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Green purchasing - or eco-procurement - by local and central governments has long been recommended in documents such as Agenda 21 to be a key - although sometimes supplemental-ingredient in the achievement of more environmentally responsible economies. Certainly, sustainable consumption cannot be considered a realistic goal without the full engagement of public authorities. Many initiatives have been undertaken in OECD countries, most successfully in Japan and Denmark where green public purchasing has been proven to be workable and highly effective, while, in other countries, city municipalities have successfully pioneered the development of sophisticated public environmental purchasing poli...
For reseach in all subjects and among different philisopical paradigms, research methodologies form one of the key issues to rely on. This volume brings a series of papers together, which present different research methodologies as applied in supply chain management. This comprises review oriented papers that look at what kind of methodologies have been applied, as well as methodological papers discussing new developments needed to successfully conduct research in supply chain management. The third group is made up of applications of the respective methodologies, which serve as examples on how the different methodological approaches can be applied. All papers have undergone a review process ...
This book harvests tried and tested management models - models that have demonstrated added value in everyday organisational practice – in an accessible and readable volume. Each contribution is structured around one central figure while describing concisely the nature, the use, actual experiences and some do's and don'ts of CSR. The book is written for a managerial and consultants audience, people that have to deal with CSR in everyday practice.
Emissions trading (ET) challenges business managers in an entirely new manner, changing the criteria by which environmental policy steers management decisions from hierarchical to monetary. The 24 contributions to this volume discuss ET theoretically and empirically in these broad topic areas: 1) Institutional design, decision making and innovation; 2) Investment and management strategies; 3) ET and business administration and 4) Effects of existing and emerging ET schemes.
Focuses on the instruments and tools currently available to the environmental manager. A theoretical background to the instruments is given together with an overview of those instruments that are in common use today, with particular attention to the physical, economic, legislative and communication instruments.
There is no doubt that the textile industry – the production of clothing, fabrics, thread, fibre and related products – plays a significant part in the global economy. It also frequently operates with disregard to its environmental and social impacts. The textile industry uses large quantities of water and outputs large quantities of waste. As for social aspects, many unskilled jobs have disappeared in regions that rely heavily on these industries. Another serious and still unresolved problem is the flexibility textile industry companies claim to need. Faced with fierce international competition, they are increasingly unable to offer job security. This is without even considering the inf...
This book analyzes Germany's path-breaking Energiewende, the country's transition from an energy system based on fossil and nuclear fuels to a sustainable energy system based on renewables. The authors explain Germany's commitment to a renewable energy transition on multiple levels of governance, from the local to the European, focusing on the sources of institutional change that made the transition possible. They then place the German case in international context through comparative case studies of energy transitions in the USA, China, and Japan. These chapters highlight the multifaceted challenges, and the enormous potential, in different paths to a sustainable energy future. Taken together, they tell the story of one of the most important political, economic, and social undertakings of our time.
This special issue of the Journal of Economics and Statistics is devoted to the use of agent-based models for economic policy advice. It presents a collection of research papers in different fields of applications. Special emphasis is laid on discussing the potential and possible limitations of agent-based models for economic policy advice. The editorial provides an overview on the role of agent-based modeling in economic policy referring also to the papers presented. Furthermore, it highlights the strength of the approach, i.e., the explicit microfoundation and the modeling of heterogenous agents. Finally, we also report on current limitations of the method with regard to economic policy advice and point at some areas deserving further research.
Material flow management offers enterprises a high potential for realizing new economic competitive advantages. The eco-efficient optimization of material flow cutS costs while simultaneously achieving long-term ecological sustainability. This book summarises the fundamental concepts and tools of material flow management, and presents contemporary methods and findings. Case studies illustrate the results from recent research projects conducted in cooperation with industrial companies.
The volume contains eight articles together with comments by twenty authors and discussants on the topic of innovations and sustainability. It provides a competently written, balanced and differentiated state-of-the-art insight into the relation between innovations and sustainability from the perspective of evolutionary economics. The scope of the contributions encompasses the technological, social, organizational, and political dimensions of the topic. Each article is discussed by a competently written commentary providing a critical evaluation and relating it to the relevant literature. Particular interest lies on the issues of steering opportunities and path formation capabilities by decentralized agents, or governmental institutions from the viewpoint of evolutionary economics.