investment in cleaner technology and signaling distortions in a market with green consumers abstract i analyze the pricing and investment behavior of a firm that signals the environmental attributes of its production technology through its price to uninformed environmentally conscious consumers i then analyze the effect of change in environmental regulation on the signaling outcome and the firm s ex ante incentive to invest in cleaner technology when regulation is weak a firm signals cleaner technology through higher price in this case the firm earns lower profit when it has cleaner technology and thus has no incentive to invest in cleaner technology the price charged by the clean firm declines sharply beyond a critical level of regulation when regulation is sufficiently stringent the firm with cleaner technology charges lower price but earns higher signaling profit and ex ante the firm has positive incentive to invest in cleaner technology with weak regulation the incentive of the firm to directly disclose its environmental performance rather than signal it through price is increasing in the level of regulation the opposite holds when regulation is sufficiently stringent

a two echelon sustainable supply chain coordination under cap and trade regulation this paper analyses the decision behaviour and coordination mechanisms for a two echelon sustainable supply chain under a cap and trade regulation in a make to order setting carbon emissions are generated primarily by the downstream manufacturing process and the market demand of the supply chain is affected by two decision variables the sustainability level and the selling price the impact of the unit emissions trading price on the optimal decision variables in both centralized and decentralized systems is revealed the comparison of decentralized and centralized systems shows that the increase in total profit in centralized system is at most 1 3 that in decentralized system to achieve the same profit as the centralized system we consider two contracts to coordinate the sustainable supply chain revenue sharing and two part tariff contracts by analysing the conditions for a win win outcome we prove that only the two part tariff contract can lead to perfect coordination finally sensitivity analysis of the key parameters is undertaken as part of a numerical example illustrating the theoretical results

board composition and financial performance uncovering the effects of diversity in an emerging economy we examine the key elements of board diversity or heterogeneity amongst listed companies operating in an emerging economy mauritius and the extent to which these influence financial performance specifically we ask whether there is evidence of tangible benefits in pursuing a strategy of board diversity in terms of gender age educational background and independence in a corporate context which has long been dominated by family led and closed boardrooms in light of recent corporate governance developments which appear to foster greater diversity we examine data from the 2007 annual reports of all 42 companies listed on the stock exchange of mauritius we find that i women remain poorly represented on boards ii there is a relatively satisfactory level of heterogeneity in terms of educational background age and independence in relation to developed countries we also find significant regression coefficients for all four variables in terms of their impact on short term performance however these relationships are characterised by both negative and positive impacts thereby leading to discussions on the validity of a strict heterogeneous or homogeneous board composition in the context of a developing economy

on inventory control of product recovery systems subject to environmental mechanisms abstract the aim of this paper is to study the impact of inventory control in reducing the carbon footprint of an organization through a stochastic inventory model our research extends the traditional minimization cost problem by incorporating environmental legislation we consider a finite horizon closed loop system whereby decisions are subject to an emissions trading scheme and to random demand and returns demand can be satisfied by two sources the primary source is environmentally friendly but expensive whereas the second is cost effective but with negative environmental consequences the problem is formulated as a stochastic dynamic problem where replenishment and carbon management decisions must be made at each period the objective is to describe how replenishment and carbon management strategies are affected by environmental constraints in particular considering the computation restriction of dynamic programming in order to extend the results we propose a genetic algorithm to find near optimal solutions for larger instances a sensitivity analysis is performed to identify the impact of carbon allowance prices emission cap and other environmental factors in the decision making process the results indicate that environmental strategies and their factors have an impact on replenishment decisions there is an emission cap from which a company must focus on strategic decisions rather than on tactical and operational decisions in addition if the carbon allowance price is such that the environmental benefit absorbs the cost of less polluting technology a change in the inventory policy must be made

women directors on corporate boards from tokenism to critical mass academic debate on the strategic importance of women corporate directors is widely recognized and still open however most corporate boards have only one woman director or a small minority of women directors therefore they can still be considered as tokens this article addresses the following question does an increased number of women corporate boards result in a build up of critical mass that substantially contributes to firm innovation the aim is to test if at least three women could constitute the desired critical mass by identifying different minorities of women directors one woman two women and at least three women tests are conducted on a sample of 317 norwegian firms the results suggest that attaining critical mass going from one or two women a few tokens to at least three women consistent minority makes it possible to enhance the level of firm innovation moreover the results show that the relationship between the critical mass of women directors and the level of firm innovation is mediated by board strategic tasks implications for both theory and practice and future research directions are discussed

optimization of manufacturing systems under environmental considerations for a greenness dependent demand abstract in this work we show that the optimization models for manufacturing systems should evolve to consider the environmental impacts of manufacturing activities and to integrate the environmental performance of finished products in particular the selection of manufacturing processes technologies and input items components should be revised with environmental consideration with this scope in mind we develop two optimization models where we consider the selection of production processes and the choice of input products in the first model a single product is offered by the firm and the demand of this product depends on its greenness in the second model the market is segmented between ordinary and green customers and the firm offers a different variety of the output product to each segment in this case both the demand and the price depend on the product greenness in both models the greenness of the output product is a decision variable that is simultaneously determined along with the other decisions in addition the models integrate environmental legislations we conduct numerical experiments on a case study from the textile sector in order to show how the integration of the product greenness impacts on the system profit and decisions

optimal production and carbon emission reduction level under cap and trade and low carbon subsidy policies abstract in recent years massive carbon emissions have caused serious global environmental damage such as a worsening greenhouse effect and thick haze to curb carbon emissions as well as maintain sustainable economic development governments promote the development of low carbon economy by issuing multiple policies among which the cap and trade policy ctp and low carbon subsidy policy lcsp are widely adopted moreover manufacturers are increasingly adopting carbon emission reduction technology to produce greener products considering related government policies and rising environmental awareness among consumers to give policy making insights to governments as well as production and carbon emission reduction decision making insights to manufacturers this paper investigates the impacts of ctp and lcsp on the production and carbon emission reduction level of a manufacturer and explores which policy is better for society the results show that the carbon emission reduction level increases as the carbon trading price increases whereas it is independent of the unit low carbon subsidy interestingly the carbon trading price does not always have a negative effect on the manufacturer s profit and the cap does not always produce a positive effect on the manufacturer s profit more importantly we find that lcsp is more beneficial to society when the environmental damage coefficient is less than a threshold but otherwise ctp is more beneficial

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

reverse channel design the case of competing retailers the economical and environmental benefits of product remanufacturing have been widely recognized in the literature and in practice in this paper we focus on the interaction between a manufacturers reverse channel choice to collect postconsumer goods and the strategic product pricing decisions in the forward channel when retailing is competitive to this end we model a direct product collection system in which the manufacturer collects used products directly from the consumers e g print and copy cartridges and an indirect product collection system in which the retailers act as product return points e g single use cameras cellular phones we first examine how the allocation of product collection to retailers impacts their strategic behavior in the product market and we discuss the economic trade offs the manufacturer faces while choosing an optimal reverse channel structure when a direct collection system is used channel profits are driven by the impact of scale of returns on collection effort whereas in the indirect reverse channel supply chain profits are driven by the competitive interaction between the retailers subsequently we show that the buy back payments transfered to the retailers for postconsumer goods provide a wholesale pricing flexibility that can be used to price discriminate between retailers of different profitability

