Martin Botha, Merwe Oberholzer and Susanna Levina Middelberg
The purpose of this paper is to investigate current practices of water governance disclosure in the food, beverage and tobacco industry and to determine whether the quality of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate current practices of water governance disclosure in the food, beverage and tobacco industry and to determine whether the quality of disclosure has a positive association with integrated reporting (IR).
Design/methodology/approach
A water governance disclosure index was developed that used content analysis to code the latest standalone social, environmental and sustainability reports or integrated reports of 49 companies in the food, beverage and tobacco industry. The selected companies are listed on three indices, the ASX, JSE and DJSI. This was followed by quantitatively testing the association between IR and the quality of water governance disclosure, as measured against the qualitatively developed index.
Findings
It was found that the 18 IR companies’ water governance disclosure quality significantly outperformed the 31 companies in the non-IR group, with a calculated index score of 71.67% and 40.97%, respectively.
Research limitations/implications
The evidence indicates that IR is superior to non-IR water governance disclosure, and the study, therefore, contributes to the literature around the legitimacy theory by concluding that IR is supportive to companies to legitimise their being.
Originality/value
The originality of this paper stems from the comparison of water governance disclosures between IR and non-IR firms. Considering that IR preparers outperformed companies in the non-IR group could provide insights to academics, regulators and reporting organisations that IR could be used to enhance water governance disclosure.
Details
Keywords
Noel Scott, Brent Moyle, Ana Cláudia Campos, Liubov Skavronskaya and Biqiang Liu
Suzanna Windon and Olga Buchko
The purpose of this quantitative study was to assess the relationship between volunteer leadership competencies and stewardship action-taking experiences among Master Gardener…
Abstract
The purpose of this quantitative study was to assess the relationship between volunteer leadership competencies and stewardship action-taking experiences among Master Gardener (MG) and Master Watershed (MW) volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected data from 1196 Penn State Extension MG and MW respondents. The mean summative score for the volunteer stewardship action-taking experience was 2.32 (SD = .79), and volunteer leadership competencies was 3.45 (SD = .60). The results of this study showed a significant moderate association between volunteer stewardship action-taking experiences and volunteer leader competencies (r = .34, p ≤ .001). Volunteer leadership competencies can explain approximately 11 % of the variation in volunteer stewardship action-taking experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new knowledge that our research brings can significantly contribute to the practice in leadership teaching and learning of Extension organizations’ volunteers. Future leadership trainings on the enhancement of the MG and MW volunteer leaders’ stewardship action-taking capacity can help contribute to the greater good in their communities in a more confident and efficient manner. Further research should focus on identifying other factors that can affect MG and MW stewardship action-taking experiences, including the impact of the demographics and motivation.
Details
Keywords
The recent COVID-19 outbreak and severe natural disasters make the design of the humanitarian supply chain network (HSCN) a crucial strategic issue in a pre-disaster scenario. The…
Abstract
Purpose
The recent COVID-19 outbreak and severe natural disasters make the design of the humanitarian supply chain network (HSCN) a crucial strategic issue in a pre-disaster scenario. The HSCN design problem deals with the location/allocation of emergency response facilities (ERFs). This paper aims to propose and demonstrate how to design an efficient HSCN configuration under the risk of ERF disruptions.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper considers four performance measures simultaneously for the HSCN design by formulating a weighted goal programming (WGP) model. Solving the WGP model with different weight values assigned to each performance measure generates various HSCN configurations. This paper transforms a single-stage network into a general two-stage network, treating each HSCN configuration as a decision-making unit with two inputs and two outputs. Then a two-stage network data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach is applied to evaluate the HSCN schemes for consistently identifying the most efficient network configurations.
Findings
Among various network configurations generated by the WGP, the single-stage DEA model does not consistently identify the top-ranked HSCN schemes. In contrast, the proposed transformation approach identifies efficient HSCN configurations more consistently than the single-stage DEA model. A case study demonstrates that the proposed transformation method could provide a more robust and consistent evaluation for designing efficient HSCN systems. The proposed approach can be an essential tool for federal and local disaster response officials to plan a strategic design of HSCN.
Originality/value
This study presents how to transform a single-stage process into a two-stage network process to apply the general two-stage network DEA model for evaluating various HSCN configurations. The proposed transformation procedure could be extended for designing some supply chain systems with conflicting performance metrics more effectively and efficiently.