Kathleen B. Aviso, Sed Anderson K. Holaysan, Michael Angelo B. Promentilla, Krista Danielle S. Yu and Raymond R. Tan
The onset of climate change is expected to result in variations in weather patterns which can exacerbate water scarcity issues. This can potentially impact the economic…
Abstract
Purpose
The onset of climate change is expected to result in variations in weather patterns which can exacerbate water scarcity issues. This can potentially impact the economic productivity of nations as economic activities are highly dependent on water especially for agricultural countries. In response to this, the concepts of virtual water and water footprint have been introduced as metrics for measuring the water intensity of products, services and nations. Researchers have thus looked into virtual water trade flows as a potential strategy for alleviating water scarcity. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Environmentally extended input-output models (IOMs) are often used to analyze interactions between economic and ecological systems. This work thus develops a multi-regional input-output model for optimizing virtual water trade between different geographic regions in consideration of local environmental resource constraints, product demands and economic productivity.
Findings
A case study on agriculture crop production and trade in different regions of the Philippines is utilized to demonstrate the capabilities of the model. The results show that the optimal strategy does not necessarily limit a water-scarce region to produce less water-intensive crops.
Research limitations/implications
The model uses an input-output framework whose fixed coefficients reflect a fixed technological state. As such, the model is best used for short-term projections, or projections for mature technological state (i.e. where no major gains in efficiency or yield can be foreseen).
Practical implications
The proposed modeling framework can be used in any geographic region (provided relevant statistical data are available for calibration) to provide decision support for optimal use of limited water resources.
Originality/value
The model proposed in this work has general applicability to the optimal planning of agro-industrial systems under water footprint constraints. This modeling approach will be particularly valuable in the future, as climate change causes changes in precipitation patterns and water availability.
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Ming-Lang Tseng, Tat-Dat Bui, Ming K. Lim, Feng Ming Tsai and Raymond R. Tan
Sustainable supply chain finance (SSCF) is a fascinated consideration for both academics and practitioners because the indicators are still underdeveloped in achieving SSCF. This…
Abstract
Purpose
Sustainable supply chain finance (SSCF) is a fascinated consideration for both academics and practitioners because the indicators are still underdeveloped in achieving SSCF. This study proposes a bibliometric data-driven analysis from the literature to illustrate a clear overall concept of SSCF that reveals hidden indicators for further improvement.
Design/methodology/approach
A hybrid quantitative and qualitative approach combining data-driven analysis, fuzzy Delphi method (FDM), entropy weight method (EWM) and fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (FDEMATEL) is employed to address the uncertainty in the context.
Findings
The results show that blockchain, cash flow shortage, reverse factoring, risk assessment and triple bottom line (TBL) play significant roles in SSCF. A comparison of the challenges and gaps among different geographic regions is provided in both advanced local perspective and a global state-of-the-art assessment. There are 35 countries/territories being categorized into five geographic regions. Of the five regions, two, Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa, show the needs for more improvement, exclusively in collaboration strategies and financial crisis. Exogenous impacts of wars, natural disasters and disease epidemics are implied as inevitable attributes for enhancing the sustainability.
Originality/value
This study contributes to (1) boundary SSCF foundations by data driven, (2) identifying the critical SSCF indicators and providing the knowledge gaps and directions as references for further examination and (3) addressing the gaps and challenges in different geographic regions to provide advanced assessment from local viewpoint and to diagnose the comprehensive global state of the art of SSCF.
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Andrei Dynich and Yanzhang Wang
The purpose of this paper is to complement an available system of qualitative analysis of efficiency of scientific activities with assessment of novelty of a subject of research…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to complement an available system of qualitative analysis of efficiency of scientific activities with assessment of novelty of a subject of research that gives a more complete pattern for evaluating the efficiency of efforts of both scientists and research teams.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is based on detection of specified linguistic patterns with further evaluation of similarity and novelty scores of obtained definitions at the sentence level.
Findings
This work presents an algorithm of automatic search for a new subject of research in scientific papers on the basis of statistical and linguistic analyses of description of new terms. Application of patterns specified in a given manuscript with further utilization of well-known methods of similarity and novelty detection scores makes it possible to evaluate the degree of novelty of a subject of research.
Practical implications
As a practical application of the proposed algorithm, the algorithm of determination of authority of a scientist will facilitate assessment of personal contributions of certain authors made in a certain field of study.
Originality/value
The main contribution of a given manuscript is in application of linguistic patterns recognition and calculation of similarity and novelty scores to the area of scientific results with further proposition of the method of automatic search for a new subject of research in scientific manuscripts.
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Deepak Datta Nirmal, K. Nageswara Reddy and Sujeet Kumar Singh
The main purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive review and critical insights of the application of fuzzy methods in modeling, assessing and understanding the various…
Abstract
Purpose
The main purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive review and critical insights of the application of fuzzy methods in modeling, assessing and understanding the various aspects of green and sustainable supply chains (SSCs).
Design/methodology/approach
The present study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis of 252 research articles. This study employs various tools such as VOSviewer version 1.6.10, Publish or Perish, Mendeley and Excel that aid in descriptive analysis, bibliometric analysis and network visualization. These tools have been used for performing citation analysis, top authors' analysis, co-occurrence of keywords, cluster and content analysis.
Findings
The authors have divided the literature into seven application areas and discussed detailed insights. This study has observed that research in the social sustainability area, including various issues like health and safety, labor rights, discrimination, etc. is scarce. Integration of the Industry 4.0 technologies like blockchain, big data analytics, Internet of Things (IoT) with the sustainable and green supply chain (GSC) is a promising field for future research.