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

women on the board and managers pay evidence from spain the current literature shows great interest in the issue of gender diversity on boards of directors some studies have hypothesized a direct relationship between diversity and the value of the firm but not many examine the intermediate mechanisms that may exert an influence on such relationships we employ two stages of gmm estimation methodology to exhibit evidences of the relationship between gender diversity and compensation of top managers in the spanish context results show that gender diversity positively affects the effectiveness of boards in terms of composition structure size and functioning influencing a proper design of top managers compensation linked to company performance evidences suggest that legislative actions aimed at increasing the presence of women on boards of directors are justified not only for ethical reasons but also for reasons of economic efficiency

preference disaggregation 20 years of mcda experience abstract the philosophy of preference disaggregation in multicriteria decision aid systems mcda is to assess infer global preference models from the given preferential structures and to address decision aiding activities this paper presents a panorama of preference disaggregation methods and summarises the most important results and applications over the last 20 years

environmental resource planning under cap and trade models for optimization abstract under the conditions of a cap and trade c t program manufacturers are restricted in total greenhouse gas emissions but allowed with options to acquire and dispose environmental resource e g certified emission quota ceq or commercialized permit for emission of certain pollutant via a market system or conduct self purification sp to reduce emission level to satisfy their overall emission needs due to production or service activities this paper analyzes the operational decisions of production systems under cap and trade conditions in which the problem is modeled as a multi stage dynamic optimization problem for each planning period the model specifically addresses the decisions on purchasing ceq reducing emission via sp and carrying over surplus emission quota seq to meet the required emission level driven by production demand for the period it also makes sure that the sum of reduced emission over the whole planning horizon meets exactly a goal of emission reduction specified at the manufacturers discretion other important problem characteristics addressed include the unit cost for reducing emission level via sp to reflect the fact that the cost increases as accumulated emission reduction increases i e the more reduced the more difficult to reduce and time related cost associated with green investment for emission reduction e g interest cost of short term loans these characteristics make the model and related analysis useful for both practitioners and researchers in this area numerical experiments were designed and carried out to verify and validate the proposed concepts

reducing emissions in transportation and inventory management r q policy with considerations of carbon reduction abstract in this study we examine three approaches on the effects of controlling carbon emissions in transportation and inventory management a business as usual scenario model bausm which delineates how carbon footprints from inventory storage and related transportation are captured is firstly developed as the benchmark model based on bausm we then develop three models with different carbon reduction approaches the first one is constructed by adding a constraint to represent the percentage target of emission reduction the second one integrates carbon taxes or cap and trade scheme into inventory management and the last one takes both reduction target and carbon offset opportunities into account our work provides new analytical models which integrate cost and emissions in transportation and storage under the framework of continuous inventory review r q policy for stochastic demand optimization algorithms are developed for solving models and related properties are investigated to examine the effects of carbon reduction and associated costs of three models the policy implications of the models are examined and discussed to provide insights for reference of the practitioners and the policy makers

a joint approach for setting unit price and the length of the credit period for a seller when end demand is price sensitive this paper considers the seller buyer channel in which the end demand is price sensitive and the seller may offer trade credit to the buyer the unit price seller charged by the seller and the length of the credit period offered by the seller to the buyer both influence the final demand for the product hence we consider both to be policy variables for the seller we use the case of no credit as a benchmark in our analysis the paper provides procedures for determiningthe seller s and the buyer s policies under non cooperative as well as cooperative relationships in the non cooperative case we determine for the seller the optimal unit price and the length of the credit period for the cooperative structure we provide a procedure for characterizingpareto efficient solutions r 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

multi product inventory model for cold items with cost and emission consideration while sharing storage and transportation units is common for many product types cold items usually have different temperature requirements and as a result not all items can share a holding transportation unit consequently the type of products and their compatibility with other products needs to be considered in the inventory model in this paper we propose multi product inventory models for cold items the models determine the inventory levels that minimize either the cost or carbon equivalent emissions we model the compatibility of items as a constraint in the inventory model to solve the model we first find an appropriate family of products that can share a storage transportation unit then for each family of products we develop an approximate solution method to determine the order quantity of each product within a family numerical experiments demonstrate the solution procedure and provide managerial insights into cold item inventory policies

non stationary stochastic inventory lot sizing with emission and service level constraints in a carbon cap and trade system firms worldwide are taking major initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint of their supply chains in response to the growing governmental and consumer pressures in real life these supply chains face stochastic and non stationary demand but most of the studies on inventory lot sizing problem with emission concerns consider deterministic demand in this paper we study the inventory lot sizing problem under non stationary stochastic demand condition with emission and cycle service level constraints considering carbon cap and trade regulatory mechanism using a mixed integer linear programming model this paper aims to investigate the effects of emission parameters product and system related features on the supply chain performance through extensive computational experiments to cover general type business settings and not a specific scenario results show that cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation have significant impacts on total cost and emission irrespective of level of demand variability while the impact of product s demand pattern is significant only at lower level of demand variability finally results also show that increasing value of carbon price reduces total cost total emission and total inventory and the scope of emission reduction by increasing carbon price is greater at higher levels of cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation the analysis of results helps supply chain managers to take right decision in different demand and service level situations

toward a theoretical model of voluntary overcompliance abstract we explain why some firms voluntarily overcomply with environmental regulation in our model all consumers value environmental quality but differ in their willingness to pay which depends on their income levels publicly available information on environmental performance of firms enables consumers to identify clean firms firms participate in a two stage duopoly game where they first choose their levels of cleaning technology and next engage in price competition the market gets segmented by income levels a minimum standard binding on the dirty firm has the effect of improving the performance of the cleaner firm a subsidy obtains the same competitive outcome

responsible production policies with substitution and carbon emissions trading abstract this paper considers a production model involving a manufacturer that uses two different technologies the green technology and the standard technology the green product produced by the green technology can be used as a substitute for the traditional product produced by the standard technology but not vice versa three models are considered the first model concerns with product substitution only and serves as a benchmark model for the next two models the carbon emission allowance model and the carbon emission trading model the second model extends the product substitution model by imposing an upper limit on the total carbon emission allowance for each firm the third model extends the second model to cater for carbon emission trading for the carbon emission allowance model analytical result shows that the optimal production quantity of any product depends on both its total carbon emission allowance quota and its unit carbon emission profit and the effect of substitution improves the service level the expected profit of the manufacturer and the green of product mix for the carbon emission trading model analytical result shows that whenever the production quantity of any product is optimal the marginal profit of production i e the additional profit obtained by producing an extra item should be equal to the unit price of carbon emission trading within the market moreover the optimal policy of either model reduces the total amount of carbon emission thus producing less pollution to the environment lastly the optimal profits obtained by using the carbon emission trading model are larger than the corresponding optimal profits obtained by using the carbon emission allowance model

