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This paper aims to report on a qualitative comparative case study of coordination in three ongoing research and development projects, each conducted by teams working virtually across multiple, geographically dispersed sites and involving varying degrees of task uncertainty at differing stages on an innovation continuum, from basic fundamental research to scale-up and commercial development.

This study investigated characteristics of effective virtual innovation teamwork, primarily using structured interviews, observation and a limited number of surveys. The analysis was based upon Pava’s (1983) methodology of sociotechnical systems (STS) for non-linear work and was used to assess the influence of virtuality and task uncertainty on the quality of team deliberations and the knowledge development barriers experienced at the various stages on the innovation continuum.

The study identified different technical and social coordination mechanisms and their impact in mitigating knowledge barriers for differing levels of task uncertainty. Technical elements, many based in digital information technology, appeared most significant for coordination where task uncertainty and ambiguity were low. However, with high task uncertainty, the most significant mechanisms were closely tied to the formal and informal social systems of virtual organization.

The key implication for future research is the development of further applications to evaluate this coordination model for modern teamwork in virtual contexts.

The findings extend previous theory about coordination of innovation to include fundamental research and virtual collaboration. Based on the results, a four-step STS methodology for design of virtual team coordination mechanisms was developed and piloted successfully by scientific teams at a prominent North American research laboratory.

This research project has shown that modern STS methodology, updated for non-routine work in a virtual context, can provide a way to assess and mitigate “coordination costs” associated with virtual teamwork. Further, it has identified clear categories of coordination mechanisms that are most effective when teams are working at different stages in the innovation process.

IT WOULD BE an impertinence to Constable for anyone not specifically devoted to art to criticize his paintings. Anyhow this has recently been done with a good deal of réclame. His taste in reading is quite another matter, and even an historian may venture to discuss it.

This paper presents an analytical framework to understand the complex CSR accountability standard architecture, studying the CSR standardization cycle through the organizational studies perspective. It has two main aims: to discuss the theoretical approach to CSR governance, proposing a matrix to classify international CSR accountability standards; and to study the CSR multi-industry standardization cycle (setting and design, diffusion and implementation), creating an analytical framework to understand the innovative dynamics adopted through CSR standard-setting.

The paper is based on empirical research on global CSR multi-industry standards and the emergence of a regulatory dynamic based on competition-collaboration. The paper's arguments stem from a case study of the Global Reporting Initiative and its inter-linkage and convergence with the UN Global Compact and ISO 26000. The author analyzes this case based on the global governance and institutional dynamics of regulation research.

Based on the study of CSR standards, the paper presents an analytical framework with various elements to analyze CSR accountability standards: scope, type of actors, performance type and mechanisms and type of legitimacy and monitoring strategies. Second, the paper advances the study of emerging inter-linkages between GRI, UNGC and ISO 26000 and analyzes the emergence of a meta-standardization process generated by the competition-collaboration dynamic.

Further research is needed to focus on the role of agency and different stakeholders on the meta-standardization process. Other research has to focus on the institutional logic and the multi-level analysis of the convergence between CSR standards and the self-regulation advanced process. In this respect, this research serves to demonstrate the leading innovative role adopted by private actors (mostly companies) in developing private standard setting for global governance.

The value of this paper is its analysis of the main convergence dynamic adopted by the most popular, global-scope CSR multi-industry standards, GRI, UNGC and ISO 26000. The findings show how this standardization cycle helps a new collaborative governance dynamic to emerge based on the adoption of private standard-setting. The paper is also useful for practitioners, helping them understand the growing convergence among CSR multi-industry standards, and how the convergence of sustainability reporting processes is advancing towards the integration and drafting of homogeneous guidelines with the prevalence of the GRI model.

Sustainable Enterprise Excellence (SEE) is defined and developed through integration and expansion of business excellence modeling and sustainability thought. The intent is to enable simple yet reliable enterprise assessment of triple bottom line (TBL) performance and produce actionable enterprise foresight that can enable next best practices and sources of sustainable competitive advantage through innovation.

Key elements of SEE are identified from various business excellence and sustainability reporting sources, including the Global Reporting Initiative, the UN Global Compact 10 Principles, and criteria of the European Quality Award and America's Baldrige National Quality Award. From these a model and key criteria are distilled, maturity scales developed, and a simple means of assessment presented.