Originality/value
The authors' contribution primarily lies in providing the integrated framework which shows the changing trends in the use of fuzzy methods in the sustainability area classifying and consolidating green and sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) literature in seven major areas where fuzzy methods are predominantly applied. These areas have been obtained after the analysis of clusters and content analysis of the literature presenting key insights from the past and developing the conceptual framework for future research studies.
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Juliana Alves and Mansour Ghanian
This chapter provides the results of the motivations and the profile of the creative tourist. Results originate from the major studies done worldwide, concerned with the different…
Abstract
This chapter provides the results of the motivations and the profile of the creative tourist. Results originate from the major studies done worldwide, concerned with the different types of activities. This analysis is essential to design new products based on Creative Tourism and sustainability. Also, because at an international level, including South Europe, the profile of the creative tourist has not been characterised, especially the one that visits medium-sized cities and rural areas. This chapter intends to answer the following questions: Who is the participant in Creative Tourism activities? Is he/she mainly domestic or an international tourist? Why does this type of tourist participate in these creative experiences? What type of information sources do these tourists use to find the experiences in which he/she participates? This chapter uses primary and secondary data. The secondary data follow a content analysis approach of activities offered by Airbnb Experiences Platform. Regarding the primary data, 595 questionnaires applied in 45 creative experiences in the Northern region of mainland Portugal were analysed. The creative experiences were divided into seven categories: ‘creative festivals’, ‘nature and creativity’, ‘photography workshop’, ‘gastronomy experience’, ‘industrial experience’, ‘technology and creativity’ and ‘art and crafts’. The methods used were quantitative in nature. The questionnaire used consisted of 31 closed questions aimed at the profile and the motivations of the creative experience participants. Descriptive statistical analysis was used. The main results showed that participants in the seven categories of Creative Tourism experiences have relatively large differences in terms of demographic and socio-economic characteristics. These differences were also evident in their motivations for participating in Creative Tourism experiences.
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Chun-Wei Lin, Shiou-Yun Jeng, Ming-Lang Tseng and Raymond Tan
The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated approach for a green product cradle-to-cradle (C2C) fuzzy recycling production planning model.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated approach for a green product cradle-to-cradle (C2C) fuzzy recycling production planning model.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper applies the failure mode and effects analysis technique and Taguchi experimental design method, develops a green product C2C performance evaluation system that considers the fuzzy impacts of environmental laws and regulations, green goodwill, and environmental efficiency of targeting countries, and decides both the optimal green production plan and estimated optimal life cycles.
Findings
This study compares the different degree of maturity in environmental regulations, and various recycling situations are simulated to demonstrate the successful applicability of the proposed model as well as the incentive policy for Taiwan, the USA and Bangladesh.
Originality/value
Previous studies failed both to develop a holistic recycling production plan which is able to consider both the optimal combination of recycled components used and final green products produced with the maximum total resultant sales profit and to consider the potential failure phenomenon of recycled components adopted in the final product. Furthermore, most prior studies ignored the influence of environmental law, goodwill of the product and the efficiency of recycling mechanism of the community.
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Shiou-Yun Jeng, Chun-Wei Lin, Ming-Lang Tseng, Korbkul Jantarakolica and Raymond Tan
This study develops an integrated zero waste discharge planning approach for improving resource efficiency in a pulp-and-paper manufacturing firm.
Abstract
Purpose
This study develops an integrated zero waste discharge planning approach for improving resource efficiency in a pulp-and-paper manufacturing firm.
Design/methodology/approach
The objectives of this study are to (1) identify the environmental, technical and social metrics in resource efficiency; (2) utilize fuzzy multi-objective programming and the hybrid particle swarm optimization algorithm to solve the fuzzy problem; and (3) develop an assessment for resource efficiency improvement in an industrial case study.
Findings
The findings demonstrate the superiority of hybrid particle swarm optimization algorithm in generating optimal results for a pulp-and-paper manufacturing firm.
Practical implications
The findings demonstrate the superiority of hybrid particle swarm optimization algorithm in generating optimal results for a pulp-and-paper manufacturing firm.
Originality/value
Resource efficiency is a multi-objective problem in an uncertain environment. In particular, zero waste discharge planning involves minimizing the total cost and maximizing the waste material recovery rate, wastewater reuse, and waste heat recovery.
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Paula Remoaldo and José Cadima Ribeiro
This chapter pinpoints a chronological and thematic literature review on the concept of Creative Tourism. Even if the concept emerged 21 years ago, its definition keeps being…
Abstract
This chapter pinpoints a chronological and thematic literature review on the concept of Creative Tourism. Even if the concept emerged 21 years ago, its definition keeps being discussed, and different approaches are available. Born in the late 1990s, it developed rapidly due to a very open, flexible and local context design, enabling the development of personal capacity, authentic experiences and involving local culture and communities. This new approach to tourism envisages bringing together local people, their habits and practices in real and everyday contexts to the heart of the tourism experience provided to visitors. Therefore, it looks to be a promising path towards sustainability. Keeping this in mind, one can wonder if Creative Tourism can be a lever for territories' economic, social, cultural and environmental sustainability. In particular, can Creative Tourism's growing importance in Southern Europe be considered a major contribution to the sustainability of those territories? The literature review concludes that most of the studies on Creative Tourism take positive impacts on territories as a kind of ‘belief’. Such an effect is not granted as a beneficial impact on a communities' well-being; it does not result just from the type of resources explored or from the participation of members of the community on the products/services supplied.
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The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive…
Abstract
The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.
This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.
The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.
This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.