comparisons of initial carbon allowance allocation rules in an o2o retail supply chain with the cap and trade regulation abstract this paper focuses on an o2o retail supply chain in the context of low carbon environment the decision models are constructed under three cases without cap and trade regulation cap and trade regulation based on grandfathering mechanism and cap and trade regulation based on benchmarking mechanism the emission reduction strategies of the supply chain members in the three cases are then discussed the paper compares the effects of the grandfathering and benchmarking mechanisms on the firm s decisions profits and social welfare firstly the results show that the unit carbon quota plays a decisive role in firm s decisions compared with the grandfathering methodology the benchmarking one can more effectively push manufacturers to produce low carbon products and motivate retailers to promote low carbon products secondly it is profitable for the retailer to cooperate with a manufacturer who has lower emission reduction cost simultaneously the retailer will prefer the benchmarking mechanism to the grandfathering mechanism thirdly for the government it is beneficial to use grandfathering mechanism for low carbon emission firms and use benchmarking mechanism for high carbon emission firms also the paper provides government and firms with conditions where the benchmarking allocation method is more suitable for sustainable development the government s decision on benchmarks is a critical factor in maximizing the social welfare

addressing climate change with a comprehensive us cap and trade system there is growing impetus for a domestic us climate policy that can provide meaningful reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide co2 and other greenhouse gases i describe and analyse an up stream economy wide co2 cap and trade system which implements a gradual trajectory of emissions reductions with inclusion over time of non co2 greenhouse gases and includes mechanisms to reduce cost uncertainty initially half of the allowances are allocated through auction and half through free distribution with the share being auctioned gradually increasing to 100 per cent over 25 years the system provides for linkage with emission reduction credit projects in other countries harmonization over time with effective cap and trade systems in other countries and regions and appropriate linkage with actions taken in other countries in order to establish a level playing field among domestically produced and imported products

impact of efficiency investment and competition on low carbon manufacturing abstract low carbon economy has become a top agenda for many countries following the agreement in the paris meeting on climate change in this article we take price and emission sensitive demand into account and incorporate competition between the two rival manufacturers in the demand function this research takes more proactive actions incorporating carbon emissions in the strategic and operational decisions which complements the existing literature on low carbon manufacturing in which the carbon emissions attribute is often used as a constraint or only the single manufacturer s demand is considered based on game theory the pricing and carbon emissions reduction decisions are investigated our study contributes to the existing literature on low carbon manufacturing by specifically examining the impact of production efficiency carbon emissions reduction efficiency and market power structure on achieving low carbon manufacturing through the systematic analysis of optimal pricing and green technology investment decisions to improve the economic and environmental performance under different market power structures our findings provide valuable managerial implications which will help many manufacturing firms to make important strategic and operational decisions regarding low carbon manufacturing

an optimization model for a monopolistic firm serving an environmentally conscious market use of chemical reaction optimization algorithm this work considers a monopolist firm which faces the following twin challenges of serving an environmentally sensitive market the first challenge is the demand s elasticity to emissions and price to entice its emission conscious customers and generate higher demand the firm incrementally invests in cleaner production technologies it also adopts a voluntary limit on its emissions from transportation however such investments and penalty lead to the second challenge of reduced net profit to address above trade off a non linear programming nlp model with a maximization quadratic profit function has been formulated recently developed chemical reaction optimization algorithm with superior computational performance has been adopted to solve the nlp the output of the model provides near optimal monopolistic price best attainable reduction in manufacturing emissions through proportional investment and makes a choice of suitable mode of transportation for each type of product offered by the firm three types of sensitivity analyses were performed by varying contextual parameters customers emission elasticity penalty charged per unit emission and investment coefficient the results underpin the importance of investments in cleaner technologies and the need of financial aids for profit maximizing firms operating in cleaner markets this work provides a decision making tool to determine the near optimal degree of each of the above dimension in multiple business fronts

sustainable allocation of greenhouse gas emission permits for firms with leontief technologies abstract in this paper we deal with production situations where a cap or limit to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions permitted is imposed fixing a tax for each ton of pollutant emitted is also considered we use bankruptcy rules to define cooperative games with externalities associated with these situations and analyze the existence of coalitionally stable allocations of the emission permits we prove that the constrained equal awards cea rule provides stable allocations and as a direct mechanism it is incentive compatible these two facts have interesting managerial implications to control pollution emissions

sustainable economic production quantity models for inventory systems with shortage abstract recently new economic order production quantity models have shifted away from focusing only on economic issues and towards combined economic environmental concerns because of sustainable development goals despite this shift only a few works have addressed sustainable economic production quantity epq the theoretical sustainable eoq and epq models are basic models that ignore many real life conditions such as the possibility of stock out in inventory systems in this paper we develop four new sustainable economic production quantity models that consider different shortage situations to find optimal values of inventory system variables we solve four independent profit maximization problems for four different situations these proposed models include a basic model in which shortages are not allowed and when shortages are allowed the lost sale full backordering and partial backordering models can be selected by operations managers depending on the manufacturer s motivation to improve service levels we have also proposed an algorithm for determining optimum values of the decision variables for these sustainable economic production quantity models finally the formulated models are explained with some different examples and the obtained results have been analyzed and discussed these results show that the sustainable economic production quantity with partial backordering model is a general and more realistic model that can be used in many real cases with a reasonable profit amount compared with the three other proposed models

customer regulatory and competitive pressure as drivers of environmental innovation we develop an economic analysis in order to examine the effects of consumer regulatory and competitive pressure on firm investments in environmentally friendly production specifically we ask why do firms vary in their levels of environmental innovation under what conditions are such pressures effective in bringing about environmental innovation we first consider a monopolist who faces the twin pressures of reduced customer demand and regulatory penalties as a result of its emissions in response to these pressures the firm has the opportunity to make a costly investment in reduction of emissions secondly we consider a competitive scenario in which two firms compete for environmentally sensitive customers solving our model we find that pressure has the intended effect as long as the firm s initial level of emissions is below a certain threshold if the emissions are above this threshold we find that pressure might have an adverse effect on the firm s environmental investment and that subsidies that support environmental innovation can be a better alternative we also show that competition over environmentally sensitive customers can improve the effectiveness of environmental pressures

