importance of environmental sustainability and (ii) if the relationship between companies’ leanness and their financial performance is heightened by the importance of environmental issues inherent in their industries. To measure the importance of environmental issues in an industry, we employ …

Toward A Doctrine Of Socially Responsible Marketing (Srm): A Macro And Normative-Ethical Perspective, Gene R. Laczniak, Clifford Schultz

Marketing Faculty Research and Publications

In this conceptual article, the authors use a macro-level analysis and normative ethical theory to delineate and to explicate a doctrine of socially responsible marketing (SRM). Applying a theory-in-formation approach, we postulate a literature-informed definition of SRM. We discuss why a macro and normative-ethical rather than a micro and positive-descriptive perspective is essential to justifying the elements of SRM. We explore and explain why the roots of an authentic doctrine of SRM can be discerned from the literatures of marketing history, corporate social responsibility, institutional economics and moral philosophy. In so doing, the mandate to engage in socially responsible marketing …

Implementing The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals In International Business, Ivan Montiel, Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, Junghoon Park, Raquel Antolín-López, Bryan W. Husted

Publications and Research

Building on the concept of externalities, we propose an explanation of how multinationals can contribute to the enactment of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as part of their ordinary investments. First, we suggest grouping the 17 Sustainable Development Goals into six categories based on whether they increase positive externalities – knowledge, wealth, or health – or reduce negative externalities – the overuse of natural resources, harm to social cohesion, or overconsumption. Second, we propose placing these categories within an extended value chain to facilitate their implementation. Third, we argue that multinationals’ internal investments in host-country subsidiaries to improve their …

Digital Transformation: What? How? Why?, Chee Hau Tan, Darren Thayre, Ewen Plougastel, Mark Shmulevich

Perspectives@SMU

Leadership and prep work ahead of transformation are key

Evaluating Urban Parks Accessibility And Equity: A Case Study Of Hartford, Ct And New Haven, Ct, Natalie Roach, Mara Tu

Honors Scholar Theses

Public parks provide cities with environmental benefits, positive health effects, recreational opportunities, community building, educational spaces, and public amenities. However, certain populations have been systematically denied their fair share of these benefits because of unjust practices in the creation and maintenance of urban parks. With a lens of environmental justice, the goal of this research was to assess park quality and accessibility of two Connecticut cities, Hartford and New Haven, by gathering publicly available information as well as using GIS tools.

The Trust for Public Land (TPL) has an existing ParkScore rating system that evaluates the quality of a city’s …

What Is The Digital City?, Amit Midha, Archan Misra

Perspectives@SMU

Urban metropolises must adapt and evolve to address disruption and sustainability challenges

Are Native Plants Green? Assessing Environmental Performances Of Locally-Owned Facilities, Narae Lee, Jiao Luo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the impact of corporate ownership and community conditions on firm environmental pollution. While the existing literature often thinks of environmental pollution as a unitary construct, we emphasize the distinction between toxic emissions, which have immediate but locally bounded impact, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which have gradual but global impact, producing climate change. Using a facility-level panel of all manufacturing facilities in the US from 2010-2018, and leveraging within-facility changes in ownership status, we show that locally owned firms have lower levels of toxic emissions, but they are also less likely to report GHG emissions, and have higher …

Building A Comprehensive Tree Index: Arbor Day Foundation Project, Coleman Cooper, Joe Dawson, Brock Wordekemper, Charlie Kramer, Evan Steinberger, Lauren Leapley

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Arbor Day Foundation’s Tree City USA and the Tree Campus Higher Education programs create benefits for cities and colleges all over America by following the standards set forth in the application to the programs. The Arbor Day Foundation can use the insights received from this application to capitalize on this data and create value for the partner organizations.

Our recommendations to create value for the Arbor Day Foundation are:

1) Create a uniform Arbor Day Foundation Tree Index to apply to college campuses in Tree Campus Higher Education

2) Expand the use of the Arbor Day Foundation Tree Index …

Social Media Engagement For Global Influencers, Kara Bentley, Charlene Chu, Cristina Nistor, Ekin Pehlivan, Taylan Yalcin

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Consumers use social media to create content, generate online word-of-mouth, and communicate with brands and other consumers. Consumers engage with influencers who deliver content that is timely, entertaining, and interesting to them. Many influencers have a truly global following across the world. However, there is little research on international aspects of social media influencers. Our paper leverages Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to study consumer engagement using a novel dataset of global sustainability influencers. Our results indicate that the cultural distance between the influencer and the followers is an important driver of engagement in a nuanced way. While the level of superficial, …

