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Full-Text Articles in Business

Sustainability Impact Assessment Of New Ventures: An Emerging Field Of Research, Klaus Fichter, Florian Ludeke-Freund, Stefan Schaltegger, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx Jan 2023

Sustainability Impact Assessment Of New Ventures: An Emerging Field Of Research, Klaus Fichter, Florian Ludeke-Freund, Stefan Schaltegger, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Entrepreneurs and start-ups are key actors in implementing environmental innovation and accelerating sustainability transitions. Thus, analyzing as well as predicting the impact of entrepreneurial ventures is central to management and entrepreneurship research. The sustainability performance, value and impact of incumbent firms and their products and services has been a key topic in business-related sustainability research for many years. However, assessing the sustainability effects of new ventures such as start-ups is a neglected area in the research literature. This article therefore provides an overview, including key definitions, a new conceptual framework, and notions that can help guide and inspire a future …


Economic And Environmental Implications Of Biomass Commercialization In Agricultural Processing, Bin Li, Onur Boyabatli, Buket Avci Jul 2022

Economic And Environmental Implications Of Biomass Commercialization In Agricultural Processing, Bin Li, Onur Boyabatli, Buket Avci

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Motivated by the agricultural industries, this paper studies the economic and environmental implications of biomass commercialization; that is, converting organic waste into a saleable product, from the perspective of a processor that uses a commodity input to produce both a commodity output and biomass. We characterize the economic value of biomass commercializa- tion and examine how input and output spot price uncertainties affect this value. Using a model calibration, we find that lower input spot price variability or higher output spot price variabil- ity or correlation between the two spot prices increases this value for a typical palm oil mill. …


Transitioning To A Circular Economy: A Systematic Review Of Its Drivers And Barriers, Jovan Tan, Fabien Jianwei Tan, Seeram Ramakrishna Feb 2022

Transitioning To A Circular Economy: A Systematic Review Of Its Drivers And Barriers, Jovan Tan, Fabien Jianwei Tan, Seeram Ramakrishna

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Advancing societal's progress to achieve circularity is imperative as our linear (take, make, waste) economic model is highly unsustainable. It depletes our natural resources and substantially contributes to pollution and global greenhouse gas emissions. Our continued participation in the linear economy will also expose businesses to volatile resource prices and supply disruptions resulting from the scarcity of critical materials and geopolitical factors. Hence, there are compelling reasons for businesses to transit and participate in the circular economy. However, anecdotal evidence suggests limited practical implementations. Therefore, this systematic review aims to determine the most significant drivers and barriers that influence business …


To Buy Green Or Not To Buy Green: Do Structural Dependencies Block Ecological Responsiveness?, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Teemu Kautonen, Henri Hakata Feb 2022

To Buy Green Or Not To Buy Green: Do Structural Dependencies Block Ecological Responsiveness?, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Teemu Kautonen, Henri Hakata

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Despite the significant increase in interest in sustainable business practices, decisions on switching to more environmentally friendly input materials are understudied. In a conjoint experiment, we presented 267 Finnish manufacturing firms with an opportunity to acquire an alternative, more ecological input material and investigated their willingness to switch to that material. We find that in general, firms are willing to substitute their current principal input with a more ecological alternative under conditions of functional parity. However, such willingness is contingent on the firm’s value creation structures. Specifically, if the products and processes driving the firm’s value creation rely more on …


Climate Change And Sustainability In Asean Countries, David K. Ding, Sarah E. Beh Jan 2022

Climate Change And Sustainability In Asean Countries, David K. Ding, Sarah E. Beh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The ASEAN region is one of the most susceptible regions to climate change, with three of its countries—Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand—among those that have suffered the greatest fatalities and economic losses because of climate-related disasters. This paper reveals that the ASEAN’s environmental performance is sorely lagging other regions despite evidence of its cohesive and comprehensive efforts to mitigate emissions and build up adaptive capacity to climate-related disasters. Within the ASEAN, there exist gaps in environmental performance between each country. This suggests that increased cooperation between individual ASEAN countries is pertinent for the region to collectively combat climate change. In …