does confucianism reduce board gender diversity firm level evidence from china this study extends previous literature on the association between confucianism and corporate decisions by examining confucianism s influence on board gender diversity using a sample of chinese listed firms during the period of 2001 2011 and geographic proximity based confucianism variables i provide strong and consistent evidence to show that confucianism is significantly negatively associated with board gender diversity suggesting that the proportion of women directors in the boardroom is significantly lower for firms surrounded by strong confucianism atmosphere than for firms located in regions with weak confucianism atmosphere this finding also implies that confucian philosophical system has important impacts on business ethics and women s status in corporate governance moreover gdp per capita the proxy for economic development level in a province in which a firm is located attenuates the negative association between confucianism and board gender diversity above results are robust to different measures of confucianism and board gender diversity and are still valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity between confucianism and board gender diversity

design of sustainable supply chains under the emission trading scheme increase in environmental concerns together with legislations are forcing industries to take a fresh look at the impact of their supply chain operations on the environment this paper introduces a mixed integer linear programming based framework for sustainable supply chain design that considers life cycle assessment lca principles in addition to the traditional material balance constraints at each node in the supply chain indeed the framework distinguishes between solid and liquid wastes as well as gaseous emissions due to various production processes and transportation systems the framework is used to evaluate the tradeoffs between economic and environmental objectives under various cost and operating strategies in the aluminum industry the results suggest that current legislation and emission trading schemes ets must be strengthened and harmonized at the global level in order to drive a meaningful environmental strategy moreover the model demonstrates that efficient carbon management strategies will help decision makers to achieve sustainability objectives in a cost effective manner

inventory management under joint product recovery and cap and trade constraints abstract the influence of environmental legislation in inventory control policies is explored previous work on product recovery is extended using the introduction of a cap and trade mechanism in an infinite horizon inventory system in which demand and returns are uncertain demand is met through two different sources namely manufacturing and remanufacturing which differ in cost and greenhouse gas emissions the main contributions of this paper are 1 comparison of system operation in terms of cost and environmental performance under conventional and green inventory policies and 2 managerial insights into the structure of green inventory policies to illustrate the impact of a cap and trade scheme a numerical example is used we solved the problem as a markov decision process and characterized the inventory policies based on the optimal replenishment strategy we also conducted a sensitivity analysis to examine the effect of underlying environmental parameters such as the emission cap and the allowance price in the policy structures the results indicate that decisions are sensitive to carbon prices the inventory policy could play an important role in compliance with environmental legislation although there is threshold carbon price beyond which the company must focus on strategic decisions rather than tactical decisions

the impacts of public sustainability concerns on length of product line abstract this paper studies how the public sustainability concerns affect a firm s decisions of product line design under different channel structures both centralized distribution channel and decentralized distribution channel are taken into consideration our research shows that the public sustainability concerns can make the centralized firm shorten its product line when the coefficient of consumer mismatching disutility is moderate in addition when the centralized firm makes the decision of product line extension from the aspect of maximizing social welfare a relative low level of the public sustainability concerns can incent it to extend the product line the public sustainability concerns are shown to be able to weaken the positive impact of channel decentralization that has on product line extension when the coefficient of consumer mismatching disutility is moderate as well

stability in a network economy the role of institutions abstract we consider an economy in which agents are embedded in a network of potential value generating relationships agents are assumed to be able to participate in three types of economic interactions autarkic self provision bilateral interaction and multilateral collaboration through endogenously provided platforms we introduce two stability concepts and provide sufficient and necessary conditions on the network structure that guarantee existence in cases of the absence of externalities link based externalities and crowding externalities we show that institutional arrangements based on socioeconomic roles and leadership guarantee stability in particular the stability of more complex economic outcomes requires more strict and complex institutional rules to govern economic interactions we investigate strict social hierarchies tiered leadership structures and global market places

total quality environmental management and total cost assessment an exploratory study abstract this study addresses one of the major perceived barriers to total quality environmental management tqem total cost assessment tca managers have difficulty assessing the impact of tqem programs because of the lack of appropriate measures in order for tqem investments to be given serious consideration a process is required for measuring monitoring and evaluating tqem by appropriately including all the environmental costs and savings for each investment option after reviewing the background of tqem and frameworks for capturing environmental costs an opportunity emerges for research involving the use of tqem and tca this research presented in this study develops a framework for identifying and formulating a set of cost measures associated with tqem investments the framework serves as a basis for comparing environmental cost measures used among several large us companies two major outputs yielded by this research are 1 a catalog of the various cost measures and procedures used to implement and carryout a tqem tca and 2 the tqem tca framework itself the catalog and framework will be important for later empirical assessment and modeling of tqem

the role of co opetition in low carbon manufacturing abstract low carbon manufacturing has become a strategic objective for many developed and developing economies this study examines the role of co opetition in achieving this objective we investigate the pricing and emissions reduction policies for two rival manufacturers with different emission reduction efficiencies under the cap and trade policy we assume that the product demand is price and emission sensitive based on non cooperative and cooperative games the optimal solutions for the two manufacturers are derived in the purely competitive and co opetitive market environments respectively through the discussion and numerical analysis we uncovered that in both pure competition and co opetition models the two manufacturers optimal prices depend on the unit price of carbon emission trading in addition higher emission reduction efficiency leads to lower optimal unit carbon emissions and higher profit in both the pure competition and co petition models interestingly compared to pure competition co opetition will lead to more profit and less total carbon emissions however the improvement in economic and environmental performance is based on higher product prices and unit carbon emissions

timing and eco nomic efficiency of climate friendly investments in supply chains abstract emission trading schemes such as the european union emissions trading system euets attempt to reconcile economic efficiency with ecological efficiency by creating financial incentives for companies to invest in climate friendly innovations using real options methodology we demonstrate that under uncertainty economic and ecological efficiency continue to be mutually exclusive this problem is even worse if a climate friendly project depends on investing in of a whole supply chain we model a sequential bargaining game in a supply chain where the parties negotiate over implementation of a carbon dioxide co2 saving investment project we show that the outcome of their bargaining is not economically efficient and even less ecologically efficient furthermore we show that a supply chain becomes less economically efficient and less ecologically efficient with every additional chain link finally we make recommendations for how managers or politicians can improve the situation and thereby increase economic as well as ecological efficiency and thus also the eco efficiency of supply chains

delay in payments a strategy to reduce carbon emissions from supply chains abstract the purpose of this paper is to study the effects of various scenarios of delay in payments a form of trade credit by a buyer after receiving items while including various costs such as fuel cost the costs of carbon emissions from manufacturing and transportation activities order cost and setup cost in a two echelon coordinated supply chain the model developed optimizes the environmental and economic performance of a supply chain the study presents a comparison of different scenarios through numerical examples and sensitivity analyses the main contribution of this paper is the joint consideration of delays in payments and the costs of transportation cost and carbon emissions the model has been tested with numerical examples and sensitivity analyses the findings showed that adopting delays in payments improves both environmental and economic performance of a supply chain the analyses also showed that optimizing one of the parameters from the production rate the length of delay in payments or the lot size provides the optimal solution for carbon emissions and the system cost of a supply chain this flexibility makes the model easy to use by practitioners

