exploring the antecedents of logistics social responsibility a focus on chinese firms fundamental research funds for the central universities 2010221025 2011221016 national natural science foundation of china 70802052 academic outstanding youthful research talent plan of fujian province ja10001s national research foundation for doctoral program of higher education of china 20100121120013 national ministry of education of china humanities and social science 10yjc630010 ncet 10 0712

finite horizons and the non neutrality of money abstract this note re examines the issue of monetary super neutrality in an optimizing model with finite horizons mortality makes agents less patient and thus affects negatively the process of capital accumulation this distortion can be reduced by increases in monetary growth

measuring corporate sustainability management a data envelopment analysis approach despite the increased awareness of the conceptual and practical definition of corporate sustainability questions remain on how to measure performance the objective of this paper is to advance our understanding of the measurement of corporate sustainability management by introducing a data envelopment analysis dea technique and an empirical case of a korean electronics industry in particular we employ cross efficiency in the presence of dual role factors by reflecting some complexity of a real world case donations for tax benefits by employing the combined approach of cross efficiency and dual role factors we offer a new model to measure corporate sustainability management the new model and study findings contribute to the body of knowledge in corporate sustainability management and its performance measurement

the optimal level of social security benefits the optimal level of social security benefits depends on balancing the protection that these benefits offer to those who lack the foresight to provide for their own old age against the welfare costs of distorting economic behavior the primary such cost is the distortion in private saving the present paper derives the level of social security benefits that is optimal in three basic cases in the first section the paper derives the optimal level of benefits for an economy in which all individuals do not anticipate retirement at all and therefore do no saving the second and third sections then derive optimal benefits for two different definitions of incomplete myopia

research advances in environmentally and socially sustainable operations abstract consumers and governments are pressuring firms to strike a balance between profitability and sustainability however this balance can only be maintained in the long run if the firm can take a holistic approach to sustain the financial flow profit resource flow planet and development flow people for the entire ecosystem comprising poor producers in emerging developing markets global supply chain partners consumers in developed countries and the planet by considering the flows associated with different entities within the ecosystem we classify and summarize recent operations research management science or ms research developments also we identify several gaps for future research in this important area

long run equilibrium modeling of emissions allowance allocation systems in electric power markets carbon dioxide allowance trading systems for electricity generators are in place in the european union and in several u s states an important question in the design of such systems is how allowances are to be initially allocated by auction by giving away fixed amounts grandfathering or by allocating based on present or recent output investment or other decisions the latter system can bias investment operations and product pricing decisions and increase costs relative to the other systems a nonlinear complementarity model is proposed for investigating the long run equilibria that would result under alternative systems for power markets characterized by time varying demand and multiple technology types existence of equilibria is shown under mild conditions solutions for simple systems show that allocating allowances to new capacity based on fuel use or generator type can yield large distortions in capacity investment invert the operating order of power plants and inflate consumer costs the distortions can be smaller for tighter co2 restrictions and are somewhat mitigated if there is also a market for electricity capacity or minimum run restrictions on coal plants distortions are also less if allowances are allocated to plants in proportion to sales rather than capacity

design for the environment a quality based model for green product development green product development which addresses environmental issues through product design and innovation as opposed to the traditional end of pipe control approach is receiving significant attention from customers industries and governments around the world in this paper we develop a quality based model for analyzing the strategic and policy issues concerning the development of products with conflicting traditional and environmental attributes on the demand side of the problem we use the framework of conjoint analysis to structure the preferences of the ordinary and green customers on the supply side we apply the theories in optimal product design and market segmentation to analyze the producer s strategic decisions regarding the number of products introduced and their prices and qualities on the policy side we evaluate the effects of environmental standards on the economic and environmental consequences of green product development by jointly considering the interactions among the customers preferences the producer s product strategies and the environmental standards imposed by governments we present some interesting findings that can be used to manage and regulate the development of green products two major findings show that green product development and stricter environmental standards might not necessarily benefit the environment

operations research for green logistics an overview of aspects issues contributions and challenges the worldwide economic growth of the last century has given rise to a vast consumption of goods while globalization has led to large streams of goods all over the world the production transportation storage and consumption of all these goods however have created large environmental problems today global warming created by large scale emissions of greenhouse gasses is a top environmental concern governments action groups and companies are asking for measures to counter this threat operations research has a long tradition in improving operations and especially in reducing costs in this paper we present a review that highlights the contribution of operations research to green logistics which involves the integration of environmental aspects in logistics we give a sketch of the present and possible developments focussing on design planning and control in a supply chain for transportation inventory of products and facility decisions while doing this we also indicate several areas where environmental aspects could be included in or models for logistics

shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice abstract over the past decade an increasing number of authors have been examining the nexus of producer versus consumer responsibility often dealing with the question of how to assign responsibility for internationally traded greenhouse gas emissions recently a similar problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the ecological footprint while the method traditionally assumes a full life cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility a large number of producers businesses and industry sectors have started to calculate their own footprints see www isa org usyd edu au adding any producer s footprint to other producers footprints or to population footprints which all already cover the full upstream supply chain of their operating inputs leads to double counting the sum of footprints of producers and consumers is larger than the total national footprint the committee in charge of the footprint standardisation process was hence faced with the decades old non additivity problem posing the following dilemma for the accounting of footprints or any other production factor if one disallows double counting but wishes to be able to account for producers and consumers then one cannot impose the requirement of full life cycle coverage the supply chains of actors have to be curtailed somehow in order to avoid double counting this work demonstrates and discusses a non arbitrary method of consistently delineating these supply chains into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive portions of responsibility to be shared by all actors in an economy

industry self regulation without sanctions the chemical industry s responsible care program industry self regulation the voluntary association of firms to control their collective action has been proposed as a complement to government regulation proponents argue that the establishment of

inter linking issues and dimensions in sustainability reporting during the last decade sustainability reporting sr has been increasingly adopted by corporations worldwide this is evidenced by the adoption of several guidelines such as the iso 14000 series the social accountability 8000 standard and the gri sustainability guidelines sr shows promise to help corporate leaders and their employees to contribute towards achieving sustainable societies however most of the guidelines and standards address sustainability issues through comparmentalisation thereby leading to the separation of the economic environmental and social dimensions due to these divisive approaches holistic assessments of the effects of their efforts are seldom properly integrated into coporate decisions and procedures to make improvements for example through cleaner production worker health and safety consumer safety and reductions in the negative short and long term social and environmental impacts this paper analyses sr reports from three companies with the help of grounded theory s constant comparative analysis this analytical framework helped the authors to systematically assess the degree to which the companies addressed economic ecological and social issues separately or in an integrated and inter linked manner from the inter linkages found a new category is proposed to be added to future sr this new category can help corporate sr planners and researchers on sustainability reports to better understand how the company leaders understand their responsibilities with regard to sd these inter connectednesses are highly relevant in many short and long term dimensions of supply chain management global warming ecological disruption and societal equity issues especially with regard to the local national and global energy issues of fuels and oils the central themes of the conference at which this paper was originally presented it also plays a key role in real long term changes towards sustainability where the time dimension plays a key role in human survival on planet earth

sustainable supply chain management a case study of british aerospace bae systems sustainability is viewed as possessing environmental economic and social dimensions the sustainability approaches adopted by individual businesses and the supply chains to which they belong must include these facets these three components of sustainability are collectively termed the triple bottom line or 3bl the idea of a triple bottom line which originated in the 1990s implies attending to the traditional financial aspects of an organisation as well as to the social and environmental criteria the economic aspect of the 3bl refers to profit making and attaining and sustaining competitive advantage through sustainability the environmental dimension involves factors relating to climate change global warming air land and water pollution or preservation and ozone layer depletion the social aspect involves health and safety issues community well being employment opportunities charities cultural sensitivities and requirements and organisational behaviour as global warming climate change and depletion of resources are on a rise alongside greater demand for improvement in business processes economic standards and technology it has become necessary to sustain processes along the value chain in order to contribute to sustainability this paper examines the drivers of sustainability and related key features based on extant literature and a case study an overview is given of the british aerospace bae systems sustainability initiatives and activities on the basis of the bae systems case study two resultant frameworks emerge that display the interdependence of the triple bottom line and the essential elements required for a sustainable supply chain