Purpose In The For-Profit Firm: A Review And Framework For Management Research, Gerard George, Martine R. Haas, Anita M. Mcgahan, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Paul Tracey Apr 2021

Purpose In The For-Profit Firm: A Review And Framework For Management Research, Gerard George, Martine R. Haas, Anita M. Mcgahan, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Paul Tracey

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose is a concept often used in managerial communities to signal and define a firm’s benevolent and pluralistic approach to its stakeholders beyond its focus on shareholders. While some evidence has linked purpose to positive organizational outcomes such as growth, employee satisfaction, innovation, and superior stock market performance, the definition and application of purpose in management research has been varied and frequently ambiguous. We review literature streams that invoke purpose in the for-profit firm and propose a unifying definition. Next, we develop a framework to study purpose that decouples its framing and formalization within firms from its realization, thus helping …


Are Native Plants Green? Assessing Environmental Performances Of Locally-Owned Facilities, Narae Lee, Jiao Luo Apr 2021

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 …


Predictive Insights For Improving The Resilience Of Global Food Security Using Artificial Intelligence, Meng Leong How, Yong Jiet Chan, Sin Mei Cheah Aug 2020

Predictive Insights For Improving The Resilience Of Global Food Security Using Artificial Intelligence, Meng Leong How, Yong Jiet Chan, Sin Mei Cheah

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Unabated pressures on food systems affect food security on a global scale. A human-centric artificial intelligence-based probabilistic approach is used in this paper to perform a unified analysis of data from the Global Food Security Index (GFSI). The significance of this intuitive probabilistic reasoning approach for predictive forecasting lies in its simplicity and user-friendliness to people who may not be trained in classical computer science or in software programming. In this approach, predictive modeling using a counterfactual probabilistic reasoning analysis of the GFSI dataset can be utilized to reveal the interplay and tensions between the variables that underlie food affordability, …


The Global Sustainability Footprint Of Sovereign Wealth Funds, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog Jun 2020

The Global Sustainability Footprint Of Sovereign Wealth Funds, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

With the emergence of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) around the world managing equity of over $8 trillion, their impact on the corporate landscape and social welfare is being scrutinized. This study investigates whether and how SWFs incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations in their investment decisions in publicly listed corporations, as well as the subsequent evolution of target firms' ESG performance. We find that SWF funds do consider the level of past ESG performance as well as recent ESG score improvement when taking ownership stakes in listed companies. These results are driven by the SWF funds that do have …


Crop Planning In Sustainable Agriculture: Dynamic Farmland Allocation In The Presence Of Crop Rotation Benefits, Onur Boyabatli, Javad Nasiry, Yangfang (Helen) Zhou May 2019

Crop Planning In Sustainable Agriculture: Dynamic Farmland Allocation In The Presence Of Crop Rotation Benefits, Onur Boyabatli, Javad Nasiry, Yangfang (Helen) Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines crop planning decision in sustainable agriculture---that is, how to allocate farmland among multiple crops in each growing season when the crops have rotation benefits across growing seasons. We consider a farmer who periodically allocates the farmland between two crops in the presence of revenue uncertainty where revenue is stochastically larger and farming cost is lower when a crop is grown on rotated farmland (where the other crop was grown in the previous season). We characterize the optimal dynamic farmland allocation policy and perform sensitivity analysis to investigate how revenue uncertainty of each crop affects the farmer's optimal …


Selling Off-Grid Light To Liquidity Constrained Consumers, Bhavani Shanker Uppari, Ioana Popescu, Serguei Netessine Mar 2019

Selling Off-Grid Light To Liquidity Constrained Consumers, Bhavani Shanker Uppari, Ioana Popescu, Serguei Netessine

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: A large proportion of the world’s population has no access to electricity and so relies on noxious kerosene for their lighting needs. Solar-based solutions require a large up-front investment and are often unaffordable in this market owing to consumers’ tight liquidity constraints. As an alternative, there are business models relying on rechargeable light bulbs that are sold at a subsidized price (which renders them affordable) and require regular micropayments for recharges (which eases liquidity constraints). These bulbs provide a cheaper and healthier light source than kerosene, yet their adoption is lower than expected, and some consumers continue …