haulage sharing approach to achieve sustainability in material purchasing new method and numerical applications abstract transportation costs are becoming increasingly important in inventory replenishment decisions and in practice lot sizing decisions are strongly affected by material handling equipment transportation flow paths vehicle capacities and technical constraints companies within a global sourcing context daily experience the cost of transportation as playing a major role in total purchasing costs on the other hand sustainability issues are always more urgent and environmental impact assessment is becoming a key requirement for materials purchasing and transportation choices this work is particularly focusing on an interesting new area of research the haulage sharing in freight transportation when sustainability considerations are taken into account the paper develops and discusses a new haulage sharing lot sizing model in which two partners are cooperating in sharing transportation paths and handling units a three step methodology based on multi objective optimization approach is here proposed to permit the complete evaluation of the costs and savings that arise with an horizontal cooperation the method is described here and applied to two different numerical cases in order to drive useful conclusions and discuss future research steps

the carbon constrained eoq model with carbon emission dependent demand abstract currently companies are looking for solutions to reduce carbon emissions associated with their operations operational adjustments such as modifications in batch sizes or order quantities have proven to be an effective way to decrease emissions in this paper a novel model is proposed that takes into account the link between an inventory policy eoq total carbon emissions and both price and environmental dependent demands in the case of an exogenous price two optimal quantities are determined which maximize a retailer s profit and which minimize carbon emissions conditions that allow a company to maximize profit while minimizing emissions and mechanisms that allow a firm to maximize its profit and to decrease its carbon emissions are determined in the case of an endogenous price some empirical results are also discussed when a firm optimizes its profit through both its selling price and its order quantity some experiments match empirical observations on the one hand an environmental strategy is more significant for cheaper and green labeled products on the other hand a public mechanism such as a carbon tax will decrease total and marginal emissions

does culture influence asset managers views and behavior abstract this research enters new ground by presenting comparative survey evidence on asset managers views and behavior in the united states germany japan and thailand relying on hofstede s four cultural dimensions we find that cultural differences are most helpful in understanding country differences which cannot be explained by pure economic reasoning in short controlling for various determinants the dimension of more individualism predicts less herding behavior more power distance leads to older and comparatively less experienced managers in the upper hierarchy masculinity brings men into top positions and to higher volumes of assets under personal responsibility and uncertainty avoidance is related to higher safety margins against the tracking error allowed and relatively more research effort these consequences i e the culturally different importance of herding age experience gender tracking error and research effort clearly affect investment behavior although in a complex way

98 effective integer ratio lot sizing for one warehouse multi retailer systems a warehouse supplies n retailers constant external demand occurs at each retailer and shortages are not allowed there are linear holding costs and fixed costs for ordering at the warehouse and at each retailer the goal is to minimize the long run average cost over an infinite time horizon we define a new class of policies for this problem whose simple structure facilitates both computation and implementation the cost of a policy that is optimal within this class is shown to be within 2 of the cost of an optimal policy for the original problem in the worst case such a policy can be computed in on log n time

an empirical investigation of green purchase behaviour among the young generation due to an increasing awareness in environmental impact consumers are more sensitive towards green products when making their purchasing decisions the young generation who represents the future of our society seems to have a different attitude and belief which enables them to reflect on their choice of green products this research empirically examines the influence of ecological affect and ecological knowledge on the green purchasing behaviour of the young generation a survey was administered to young consumers between the age of 18 and 30 structural equation modelling was applied to test the hypotheses the analysis result confirms that the ecological effect and knowledge are significant in determining young consumers green involvement as well as their actual purchase

how many parts to make at once reprinted from factory the magazine of management volume 10 number 2 february 1913 pp 135 136 152 interest on capital tied up in wages material and overhead sets a maximum limit to the quantity of parts which can be profitably manufactured at one time set up costs on the job fix the minimum experience has shown one manager a way to determine the economical size of lots

impact of product pricing and timing of investment decisions on supply chain co opetition abstract in supply chain co opetition firms simultaneously compete and co operate in order to maximize their profits we consider the nature of co opetition between two firms the product supplier invests in the technology to improve quality and the purchasing firm buyer invests in selling effort to develop the market for the product before uncertainty in demand is resolved we consider three different decision making structures and discuss the optimal configuration from each firm s perspective in case 1 the supplier invests in product quality and sets the wholesale price for the product the buyer then exerts selling effort to develop the market and following demand potential realization sets the resale price in case 2 the supplier invests in product quality followed by the buyer s investment in selling effort then after demand potential is observed the supplier sets the wholesale price and the buyer sets the resale price finally in case 3 both firms simultaneously invest in product quality and selling effort respectively subsequently observing the demand potential the supplier sets the wholesale price and the buyer sets the resale price we compare all configuration options from both the perspective of the supplier and the buyer and show that the level of investment by the firms depends on the nature of competition between them and the level of uncertainty in demand our analysis reveals that although configuration 1 results in the highest profits for the integrated channel there is no clear dominating preference on system configuration from the perspective of both parties the incentives of the co opetition partners and the investment levels are mainly governed by the cost structure and the level of uncertainty in demand we examine and discuss the relation between system parameters and the incentives in desiging the supply contract structure

transforming sustainability challenges into competitive advantage multiple case studies kaleidoscope converging into sustainable business models abstract recent tendency has been pushing organizations to rethink their role in society and making organization reflect that profit may not be the only and foremost important business performance criteria thus recent literature has been exploring the sustainable business models sbm s as a way to insert sustainability goals into the core of business decisions this research aims to advance in this body of knowledge and proposes a theory and practice based framework to support organizations towards more sbm making explicit main elements to align business to sustainability performance goals to support the argument that there is no unique solution to design sbm this research performs a multiple case studies in eleven organizations from diverse sectors situated in brazil and in the united kingdom results show that sbm is not an attempt to deny business as usual perspective but rather it seeks to complement this view by adding a more axiological and systemic approach in particular three convergent aspects were identified in the case studies as relevant efforts support the integration of sustainability into sbm s value creation and delivery system 1 the connection between business purpose and employees values and believes 2 the pro active and clear engagement in solving sustainability problems and 3 the need for system level changes to enable successful sbm s this systemic thinking is highlighted by the concept emerged from the research the cascaded sustainable value captured representing that as sbm s are part of a value network value delivered by the organizations is captured not only by stakeholders to which they have direct contact but rather this is also deployed to stakeholders of focal company s stakeholders this distinction is not always trivial for companies so the proposed concept can support advances in sbm discussions further studies are called to the challenge of making explicit that sbm s are not only companies that directly addresses a specific social and or environmental problem but rather is an emerging paradigm on how to manage efficient businesses in any sector to add positive value to the globe