A compact model and supporting maturity assessment approach similar in structure to those behind established excellence awards are developed that enable enterprise assessment of progress toward SEE. The resulting assessment is delivered in a highly consumable, combined narrative and graphic format referred to as a SEE NEWS Report.

The assessment approach presented enables both enterprise progress toward Sustainable Enterprise Excellence and enterprise-to-enterprise comparability. Foresight provided by the assessment enables further advancement.

The social and environmental dimensions of SEE imply that enterprises progressing with respect to its model will of necessity contribute positively to the social fabric.

Sustainable Enterprise Excellence as superior TBL performance resulting from integration of ethical, effective and efficient governance with triple top line strategy is developed, together with a means of maturity assessment.

This paper seeks to present a model which connects performance measurement at the business level to the concept of public goods usage, and thus incites a linkage between the micro- and macro-economic aspects of sustainability.

The paper presents the essentials of a public goods cost perspective in order to agitate discussion between statisticians, standard-setters for business reporting and practitioners who wish to explore new approaches in the topic of building performance indicators.

The paper illustrates what has been achieved in measuring the outcomes of sustainable development efforts and what still needs to be done in order to arrive at aggregate values for national and global commons.

The viability of the concept will depend on the co-operation of businesses and national statistics which test the feasibility of the proposed micro-macro-link through numerical studies. As the paper is published, efforts are under way with a piloting group to initiate a pertinent study, but the results have yet to be attained.

For practitioners in both the statistics profession and management accounting who are concerned with measurement of socioeconomic and environmental phenomena, this attempt at integrating sustainable development indicators to the managerial control system of companies might provide a valuable proposition. It also is a helpful contribution to the ongoing debate about the value and credibility of sustainability reporting.

If businesses make no attempts to exhibit numerically how they contribute to preserve and expand the societal commons, they will be confronted with ever-growing agitation from pressure groups and they might be bypassed in the discussion on the issue of sustainability parameters that those groups are advocating.

This is the first academic paper that demonstrates a reporting model that unites business accounts and national accounts.

This paper seeks to integrate sustainable development, based on the application of the extended bottom line (EBL-GMS®) concept, into the implementation of organizational strategy with the relevant stakeholders. As a result, a theoretical model is proposed.

The paper reviews selected literature to propose and analyse how sustainable development can be integrated into the implementation of organizational strategy.

This paper proposes a conceptual model that deals with the relationship between sustainable development and implementation of organizational strategy with the distinct stakeholders of a company. In the proposed model, authors indicate how the concept of sustainable development could be operationalized through each of the organizational stakeholders.

Companies, as dynamic systems, are relevant in the implementation process of sustainable development, which requires this concept to be fairly applicable. In general, only one of the bottoms of the triple bottom line (TBL) has been considered, being essential to integrate and consolidate, through an ethical and balanced manner, the economic, social, environmental and corporate identity elements. This paper addresses a critical condition for companies operating in highly competitive contexts: sustainable development and its relationships with strategy implementation. The originality lies in the fact that no studies have analysed the relationship between the sustainable development concept and organizational strategy implementation, based on the operationalisation of the extended bottom line (EBL-GMS®) concept.

This paper aims to identify under which circumstances company internal emission trading schemes (IETS) are applied and to examine their actual effects on corporate greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions.

Using contingency theory, factors are identified that influence corporate decisions to introduce an IETS. To examine the effects of IETSs, emissions data for a sample of large German companies is used for linear regression modelling.

The paper finds that today, IETSs are mainly applied by companies with high levels of emissions that are subject to external trading schemes. The current use of IETSs seems to be primarily driven by the interest to reduce emissions cost-efficiently. Testing the effects of IETSs reveals that they are able to reduce corporate GHG emissions significantly.

The effects of IETSs are only tested for companies subject to an external emission trading scheme. Furthermore, the analysis does not distinguish between different types of IETSs. Future research should address the issue of whether the reductions observed also hold true for companies not subject to external trading schemes and should formulate recommendations on how IETSs should be designed.

The paper informs practitioners about the potential benefits of IETSs.

For the first time, the effects of IETSs are tested for companies subject to an external emission trading scheme. The analysis suggests that a new academic debate on IETSs is needed as the introduction of external emission trading schemes has not rendered IETSs redundant.