Scarcity In The Twenty-First Century: How The Resource Nexus Affects Management, Simon J. D. Schillebeeckx, Mark Workman, Charles Dean Jan 2018

Scarcity In The Twenty-First Century: How The Resource Nexus Affects Management, Simon J. D. Schillebeeckx, Mark Workman, Charles Dean

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Since theadvent of the 21st century and especially since the food andfinancial crisis in 2008, concerns about natural resource availability haveresurfaced. While scarcity concerns date back hundreds of years and arefoundational to economics, how scarcity is interpreted or framed has evolved significantlyin the last two centuries. In this chapter, we recount the evolving scarcity discourseand specifically address the most recent iteration that centres on the idea ofa resource nexus. While significant attention to the nexus has been paid bypolicy-makers and scholars interested in especially water, management scholarshave so far remained absent from these debates. Given recent calls to address grand …


Leviathan Inc. And Corporate Environmental Engagement, Po-Hsuan Hsu, Hao Liang, Pedro Matos Apr 2017

Leviathan Inc. And Corporate Environmental Engagement, Po-Hsuan Hsu, Hao Liang, Pedro Matos

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a special report in 2010, The Economist called the resurgence of state-owned mega-enterprises, especially those in emerging economies, “Leviathan Inc.”, and warned about the dangers of the state capitalism model. Traditionally, state-owned firms have been criticized for poor governance and questionable efficiency. In fact, they may be better positioned to deal with market failures and externalities. Our findings based on publicly-listed firms in 45 countries suggest that government-controlled companies engage more in environmental issues, and this engagement does not come at a cost to shareholder value. The effect is more pronounced among firms in emerging market economies and in …


Speaking Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Hao Liang, Christopher Marquis, Luc Renneboog, Sunny Li Sun Mar 2014

Speaking Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Hao Liang, Christopher Marquis, Luc Renneboog, Sunny Li Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We argue that the language spoken by corporate decision makers influences their firms’ social responsibility and sustainability practices. Linguists suggest that obligatory future-time-reference (FTR) in a language reduces the psychological importance of the future. Prior research has shown that speakers of strong FTR languages (such as English, French, and Spanish) exhibit less future-oriented behavior (Chen, 2013). Yet, research has not established how this mechanism may affect the future-oriented activities of corporations. We theorize that companies with strong-FTR languages as their official/working language would have less of a future orientation and so perform worse in future-oriented activities such as corporate social …


The Sustainability Syndicate: Shared Responsibility In A Trans-Organizational Business Model, Sudhi Seshadri Jul 2013

The Sustainability Syndicate: Shared Responsibility In A Trans-Organizational Business Model, Sudhi Seshadri

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper proposes design principles for the ‘sustainability syndicate’: shared responsibility among diverse stakeholders for sustainability; an agenda for unifying economic and ethical rationales; and plural governance based primarily on markets, contracts and collaborative relationships. The paper suggests a research agenda directed at issues that constrain sustainability syndicates. Syndication's contributions to sustainability build upon its trans-organizational structures for shared responsibility. Syndication works as an insurance cooperative that reduces the financial burden of risk. In addition, members could rent skill sets from other stakeholders, reduce barriers to entry into bigger projects, and improve efficiencies. As underlying sustainability are both economic and …


Sustainability In Clothing Supply Chains: Implications For Marketing, Sudhindra Seshadri Jun 2012

Sustainability In Clothing Supply Chains: Implications For Marketing, Sudhindra Seshadri

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Recommendations for sustainability strategies for business have predominantly taken an individual firm level perspective. Yet, sustainability efforts are by essence collaborative and span firm level boundaries. Multiple stakeholders espousing often divergent goals need to work together over long periods on sustainability collaborations. Well recognized externalities in the firm’s economic existence need to be addressed by multiple stakeholder skill sets and are fraught with high risks and uncertainties. These are conditions ripe for syndication, as financial and corporate syndicates have demonstrated.The rules of syndication cover the structure of membership, setting of goals and objectives, governance, incentives and sharing of rewards and …