including sustainability criteria into inventory models research on sustainability performance has considerably enriched operations management literature in recent years however work with quantitative models is still scarce this paper contributes by revisiting classical inventory methods taking sustainability concerns into account we believe that reducing all aspects of sustainable development to a single objective is not desirable we thus reformulate the classical economic order quantity model as a multiobjective problem we refer to this model as the sustainable order quantity model then a multi echelon extension of the sustainable order quantity model is studied for both models the set of efficient solutions pareto optimal solutions is analytically characterized these results are used to provide some insights about the effectiveness of different regulatory policies to control carbon emissions we also use an interactive procedure that allows the decision maker to quickly identify the best option among these solutions the proposed interactive procedure is a new combination of multi criteria decision analysis techniques

a century of evolution from harris s basic lot size model survey and research agenda abstract determining the economic lot size has always represented one of the most important issues in production planning this problem has long attracted the attention of researchers and several models have been developed to meet requirements at minimum cost in this paper we explore and discuss the evolution of these models during one hundred years of history starting from the basic model developed by harris in 1913 up to today following harris s work a number of researchers have devised extensions that incorporate additional considerations the evolution of eoq theory strongly reflects the development of industrial systems over the past century here we outline all the research areas faced in the past by conducting a holistic analysis of 219 selected journal papers and trying to give a comprehensive view of past work on the eoq problem finally a new research agenda is proposed and discussed

a sustainable production inventory model for a controllable carbon emissions rate under shortages abstract carbon emissions are the key factor of global warming nowadays some countries have focused on reducing carbon emission carbon tax and cap policies are the key mechanism utilized in many countries to achieve this keeping this issue in mind a sustainable economic production quantity sepq carbon tax and cap model has considered for a controllable carbon emissions rate by investing in green technology gt efforts under different with and without shortage situations this study has three models a a sustainable economic production quantity carbon tax and cap model with no shortages b a sustainable economic production quantity carbon tax and cap with partial backordering and c a sustainable economic production quantity carbon tax and cap with full backordering with and without green technology investment a solution methodology has been proposed for determining the optimal strategies of cycle time green technology investment and the fraction period length in positive inventory level several numerical examples have studied to validate the sustainable economic production quantity models the results of this paper are a sustainable economic production quantity carbon tax and cap partial backlogging case has a better justifiable profit with the highest cycle time and the lowest value of the fraction length period as well as the lower green technology investment cost compared with other models finally sensitivity analysis has provided with the managerial implication of the optimal feasible solution with respect to some key parameters

managing carbon footprints in inventory management abstract there is a broad consensus that mankind must reduce carbon emissions to mitigate global warming it is generally accepted that carbon emission trading is one of the most effective market based mechanisms to curb the amount of carbon emissions this paper investigates how firms manage carbon footprints in inventory management under the carbon emission trading mechanism we derive the optimal order quantity and analytically and numerically examine the impacts of carbon trade carbon price and carbon cap on order decisions carbon emissions and total cost we make interesting observations from the numerical examples and provide managerial insights from the analytical results

gender diversity in the boardroom and firm financial performance the monitoring role performed by the board of directors is an important corporate governance control mechanism especially in countries where external mechanisms are less well developed the gender composition of the board can affect the quality of this monitoring role and thus the financial performance of the firm this is part of the business case for female participation on boards though arguments may also be framed in terms of ethical considerations while the issue of board gender diversity has attracted growing research interest in recent years most empirical results are based on u s data this article adds to a growing number of non u s studies by investigating the link between the gender diversity of the board and firm financial performance in spain a country which historically has had minimal female participation in the workforce but which has now introduced legislation to improve equality of opportunities we investigate the topic using panel data analysis and find that gender diversity as measured by the percentage of women on the board and by the blau and shannon indices has a positive effect on firm value and that the opposite causal relationship is not significant our study suggests that investors in spain do not penalise firms which increase their female board membership and that greater gender diversity may generate economic gains

optimizing cooperative carbon emission reduction among enterprises with non equivalent relationships subject to carbon taxation abstract getting enterprises to reduce carbon emissions cooperatively is an effective way of sharing the burden of carbon taxation it is easier for core enterprises to promote cooperation because of their dominant positions in the supply chain the main goal of this paper is to provide a potential method for the core enterprise to organize this cooperation successfully we explore how core enterprises should allocate their reduction investments and coordinate the selection of technology upgrade strategies so as to maximize their profits without disrupting the profits of cooperating enterprises for a supply chain where there are non equivalent relationships between enterprises the main hypotheses are that each enterprise only produces one product and each production process in each enterprise can only select one production technology and the intermediate products are mainly traded among cooperative enterprises a model based on independent carbon emission reduction model i is first constructed and used to analyze each enterprises basic information when they reduce carbon emission without cooperation considering total costs profits and so on then based on this information a model including cooperation is proposed model ii in model ii the enterprises are divided into core and cooperative enterprises and both capital and technical cooperation are considered a multi agent system is presented to simulate the negotiations between the enterprises and is then used to solve model ii finally a numerical example is considered to examine the feasibility of the proposed model the results indicate that a cooperative carbon emission reduction strategy has more advantages than the independent carbon emission reduction approach a notable advantage is that it can further rationalize the emission reduction structure of the supply chain through rational allocation of reduction investments and thus further restores profits

the impact of environmental management on firm performance environmental management has the potential to play a pivotal role in the financial performance of the firm many individuals suggest that profitability is hurt by the higher production costs of environmental management initiatives while others cite anecdotal evidence of increased profitability a theoretical model is proposed that links strong environmental management to improved perceived future financial performance as measured by stock market performance the linkage to firm performance is tested empirically using financial event methodology and archival data of firm level environmental and financial performance significant positive returns were measured for strong environmental management as indicated by environmental performance awards and significant negative returns were measured for weak environmental management as indicated by environmental crises the implicit financial market valuation of these events also was estimated cross sectional analysis of the environmental award events revealed differences for first time awards and between industries first time award announcements were associated with greater increases in market valuation although smaller increases were observed for firms in environmentally dirty industries possibly indicative of market skepticism this linkage between environmental management and financial performance can be used by both researchers and practitioners as one measure of the benefits experienced by industry leaders and as one criterion against which to measure investment alternatives

design for the environment impact of regulatory policies on product development abstract globally automakers are facing pressure from their stakeholders to follow sustainable business practices and produce products that are less harmful to the environment the introduction of gas guzzling automobiles in the us market despite the increasingly stringent emission norms highlights the widening gap between the goals of the regulators and the automakers demanding a fresh outlook at the regulatory framework in this paper we therefore propose a composite regulatory standard that not only allows the regulators to control various environmental standards but also provides automakers with an opportunity to exploit scale economies and synergies in product development our results show that under composite regulations sufficiently high economies of scale will ensure higher traditional and environmental qualities as well as higher profits for the automaker while operating in two markets as opposed to a single market we also find under the composite regulations that when more demanding norms are in place despite positive synergies between traditional and environmental quality attributes higher environmental quality is not guaranteed unless the scale economies are sufficiently high our work has implications for regulatory authorities in evaluating alternative policy design under heterogeneous market characteristics and technological synergies