a stochastic aggregate production planning model in a green supply chain considering flexible lead times nonlinear purchase and shortage cost functions in this paper we develop a stochastic programming approach to solve a multi period multi product multi site aggregate production planning problem in a green supply chain for a medium term planning horizon under the assumption of demand uncertainty the proposed model has the following features i the majority of supply chain cost parameters are considered ii quantity discounts to encourage the producer to order more from the suppliers in one period instead of splitting the order into periodical small quantities are considered iii the interrelationship between lead time and transportation cost is considered as well as that between lead time and greenhouse gas emission level iv demand uncertainty is assumed to follow a pre specified distribution function v shortages are penalized by a general multiple breakpoint function to persuade producers to reduce backorders as much as possible vi some indicators of a green supply chain such as greenhouse gas emissions and waste management are also incorporated into the model the proposed model is first a nonlinear mixed integer programming which is converted into a linear one by applying some theoretical and numerical techniques due to the convexity of the model the local solution obtained from linear programming solvers is also the global solution finally a numerical example is presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed model

chilean pension reform coverage facts and policy alternatives as opposed to defined benefit pension schemes which are showing sustainability problems around the world individual capitalization systems are seen as financially solvent however there has been some controversy during the last years with respect to this system s ability to provide adequate pensions nevertheless in any contributory system defined benefit or defined contribution the performance of labor markets is crucial the lack of contributions in the first case would imply financial problems or exclusion and lower pensions in the second this article presents an analysis of how different variables affect the pension level in an individual capitalization scheme assessing their relative importance then individual level administrative data combined with survey information is used to project pension benefits the results show that a considerable percentage of the population would not be able to self finance an old age pension higher than the level of the minimum pension guarantee in expected terms moreover most of them would not be entitled to get state funding to obtain a pension of that amount however the heterogeneity of individuals implies that there are very different situations and that not all of those who receive a low pension are vulnerable when old there are cases in which individuals have other types of savings or in the case of women they might live of their husband s pension or widow pension benefit if diseased additionally two possible reforms are explored and their potential impact is evaluated the default contribution for self employed and the extension of the minimum pension guarantee for a broader range of contribution periods not just 20 years

optimal production planning with emissions trading emissions trading is a market based mechanism for curbing emissions and it has been implemented in europe north america and several other parts of the world to study its impact on production planning we develop a dynamic production model where a manufacturer produces a single product to satisfy random market demands the manufacturer has access to both a green and a regular production technology of which the former is more costly but yields fewer emissions to comply with the emissions regulations the manufacturer can buy or sell the allowances in each period via forward contracts in an outside market with stochastic trading prices while needing to keep a nonnegative allowance account balance at the end of the planning horizon we first derive several important structural properties of the model and based upon them we characterize the optimal emissions trading and production policies that minimize the manufacturer s expected total discounted cost in particular the optimal emissions trading pol

do corporate global environmental standards create or destroy market value arguments can be made on both sides of the question of whether a stringent global corporate environmental standard represents a competitive asset or liability for multinational enterprises mnes investing in emerging and developing markets analyzing the global environmental standards of a sample of u s based mnes in relation to their stock market performance we find that firms adopting a single stringent global environmental standard have much higher market values as measured by tobin sq than firms defaulting to less stringent or poorly enforced host country standards thus developing countries that use lax environmental regulations to attract foreign direct investment may end up attracting poorer quality and perhaps less competitive firms our results also suggest that externalities are incorporated to a significant extent in firm valuation we discuss plausible reasons for this observation

performance evaluation and a flow allocation decision model for a sustainable supply chain of an apparel industry abstract there is a growing concern that business enterprises and their supply chains focus primarily on economic activities and ignore their impact on the environment and society this paper aims to help decision makers managers and practitioners to achieve economic growth societal development and environmental protection by developing sustainable supply chain performance measures and proposes a partner selection and flow allocation decision making model survey data from 278 business organizations from the indian apparel industry supply chain network were used and an integrated method of structural equation modeling fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and fuzzy multi objective linear programming was applied to the proposed model the results of the structural equation modeling analysis indicate that the survey respondents considered sustainable production performance to be of prime importance which thus indicates its significance in developing a sustainable supply chain for the apparel industry to illustrate the use of the proposed model for partner selection and flow allocation decision making real time data from an apparel manufacturer are presented optimal results were obtained for two strategies sustainability and cost saving to show a cost benefit trade off when developing a sustainable supply chain using comparative performance a decision maker can choose an appropriate strategy based on cost benefit analysis of the presented trade offs

