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Schneider Electric’s ethos to be ‘the most local of global companies’ includes promoting open standards and innovative partnerships, such as with customers Co-Op Live and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in the UK, along with 1,000 suppliers, to deliver Net Zero goals through their Life is On ethos. In 2005, they created their Sustainability Barometer delivering customer savings of 120 million tonnes in CO₂ emissions. Fifteen years after its launch and having enabled access to energy for 30 million people, they achieved a ranking as the World’s most sustainable company in Knight’s Global 100 ranking and have transformed energy management practices across their own sites including IntenCity as Schneider Electric’s new flagship building located in the Scientific Polygon (Presqu’île) of Grenoble, France, and their Leeds UK decarbonisation programme. The Schneider Sustainability Impact (SSI) programme, 2021–2025, aims to deliver contributions across all the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including six long-term commitments to the environment, society, and economy, backed up by 11 global targets and accompanying local targets, as part of their focus on delivering a just transition. Schneider Electric introduced their ‘Zero Carbon Project’ as a demonstration of company-wide commitment to minimising ‘operational carbon emissions’ by 2025 and a Biodiversity Pledge promoting plan to protect and preserve nature and biodiversity. Early engagement at the design stage with clients has been essential. By explaining and demonstrating the opportunities for capturing and using technology and constantly evolving softwares, it is possible to unlock the efficiency of both project delivery and the operational energy performance of any building through its life cycle.

This chapter describes the nature and importance of the activity model. The authors explain what we learn from this model and the shift from an external and broader view of knowledge to activities related to the knowledge itself. The challenges and confusion associated with an activity model are explained. The authors suggest a clarification for understanding and designing an activity model. The similarities to business capability models are identified. A step-by-step approach to building an activity model is described and aligned with the build-out of business capability models.

Family planning (FP) services through the lens of human rights are not well known in Nepal. This study aims to assess Family Planning 2020: Rights and Empowerment Principles for Family Planning and identify factors affecting contraceptive use among HIV-infected women living in rural Far Western Nepal.

This study conducted a cross-sectional survey using self-designed proforma. To assess the association between contraceptive use and independent variables, this study calculated adjusted odd ratio (AOR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) V.20.

Only 37.8% of participants had access to full range of contraceptive methods, and only 57.5% of participants received proper counseling. Agency/autonomy, transparency/accountability and voice/participation were practiced by 43.7%, 23.4% and 19.7% of participants, respectively. Husband’s support (AOR = 4.263; 95% CI: 1.640–11.086), availability of FP services in their locality (AOR = 2.497; 95% CI: 1.311–4.754), employment (AOR = 3.499; 95% CI: 1.186–10.328) and postpartum period (AOR = 0.103; 95% CI: 0.023–0.475) were significantly associated with contraceptive use.

Health-care providers’ and program managers’ perspectives were not examined.

Findings of this study will be useful for making strategic plan on human rights-based approach to FP.

Expanding access to contraceptive information and services and strengthening autonomy, accountability and participation are key to human rights-based approach to FP.

This study identified that inadequate counselling, nonavailability of full range of contraceptive methods, low level of autonomy, accountability and participation were key bottlenecks in fulfilling human rights-based approach to FP.

This chapter explores the nature of knowledge codification. The chapter discusses the knowledge codification process and explains how it aligns with the broader field of knowledge engineering. The authors break knowledge codification process into (1) knowledge modeling, (2) knowledge representation and modeling of semantic memory, and (3) knowledge representation and modeling of semiotic networks. The chapter also defines object-oriented models, the representation of tasks, and process modeling. The authors also focus on the total concept and methods of knowledge engineering that are at the origin of the MASK Knowledge Book technique.

This chapter focuses on designing and constructing a phenomenon model. Phenomena are similar to systems. Designing a phenomenon model is not dissimilar from designing and constructing a systems model. The essential elements of a systems model are presented and aligned with the MASK phenomenon model. The authors explain the six components of the model. The authors explain what we can learn from a phenomenon model, and the consequences of overlooking or avoiding the model are explained. A step-by-step methodology, well-suited elicitation methods, and suggestions for sourcing information are presented.

This study explores how companies’ operations and supply networks can induce social impacts such as enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). The study focuses on social enterprises’ supply networks and examines the effects of supply network characteristics on the creation and resolution of social–commercial objectives tension.

A supply network that is divided into five embedded cases, where each case is the supply network of a social enterprise, was studied. Forty-eight interviews at social enterprises, corporate customers, distributors, suppliers, non-governmental organizations and charities were conducted.