the effects of emission trading on production and inventories in the arrow karlin model abstract the paper deals with the effect of introduction of tradable permits on the production inventory strategy of a firm it is assumed that the firm will minimize its costs the cost function consists of linear holding and convex production costs after introducing emission trading the cost function will contain a linear emission procurement selling cost we will compare the optimal production inventory strategy before tradable permits and thereafter the mathematical investigation is based on the well known dynamic arrow karlin model

a theory of consumer boycotts under symmetric information and imperfect competition this article models strategic interactions between non identical duopolistic firms and a public interest environmental organisation eo that promotes green production practices by threatening consumer boycotts against brown producers the article describes when boycotts are deterred by prior firm commitments to be green and also when a boycott arises in equilibrium despite symmetric information when a boycott arises it is either a small persistent boycott against the small firm in the industry or a large transitory boycott against the large firm in the industry that prompts the target firm to accede to the boycott demands quickly

vertical strategic interaction implications for channel pricing strategy this paper examines two strategic pricing decisions within channels using foresight i e price leadership and considering category implications i e product line pricing are price leadership and product line pricing always the best pricing strategies for a channel member if not when does this occur and why by investigating these questions we address some major concerns of both marketing practitioners and scholars interested in channel management issues in addition this study provides an indepth discussion on why previous analytic studies produced answers to these questions that depend upon the choice of the form of demand functions as such this study should significantly resolve the debate among analytic marketing modelers about the right demand specification at the core of our discussion lies the concept of vertical strategic interaction which is defined in terms of the direction of a channel member s reaction to the actions of its channel partner within a given demand structure specifically if a channel member s best reaction is to reduce its margin when its channel partner increases its margin the type of vertical strategic interaction is referred to as vertical strategic substitutability vss if the best reaction is to increase the margin the environment is referred to as vertical strategic complementarity vsc if the best reaction is no margin change it is referred to as vertical strategic independence vsi using a game theoretic approach we demonstrate that these three types of vertical strategic interactions represent a key driving force for optimal decisions on channel price leadership and product line pricing our investigation involves mathematical analyses of an industry model composed of two manufacturers selling competing products both carried by two competing retailers as such the model allows for retailer product line pricing as well as manufacturer and retailer level competition in addition this general model can be used to analyze three more restrictive industry settings often found in the channels literature i e a bilateral monopoly jeuland and shugan jeuland abel steven m shugan 1983 managing channel profits marketing sci 2summer 239 72 two competing manufacturers selling through competing franchised retailers mcguire and staelin mcguire timothy w richard staelin 1983 an industry equilibrium analysis of downstream vertical integration marketing sci 2spring 161 92 and two competing manufacturers selling through one common retailer using product line pricing choi choi s chan 1991 price competition in a channel structure with a common retailer marketing sci 10fall 271 96 unlike many other channel studies most of our analyses are performed without assuming particular functional forms of demand curves thus this paper provides greater assurance that the insights from this stream of research are broadly applicable not only across industry structures but also across demand conditions the paper starts out by defining three different rules for how prices are set the manufacturer uses foresight the retailer uses foresight and neither channel member uses foresight we then show a one to one mapping between the type of vertical strategic interaction and the optimality of channel price leadership specifically a channel member finds it profitable to be a price leader for vss but prefers to be a follower for vsc for vsi channel members are indifferent to the channel price leadership issue as it has no effect on channel member profits we also show that there exist conditions under which a retailer might see a reduction in profits when it changes its policy from non product line pricing to product line pricing such conditions arise when the retailer is not a price leader and the environment is characterized by vss or vsc at a more general level this study suggests not only the value but also the cost to a firm for using superior knowledge i e foresight and or product line pricing in making strategic marketing decisions in this way ignorance can be bliss we also explore the link between demand characteristics and the three types of vertical strategic interaction we show that the type of vertical strategic interaction present in a given environment is closely related with the convexity of the demand curve and the level of demand for a given price interestingly we find that linearity of demand is not a necessary condition for any of the three types of vertical strategic demand function consequently in evaluating the robustness of analytic analyses it may be more important to determine the type of vertical strategic interaction assumed instead of whether the demand is linear or nonlinear finally our results are limited to situations where the channels are not coordinated and the retailer s precommitment to particular pricing policy and decision is credible although such situations still capture a significant portion of reality we acknowledge that the insights from this study might not be applicable in all situations

environmentally responsible inventory models non classical models for a non classical era abstract mathematical models of inventory typically include the three inventory associated costs of surplus shortage and ordering these classic inventory models are then analysed so as to choose inventory parameters that usually minimise the total cost of operating the inventory system being investigated unfortunately classic inventory models do not provide a meaningful basis for analysing many real and increasingly important practical inventory problems and situations it is therefore not surprising that over recent years several authors have discussed these issues in broad terms and suggested that a new paradigm needs to be developed this paper develops some specific aspects of this discussion in particular the paper identifies a range of inventory problems that are not covered appropriately by traditional inventory analysis one of these is to design responsible inventory systems i e systems that reflect the needs of the environment the paper then examines the importance of inventory planning to the environment in greater detail for example packaging is important not only because of its costs and the protection that it provides to the inventory items but also because of its eventual effects on the environment in terms of the use of resources and potential landfill for similar reasons waste which can result from poor inventory management is highly important the location of stores is important because location affects transport costs thus the influence of the secondary aspects of most inventory models packaging waste and location are important but even more important are the inter relations with the total system in particular the location of the manufacturing plants and the effect that inventory planning has on the logistics chain potentially have considerable environmental implications inventory is part of a wider system however until the cost charged for an activity reflects the true environmental cost of that activity it is likely that decisions will be made on the basis of erroneous data in that situation we are faced with either determining the environmental cost of specific actions or to use environmental costs that are somewhat contrived in which case it may be more sensible to use very different performance measures and models the paper discusses these ideas and ways in which inventory policies may reassure us with our environmental concerns

a comparative analysis of greening policies across supply chain structures abstract in this paper we examine an apparel serial supply chain whose players initiate product greening we consider situations in which the players cooperate or act individually our problem is motivated by recent developments in the supply chains of global apparel players we build game theoretic models and show how greening levels prices and profits are influenced by channel structures we also study the impact of greening costs and consumer sensitivity towards green apparels we propose a two part tariff contract to coordinate the green channel our key contribution lies in the model of decision making of various supply chain structures and analyzing its impact on the players and supply chain the problem throws interesting insights into the strategies of apparel players and their key decisions

is there an endogenous relationship between culture and economic development abstract evidence from two communities suggests diverging paths of economic development one which integrates culture into economic activities and a second path which does not if endogeneity cannot be assumed does the relevance of culture for economic activities influence its stability and sustainability despite the predominance of culture in the former community the social norms ethnic cues and symbols are neither more likely to thrive or survive against expectations the latter group appears more successful in preserving culture through a strategy of separating social identity from economic activities