environmental safety stock the impacts of regulatory and voluntary control policies on production planning inventory control and environmental performance abstract this paper analyzes the impacts of different pollution control policies on a firm s decisions of production planning and inventory control based on a stochastic model with both demand and environmental uncertainties we derive the optimal policies of production planning and inventory control under both regulatory and voluntary pollution control approaches and investigate their operational and environmental effects we establish that the conventional wisdom which suggests that reduction of environmental waste at the end of a production process also decreases the stock and throughput levels of a production system is not necessarily true rather a regulatory environmental standard that limits the total amount of waste may induce the firm to raise its planned stock level which would lead to a higher expected amount of environmental wastes before the standard is enforced as well as environmental risks at other stages of the production process the additional planned stock level which is termed environmental safety stock can be reversed by using the voluntary control approach that provides the firm with the flexibility to occasionally exceed the environmental standard we also conduct numerical experiments to analyze the effects of different values of model parameters under different control approaches the analytical results provide new insights to the impacts of a firm s production and inventory decisions on the natural environment as well as to the choices of pollution control approaches by decision makers in both the private and public sectors

devaluation levels vs rates and balance of payments in a cash in advance economy abstract this paper investigates the consequences of the currency devaluation both in levels and rates on the balance of payments in a cash in advance economy with finite horizons endogenous capital accumulation and international capital immobility in this context a once and for all currency devaluation induces a balance of payments surplus whereas a sustained increase in the rate of devaluation produces in principle an ambiguous effect on the balance of payments if however non restrictive assumptions on some structural parameters are made an increase in the devaluation rate leads to a balance of payments surplus the exact opposite of calvo s result j int econ 11 2 1981 165

shared savings contracts for indirect materials in supply chains channel profits and environmental impacts there are many materials for which the quantity needed by a firm is at best indirectly related to the quantity of final product produced by that firm such as solvents in manufacturing processes or office supplies for any such indirect materials an inescapable incentive conflict exists the buyer wishes to minimize consumption of these indirect materials while the supplier s profits depend on increasing volume both buyer and supplier can exert effort to reduce consumption hence making the overall supply chain more efficient however no supplier will voluntarily participate unless contract terms are fundamentally revised this can be done through a variety of shared savings contracts where both parties profit from a consumption reduction this paper analyzes several such contracts currently in use for chemicals purchasing we show that such contracts can always increase supply chain profits but need not lead to reduced consumption we analyze equilibrium effort levels consumption and total profits and show how these change with the contract parameters we find that the goals of maximizing joint profits and minimizing consumption are generally not aligned also surprisingly a decrease in a cost parameter can lead to a decrease in profits it may be necessary but is always possible to renegotiate the shared savings contract to reap the benefits of a cost decrease

dynamics of supply chain networks with corporate social responsibility through integrated environmental decision making in this paper we develop a dynamic framework for the modeling and analysis of supply chain networks with corporate social responsibility through integrated environmental decision making through a multilevel supply chain network we model the multicriteria decision making behavior of the various decision makers manufacturers retailers and consumers which includes the maximization of profit the minimization of emission waste and the minimization of risk we explore the dynamic evolution of the product flows the associated product prices as well as the levels of social responsibility activities on the network until an equilibrium pattern is achieved we provide some qualitative properties of the dynamic trajectories under suitable assumptions and propose a discrete time algorithm which is then applied to track the evolution of the levels of social responsibility activities product flows and prices over time we illustrate the model and computational procedure with several numerical examples

social issues in supply chains capabilities link responsibility risk opportunity and performance abstract social issues in the supply chain are defined as product or process related aspects of operations that affect human safety welfare and community development drawing from related literatures basic constructs related to capabilities and risk are defined and used to underpin case research in five multinational firms this data extended our understanding of three key social management capabilities monitoring collaboration and innovation moreover the field research revealed four key linkages that detail how managers actively can work toward mitigating social risks creating new opportunities and improving firm performance collectively these capabilities and linkages establish the basis for an integrative framework and five research propositions

corporate optimal production planning with varying environmental costs a grey compromise programming approach abstract corporate environmental and resources management has become more strategically oriented when many pollution charges environmental taxes and resources conservation fees have been gradually imposing to the industry the need for explicit consideration and incorporation of varying environmental costs within production planning program is becoming critical to corporate management this paper attempts to assess an optimal production planning program in response to varying environmental costs in an uncertain environment the optimal production strategy concerning numerous screening of possible production alternatives of dyeing cloth in a textile dyeing firm in terms of market demand resources availability and impact of environmental costs is treated as an integral part of the multi criteria decision making framework based on the grey compromise programming approach it covers not only the regular part of production costs and the direct income from product sales but also the emission effluent charges and water resource fees reflecting part of the goals for internalization of external cost in a sustainable society in particular all the crucial variables in the model are addressed by interval expressions the same as they are frequently applied in the grey systems theory in support of a vital uncertainty assessment which is much better suited for this particular study than other approaches research results demonstrate the applicability and significance of such an approach based on a case study industry looking for the competitive advantage of environmental management must be aware of the potential benefits from such an integrated production planning program once the trend of increasing pollution charges environmental taxes and resources conservation fees remains