The study highlights how social enterprises use their supply networks to help disadvantaged people gain employment, truly balance DEI and efficiency objectives and manage paradoxical tensions. The results reveal three types of social purpose supply networks, dichotomized, paired and blended, that hybrid and for-profit organizations can adopt to jointly pursue multiple, potentially competing, objectives and resolve the paradoxical tensions in their supply networks. The creation and resolution of tension are also clarified by considering dyadic, triadic and tetradic tie structures.

The study contributes to the literature by extending the analysis of paradoxical tension between commercial and social welfare objectives such as DEI to the supply network level and revealing three social purpose supply network structures that depict social enterprises’ different ways to resolve paradoxical tensions. The study contributes to social network theory by describing the dynamic interaction between strong and weak ties in multi-tie structures.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which the presence of women in governance and top management positions is likely to affect corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. This study also examines the interaction effect between female leadership and cultural leadership in the boardroom.

The empirical quantitative paper covers a sample of French-listed non-financial companies from 2018 to 2022 (925 firm-year observations). France is the European Union pioneer of non-financial reporting and gender equality policies. A fixed-effect panel regression analysis was estimated to unveil the links between the presence of women in governance and top management positions and ESG performance.

Results show that appointing more women on the board of directors and executive team is conducive to higher ESG performance. Nevertheless, the interaction effect between female and cultural leadership does not impact ESG performance.

This study contributes to the accounting and corporate governance literature on gender diversity and ESG performance by investigating female leadership in both directorship and top executive roles.

The healthcare sector faces leadership challenges, emphasizing the importance of a mechanism to support and empower team members. The present study aims to investigate the impact of team empowerment (TE) on team performance (TP), with the mediating role of shared leadership (SL) and the moderating role of relationship conflict between shared leadership and team performance.

This study's conceptual model was proposed using the social exchange theory and conservation of resource theory. Data was collected using a self-administrated questionnaire to 492 respondents, of which 42 were team leaders, and 450 were team members from 42 teams in the Pakistani healthcare sector. The Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was used to examine the proposed hypotheses of the study.

The results revealed a significant positive relationship between team empowerment and shared leadership. SL is positively associated with team performance. The present study also found that SL positively mediated the relationship between shared leadership and team performance. Moreover, relationship conflict moderated the relationship between SL and TP.

The finding delineates that healthcare organizations can adopt shared leadership and empower team members by involving them in decision-making, enhancing collaboration, resource utilization, and patient care outcomes. Managers should implement structured strategies like cross-functional training and inclusive decision-making processes to cultivate empowered teams and mitigate relationship conflicts for optimal performance.

The study advocates developing shared leadership practices for better team outcomes. This study is an early attempt to examine the mediating role of shared leadership between team empowerment and team performance.

Transport is responsible for around a quarter of global emissions. It is 91% fossil fuel dependent for energy, with emissions remaining stubbornly high, increasing in the EU since 1990 and falling since then by just 15% in the UK. The UK’s National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), in producing its second assessment, a major strategic overview for the next 30 years, emphasises a near universal dependency on electricity and hydrogen to decarbonise transport emissions. Locally distributed energy solutions are not considered part of their approach and neither do they consider where the products proposed for mass adoption – electric vehicles (EVs) are to be manufactured. Embodied carbon emissions are not taken into account, with emissions analysis focused on zero tailpipe emissions. Green gases which can be used in combustion engines and hybrids, harnessing existing supply chains and maintenance service provision, are also not seen as part of the solution, even during transition. Manufacturers are concerned that legislation and policy approaches, such as the Zero Emissions Vehicle Mandate, will lead to off-shoring of production. Zero Emissions Vehicles do not consider tyre emissions, which some research has shown to be many times higher than tailpipe emissions with devastating impacts on ecosystems. The chapter proposes the need for a greater holistic and circular approach to be taken to embodied carbon, mineral and resource utilisation together with biodiversity and planetary impacts.

Knowledge in an organization is found in its information, phenomena, activities, history, concepts, tasks, and lineages. It is difficult to capture the six other items if information is generally not available. In this chapter, the authors define the six fundamental types of knowledge addressed in the MASK methodology, including the phenomenon model, the activity model, the history perspective, the concept perspective, task perspective, and the evolution or lineage model. The authors explain how each model is both a visual and an actual language, with precise syntax and semantics. The models are illustrated through use cases.