block ownership and ceo compensation does board gender diversity matter abstractthis study investigates the effect of block ownership institutions and state on ceo compensation and the extent to which gender diversity in the corporate board moderates this nexus durin

transitional politics emerging incentive based instruments in environmental regulation abstract this paper proposes a positive theory of environmental instrument choice we study a democratic society that seeks to lower the level of pollution from industrial sources to a pre specified target the target can be implemented by one of three instruments s uniform emission standards p tradeable permits and t emission taxes the conflict of interest between special interests representing polluters and the electorate is resolved by an elected politician we characterize when each of the three policy instruments is chosen in political equilibrium and show that the transition observed in many countries from s to either p or t can be understood as a natural consequence of increasingly ambitious environmental targets

tax subsidy policies in the presence of environmentally aware consumers abstract we study policy measures to improve environmental quality in the presence of environmentally aware consumers we consider two sets of policy instruments uniform policies for the firms and policies that discriminate between the firms based on their environmental quality for the latter set either the better performer is rewarded with a subsidy or the worse performer is punished with a tax we find that while a uniform subsidy policy improves average environmental quality a uniform tax policy worsens it further while a discriminatory subsidy policy reduces total pollution and enhances aggregate welfare a discriminatory tax policy may increase total pollution and may reduce aggregate welfare

sustainable trade credit and replenishment decisions with credit linked demand under carbon emission constraints abstract in this paper we consider issues of sustainability in the context of joint trade credit and inventory management in which the demand depends on the length of the credit period offered by the retailer to its customers we quantify the impacts of the credit period and environmental regulations on the inventory model starting with some mild assumptions we first analyze the model with generalized demand and default risk rates under the carbon cap and trade policy and then we make some extensions to the model with the carbon offset policy we further analytically examine the effects of carbon emission parameters on the retailer s trade credit and replenishment strategies finally a couple of numerical examples and sensitivity analysis are given to illustrate the features of the proposed model which is followed by concluding remarks

multi item production planning with carbon cap and trade mechanism abstract carbon emission control becomes a challenge in recent years and carbon emission trading is an effective way to curb carbon emission this paper investigates the multi item production planning problem with carbon cap and trade mechanism in which a firm uses a common capacity and carbon emission quota to produce multiple products for fulfilling independent stochastic demands and the firm can buy or sell the right to emit carbon on a trading market of carbon emission a profit maximization model is proposed to characterize the optimization problem the optimal policy of production and carbon trading decisions is analyzed and an efficient solution method with linear computational complexity is presented for solving the optimal solution the impacts of carbon price carbon cap on the shadow price of the common capacity production decisions carbon emission and the total profit are investigated the comparisons of the carbon cap and trade policy and the taxation policy are given to show the effectiveness of the policies numerical analyses are presented for illustrating our findings and obtaining some managerial insights and policy implication

the nature of the firm agency theory and shareholder theory a critique from philosophical anthropology standard accounts on the nature of the firm are highly dependent on explanations by coase coupled with inputs from agency theory and shareholder theory this paper carries out their critique in light of personalist and common good postulates it shows how personalist and common good principles create a framework that not only accommodates business ethics better but also affords a more compelling understanding of business as a whole

the single period inventory model under dual sourcing and product carbon footprint constraint abstract important drivers for environmental sustainability efforts in purchasing and supply management are top management initiatives and compliance with laws and regulations on the other hand market forces are largely ignored although it is shown that the product carbon footprint contained on the product s eco label influences the purchasing decisions of consumers if it is disclosed by several companies in an industry then the product carbon footprint turns out to be a relevant competitive differentiator i e the company with lower emissions can increase its market share in this paper we consider the single period inventory model with product carbon footprint constraint an upper bound for the carbon footprint is specified as a benchmark derived either from the company s environmental target or from an industry standard in the case of one supply option the optimal order quantity is characterized by a one sided control limit policy especially for high profit products the environmental constraint is binding thus has a negative impact on the economic performance i e expected profit if a second supply option exists in the resulting dual sourcing framework with quick response two scenarios with different additional costs and emissions for the second emergency order are considered in the first scenario for both options the same supplier is used it applies to an offshore supplier because a fast transportation mode is considered here the structure of the optimal first order quantity is a two sided control limit policy in scenario two the second order comes from a different onshore supplier by comparing the fast and the onshore scenario the trade off between economic expected profit and environmental expected emissions performances is discussed

analyzing the impacts of carbon regulatory mechanisms on supplier and mode selection decisions an application to a biofuel supply chain this paper analyzes the impacts of carbon regulatory mechanisms on replenishment decisions in a biofuel supply chain we employ mathematical models for operations which integrate replenishment and supplier transportation mode selection decisions these models explicitly account for carbon emissions that may result from transportation and inventory storage activities this research is motivated by observations indicating that nearly 19 of the energy consumption and 25 of the energy related carbon dioxide emissions worldwide arise from transportation because freight transportation is expected to continue to grow we consider the impacts of different carbon regulatory mechanisms on transportation and inventory replenishment decisions in a biofuel supply chain a set of extensive numerical experiments uses the biofuel supply chain context to analyze the impacts of different regulatory mechanisms including carbon cap carbon tax carbon cap and trade and carbon offset on performance we use existing methodologies to calculate emissions as a function of distance traveled load weight and transportation mode used we also use publicly available data to derive representative biomass transportation costs as a consequence our numerical results are meaningful and give a realistic representation of the relationships between emissions from different transportation modes and the resulting costs the results of our computational experiments indicate that carbon regulatory mechanisms have a non trivial impact on replenishment schedules and as a consequence costs and emissions in the supply chain

integrated economic and environmental models for a multi stage cold supply chain under carbon tax regulation abstract the elevated level of public and organizations awareness concerning sustainability has necessitated the adoption of environmentally conscious practices in the management of supply chains as such classical inventory models wherein the sole measure of performance is cost minimization are no longer appropriate to handle such emerging and pressing issue this paper assesses the impact of accounting for carbon emissions resulting from transportation and storage activities of a cold item in the context of a multi stage supply chain comprised of a plant warehouse a distribution center dc and a retailer we present an operational cost minimization model a carbon footprint minimization model and a hybrid economic and environmental minimization model where all models seek to determine the optimal lot sizing and shipping quantities alongside the number of trucks to be used in the upstream and downstream directions of the supply chain as well as the number of freezer units utilized at the dc which is owned by a third party logistics provider the structural properties for the optimal solution of the three models are identified and solution algorithms are also proposed upon conducting computational experiments it turns out that the incorporation of carbon related costs through carbon tax regulation may call for adjusting the adopted operational policy which results in a minor increase in the operational cost however this increase is outweighed by the savings resulting from the carbon related costs numerical results of the sensitivity analysis on the carbon tax policy indicate that as the tax rate increases substantial reductions in the amount of carbon footprint emitted are realized and cost savings are also achieved when adopting the lot sizing and shipping policy of the third integrated model over the operational cost minimization model