USE conference paper.Ever since the mid-1970s a multitude of studies linking corporate sustainability performance (CSP) measures and financial performance measures have been conducted. Until today a plethora of corporate sustainability performance measures heve been developed. A universally accepted CSP definition of construct does not (yet) exist. Since we don't exactley know what CSP entails, CSP measures should (at least) be considered conceptually flawed for that matter. These measures may measure CSP, but it cannot e excluded that other (overarching) phenomena are measured. There are leads suggesting that CSP measures are reflections or representations of corporate culture, suggesting that corporate culture drives FP. If so, managers should not focus on increasing CSP to boost FP, but create a high culture for sustainability If corporate culture drives financial performance, the investment community can also benefit through improving its decision making processes by including CSP measures that reflect corporate culture.
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The relationship between project management and sustainable development is rapidly gaining interest from both practitioners and academics. Studies on the integration of the concepts of sustainability into project management, approach this topic mostly from a conceptual, logical or moral point of view. Given the fact that the relationship between sustainability and project management is still an emerging field of study, these approaches make sense. However, they do not diminish the need for more empirical studies to understand how the concepts of sustainable development are implemented in practice. This paper reports an analysis of 56 case studies on the integration of the concepts of sustainability in the way organizations initiate, develop and manage projects. The research question of the study was: To what extent, do organizations consider the concepts of sustainability in the initiation, development and management of projects? The study uses the maturity model for sustainability integration that was presented at the 2010 IPMA World Congress for the assessment of the level of sustainability consideration. The study found an overall average level of sustainability consideration in the actual situation of 25.9%. For the desired situation, this score is almost 10 percent higher, showing an ambition to take sustainability more into consideration. The study also showed that the way sustainability currently is considered, shows the traditional ‘less bad’ approach to sustainability integration and not a more modern social responsibility approach.
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Currently, many novel innovative materials and manufacturing methods are developed in order to help businesses for improving their performance, developing new products, and also implement more sustainability into their current processes. For this purpose, additive manufacturing (AM) technology has been very successful in the fabrication of complex shape products, that cannot be manufactured by conventional approaches, and also using novel high-performance materials with more sustainable aspects. The application of bioplastics and biopolymers is growing fast in the 3D printing industry. Since they are good alternatives to petrochemical products that have negative impacts on environments, therefore, many research studies have been exploring and developing new biopolymers and 3D printing techniques for the fabrication of fully biobased products. In particular, 3D printing of smart biopolymers has attracted much attention due to the specific functionalities of the fabricated products. They have a unique ability to recover their original shape from a significant plastic deformation when a particular stimulus, like temperature, is applied. Therefore, the application of smart biopolymers in the 3D printing process gives an additional dimension (time) to this technology, called four-dimensional (4D) printing, and it highlights the promise for further development of 4D printing in the design and fabrication of smart structures and products. This performance in combination with specific complex designs, such as sandwich structures, allows the production of for example impact-resistant, stress-absorber panels, lightweight products for sporting goods, automotive, or many other applications. In this study, an experimental approach will be applied to fabricate a suitable biopolymer with a shape memory behavior and also investigate the impact of design and operational parameters on the functionality of 4D printed sandwich structures, especially, stress absorption rate and shape recovery behavior.