Laudato Si’ – A Macromarketing Manifesto For A Just And Sustainable Environment, Thomas A. Klein, Gene R. Laczniak

Marketing Faculty Research and Publications

This paper posits that Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on environmental climate change, Laudato si’ (“Praise be to you, my Lord”), or LS for short, provides a compelling and multi-faceted framework for co-creating a just and sustainable environment. LS includes considerable commentary about how markets and marketing impact the physical and social environment. Additionally, the document provides religion-inspired ethical norms for market conditions, actions, and performance that reflect both (a) the social teachings of the Catholic Church as they have evolved over the past 125 years and, as we will explain, (b) a foundational predicate of macromarketing scholarship – that is, …

The Business Of Sustainability, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Price points, fundraising, and scaling are the unavoidable and necessary parts that turn sustainability dreams into reality. It helps to have investors that believe in both the mission and business

Creating Value In Sustainability, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

You can create value when you deliver what the market demands or if you can identify and remove costs from the system. But it does not take away ‘Oh sh*t!’ moments

Beyond Sustainable: An Analysis Of The Visual Rhetoric Behind The Branding Of Christy Dawn, Megan Mccormick

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This research project offers insight into the visual rhetorical of design decisions made in the marketing materials of Christy Dawn, a sustainable fashion brand. The primary goal of this research is to identify several motivators, based on prior studies, for the consumption of sustainable fashion and analyze the existing marketing visuals of Christy Dawn’s brand, specifically in how they appeal to these motivators, thus also communicating their sustainable rhetoric to consumers in the process. This project defines these motivators in detail and addresses them in relation to particular elements of design in Christy Dawn’s materials, such as images, color, and …

The Global Goals: Bringing Education For Sustainable Development Into U.S. Business Schools, Nancy E. Landrum

School of Environmental Sustainability: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Purpose – This paper aims to learn how sustainability and the circular economy were being integrated into the curriculum of a Dutch university and to transfer that knowledge back to a US university business school curriculum. Given the resistance toward integrating sustainability into the US business school curriculum, the Dutch university served as a role model for education for sustainable development.

Design/methodology/approach – This case study used ethnographic methods of participant observation over a four-month residency at the Dutch university.

Findings – Themes observed are as follows: success in the current context relied upon sustainability being integrated into the culture …

Editorial: Covid-19, Corporate Governance, Sustainability, And The Post-Neoliberal World, Marie Dela Rama, Julie Crews

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Welcome to this special issue of Corporate Governance and Sustainability Review focusing on the impact of thecoronavirus (COVID-19) on societies and economies worldwide. The five papers in this special issue reflect the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,in its first year,on corporate governance and sustainability. What is common throughout these papers is how the pandemic has created disequilibria for many organisations. The question continues to be posed as to the new forms of organising and managing as the world reorientates or pivots in a pandemic and post-pandemic world.

Green User Electronics Lifecycle Behavior And Planning Mechanisms, Yaojie Li, Xuan Wang, Thomas Stafford, Hanieh Javadi Khasraghi

Information Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper seeks to understand general user intentions toward engaging in green information technology (IT) behaviors, and in engaging with the consumer electronics lifecycle, which includes not only adoption and use, but also disposal. Based upon an extended planned behavior theoretical framework, our study suggests that what we call “eco-belief” among technology users can determine eco-attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral controls related to the life cycle process, thus shaping green user behavior. Also, eco-knowledge appears to be important in changing user’s attitudes and intentions to perform green behaviors. This study also revisited relevant green IT and green Information Systems …

Are Happier Nations More Responsible? Examining The Link Between Happiness And Sustainability, Yomna M. Sameer, Suzanna Elmassah, Charilaos Mertzanis, Lujain El-Maghraby

All Works

The paper uses aggregate data from 152 countries to analyze the association between happiness and sustainability. Our paper provides new evidence on happiness and sustainability. Taking a psychological approach, happiness is linked to hedonism and reflects individual perceptions of quality of life and life satisfaction. Sustainability reflects the extent of meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals which includes responsible consumption. In order to elucidate the link, the analysis examines separately the association between happiness, consumption, sustainability and responsible behavior. The results document a positive and significant association between them, which remains broadly robust subject to various controls, sensitivity and endogeneity …