knowledge information and retirement saving decisions evidence from a large scale intervention in chile all over the world retirement income depends increasingly on individuals savings choices over their lifetime while government sponsored retirement schemes like the u s social security system provide a reasonable stream of resources for old age middle and high income workers are expected to make their own additional savings arrangements either through employer sponsored pension plans matching contribution schemes such as the 401 k plans in the united states or individual savings through tax favored investment vehicles 1to adequately plan for retirement individuals need information about their current situation the different choices available to them and some minimal mathematical and abstraction capabilities to properly process this information there is growing concern however regarding the low level of financial literacy among the general population the baby boomer generation does not seem to have accumulated sufficient financial wealth beyond housing with particularly low asset levels for female headed households 2 even if the lack of financial sophistication could be overcome by the use of retirement planning services the existing evidence suggests that these services are rarely sought and when they are it is mostly by individuals with initially higher levels of financial literacy 3 furthermore individuals with less exposure to financial planning tend to make wrong choices saving less than required in poorly diversified portfolios or not profiting from tax favored instruments 4in a defined contribution scheme the level of the benefit is not known beforehand and individuals face uncertainty about how their current savings will translate into future benefits in this setting one key piece of information that individuals need to make active decisions to improve their retirement wealth is the pension level they are expected to receive given their current financial wealth and their historical saving behavior assuming that individuals can reasonably form an expectation of the income level they would like to receive in old age the comparison between desired and projected income could induce them to save more transfer their wealth into more conservative or aggressive portfolios postpone retirement or seek retirement planning advice while it is always possible to make these adjustments the effectiveness of these choices depends on the time horizon until retirement while small changes when one is young can have a large impact on retirement individuals with low asset levels can do little to improve their situation as they approach retirement age except perhaps postpone their exit from the labor force in this article we exploit a large scale natural experiment to analyze the impact of a personalized pension projection ppp which was sent to practically all chilean active dependent workers in july 2005 on their retirement saving behavior the objective of this intervention was to simplify the information received by pension system members to help them make better decisions in essence we compare the saving behavior of individuals during the first twelve months after they received the ppp with that of comparable individuals who were not sent this statement due to some specific administrative rules we use this analysis to address two different issues first if individuals were well aware of their current financial stance receipt of this information should have no effect on their retirement related saving behavior our analysis serves as a test of the full information hypothesis second the large scope of the intervention allows us to look at different subgroups of the population as mentioned above the age dimension is particularly important since the possibility of correcting misalignments between expectations and projections depends crucially on the time horizon until retirement the gender dimension is also important for the chilean case as the actuarial nature of the chilean pension system tends to directly translate gender differences in the labor market into differences in their old age income chilean women tend to work less frequently receive lower wages for a comparable job retire earlier and live longer

money growth and finite horizons the implications of endogenous labor supply for money superneutrality in olg economies are analyzed inflation increases capital and output while it affects labor ambiguously in a closed economy inflation reduces capital and output but stimulates wealth in an open economy

towards supply chain sustainability economic environmental and social design and planning abstract costumers and governments are pressuring companies to become more sustainable however the lack of research on how to incorporate these issues makes this a challenging task to fill this gap a generic multi objective mathematical programming model for the design and planning of supply chains integrating the three dimensions of sustainability is presented the economic pillar of sustainability is addressed in this work considering the costs of the supply chain then recipe an environmental assessment methodology indicated in the literature and by the european commission as the most developed one currently available is for the first time applied to supply chain design optimization finally a social indicator appropriate to assess strategic decisions is proposed this social indicator considers the impact of social and political concerns on company s performance the relevance of this model as a decision support system is highlighted with its application to a real case study of a portuguese battery producer and distributor a set of strategies to select the best solution among the obtained optimal ones is presented results show that the model allows improvements in all the three dimensions of sustainability and offers important managerial insights