Collaborative networks for sustainability are emerging rapidly to address urgent societal challenges. By bringing together organizations with different knowledge bases, resources and capabilities, collaborative networks enhance information exchange, knowledge sharing and learning opportunities to address these complex problems that cannot be solved by organizations individually. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the apparel sector, where examples of collaborative networks for sustainability are plenty, for example Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Zero Discharge Hazardous Chemicals, and the Fair Wear Foundation. Companies like C&A and H&M but also smaller players join these networks to take their social responsibility. Collaborative networks are unlike traditional forms of organizations; they are loosely structured collectives of different, often competing organizations, with dynamic membership and usually lack legal status. However, they do not emerge or organize on their own; they need network orchestrators who manage the network in terms of activities and participants. But network orchestrators face many challenges. They have to balance the interests of diverse companies and deal with tensions that often arise between them, like sharing their innovative knowledge. Orchestrators also have to “sell” the value of the network to potential new participants, who make decisions about which networks to join based on the benefits they expect to get from participating. Network orchestrators often do not know the best way to maintain engagement, commitment and enthusiasm or how to ensure knowledge and resource sharing, especially when competitors are involved. Furthermore, collaborative networks receive funding from grants or subsidies, creating financial uncertainty about its continuity. Raising financing from the private sector is difficult and network orchestrators compete more and more for resources. When networks dissolve or dysfunction (due to a lack of value creation and capture for participants, a lack of financing or a non-functioning business model), the collective value that has been created and accrued over time may be lost. This is problematic given that industrial transformations towards sustainability take many years and durable organizational forms are required to ensure ongoing support for this change. Network orchestration is a new profession. There are no guidelines, handbooks or good practices for how to perform this role, nor is there professional education or a professional association that represents network orchestrators. This is urgently needed as network orchestrators struggle with their role in governing networks so that they create and capture value for participants and ultimately ensure better network performance and survival. This project aims to foster the professionalization of the network orchestrator role by: (a) generating knowledge, developing and testing collaborative network governance models, facilitation tools and collaborative business modeling tools to enable network orchestrators to improve the performance of collaborative networks in terms of collective value creation (network level) and private value capture (network participant level) (b) organizing platform activities for network orchestrators to exchange ideas, best practices and learn from each other, thereby facilitating the formation of a professional identity, standards and community of network orchestrators.
Het doel van dit project is het structureel verbeteren van de duurzaamheidsprestaties van mkb-bedrijven op de lange termijn, door een pragmatische aanpak te bieden die hen in staat stelt effectief in te spelen op de kansen en uitdagingen van het steeds complexer wordende duurzaamheidsregelgevingslandschap, waaronder de Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Het mkb-bedrijven spelen een sleutelrol in duurzame ontwikkeling door middel van innovatie, het creëren van groene banen en de transitie naar een circulaire, klimaatneutrale economie. Deze transitie biedt bovendien unieke kansen voor het ontwikkelen van innovatieve businessmodellen, waarmee zij een sterke marktpositie kunnen verankeren. Om succesvol te zijn, moeten zij verder kijken dan technologische oplossingen, materiaalbesparing en afvalreductie. Een systematische, strategische benadering is essentieel voor duurzame groei en concurrentievoordeel. Dit project onderzoekt hoe mkb-bedrijven, vooral in de maakindustrie maar ook in andere sectoren, duurzaamheid kunnen inzetten voor groei en compliance, met oog voor de specifieke volwassenheid van het bedrijf. De centrale onderzoeksvraag luidt: Hoe kunnen mkb-bedrijven, afhankelijk van hun specifieke behoeften en volwassenheidsniveaus, duurzaamheidsprestaties systematisch en structureel verbeteren door middel van proactieve, innovatiegedreven duurzaamheidspraktijken, en tegelijkertijd klaar zijn voor wetgeving zoals CSRD? Startend vanuit de vraagarticulatie en voortbouwend op state of the art kennis in Operational Excellence, Performance Management en Duurzaamheid, ontwikkelen de twee betrokken hogescholen, samen met 11 mkb-bedrijven, een pragmatische aanpak met tools om hun duurzaamheidsprestaties effectief te meten, beheren en verbeteren. De resultaten worden ingezet in de regio door koepel- en ondersteunende organisaties om ook andere mkb-bedrijven te helpen duurzaamheid in hun kernactiviteiten, doelstellingen en bedrijfsvoering te verankeren. Door kennisdeling en praktische ondersteuning creëren we een kompas, een schaalbare routekaart die niet alleen de betrokkenen helpt verduurzamen, maar ook toegepast kan worden bij andere mkb-bedrijven en opgenomen in onderwijsprogramma’s, zodat ook de toekomstige generatie klaar is voor een duurzame toekomst.