The literature on sustainable business development in emerging economies deals predominantly with the entry modes of multinationals and how they adapt to local conditions. Little has been written on how organisations in developing countries innovate and employ innovations in a sustainable manner. This paper presents a case study of an innovation business in a partially developed country, but which was taken over by a South African organisation. The purpose of this paper is to study why the venture failed and what lessons this case study offers to future developing country innovators.

The paper refers to the literature that addresses business projects in emerging countries and analyses the actions of a South African company that set out to develop commercial nuclear electricity generation using the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) technology. The approach adopted in the paper is an assessment of the events and actions that led to the project's failure.

The management of the project was flawed from the start because of a lack of measurable milestones and budgetary constraints. The South African government continued to fund the project while not controlling it. Technically, the project was too ambitious and it is not certain whether the project could ever have come to fruition.

The generalisability of results from case study research needs to be treated with some caution, but similar findings in different contexts may strengthen internal validity, and in turn lead to wider generalisability.

The paper reinforces the challenges faced by businesses in emerging countries when developing innovative products. The need for financial control and technical milestones is emphasised even though innovations are by definition uncertain.

The benefits from the PBMR could have been significant, but the project failed at a cost of $1bn, which a country such as South Africa could ill afford. The knowledge gained during the duration of the project will be of little benefit to the country, particularly as the knowledge context was extremely narrow.

The paper addresses a topic that has not been dealt with before in the academic literature. It highlights a number of shortcomings in the way in which a developing country embarked on an innovative project.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the risk management objectives of the firm's owners influence the organization's sustainability strategies with a particular focus on new sustainability related initiatives. Given shareholder objectives direct firm attention to refine organizational focus, the paper's main premise is that ultimately it is the ownership structure of the firm that sets the agenda in terms of sustainability initiatives. Considering the broad distinctions between family/founder ownership, corporate ownership and institutional ownership, the overall ownership structure of the firm will strongly influence the motivations and temporal considerations of the firm vis-à-vis sustainability related initiatives.

Within a resource-based view, the authors link first-mover advantages and sustainability strategies as a reflection of owners' perceptions of risk management and underlying motivations.

The authors postulate that firms with predominant family/founder ownership undertake sustainability-related initiatives as patient investors based on their ideological motivations, while corporate owners undertake initiatives with capabilities building orientation, with institutional owners adopting sustainability-related initiatives as a risk mitigation strategy.

Managers charged with developing sustainability strategies may add a further consideration, namely taking into account the risk management objectives of the owners of the firm, in choosing and justifying the type of sustainability innovation.

This conceptual paper provides a novel link between the first-mover advantage of sustainability initiatives and the ownership and governance of the organization. It contributes to the limited strategy research on ownership impact on sustainability initiatives and provides guidance to managers in developing appropriate strategies.

This paper analyses the sustainability-oriented transformation of industries from the lens of sustainable entrepreneurship. The authors investigate the co-evolution between pioneers introducing radically more sustainable offerings and (mostly large) market leaders with their responses. While sustainability pioneers introduce new products in niche markets, incumbents advance them into the mass market, together leading to the transformation of industries, markets and consumer habits.

The authors apply the sustainable entrepreneurship perspective to a case study of the German clothing retail industry with a focus on organic cotton. The analysis covers four of the ten largest German textile retailers. Data collection is based on public available sources.

The late 1970s saw the foundation of Hess Natur, which pioneered organic cotton practices and supported the development of sustainability standards in the clothing industry. In the beginning this was largely a phenomenon in niche markets, but to date some organic practices have diffused amongst mainstream retailers. This is counter-intuitive, as theory suggests that incumbents only adopt practices with significantly lower sustainability standards than companies in the niche.

The study suggests that more research should focus on the co-evolutionary dynamics between pioneering companies and incumbents and examine whether and how sustainability practices diffuse into the mass market.

The findings can help managers to better understand their organisation's role in the transformation of industries towards sustainability and, vice versa, how the transformation may affect them. Leading the transformation challenge by adopting organic and other sustainable supply chain practices can be an important measure for market success.

This study is one of the few pieces of research investigating sustainability-oriented industry transformation from a market-based perspective. Actual data on organic cotton diffusion in German retail are presented.