Search

PurposeThis research aims to investigate the influence of the implementation of technical cycles on both captured value and shared value in the circular economy context. Moreover, it analyses the moderating effect of competitive criteria on the relationship between technical cycles and captured value. Finally, it examines the relationship between the captured value and the shared value.Design/methodology/approachThis research follows survey-based research with data gathered from 50 countries and 16 sectors, whose final sample represented 233 organisations. In order to validate the structural and measurement model, the authors applied the partial least squares structural equation modelling technique in the strict rigour of the confirmatory algorithm.FindingsThe validated research model demonstrates the value flow through technical cycles. Moreover, it shows the crucial role of the competitive criteria in the value stream through direct, moderate and indirect effects by influencing the relationship between technical cycles and captured and shared values. Finally, the study fills the gap for quantitative studies in the circular economy field.Practical implicationsFrom a practical perspective, this study contributes to structuring circular business models more robustly, by understanding the influence of competitive criteria (cost, quality, flexibility and delivery) on the conversion of operation strategy in the implementation of the technical cycles in the circular economy context. It contributes to decision-makers, in deciding on which competitive criteria to invest more, which brings more consistent results for technical cycle implementation. It also confirms the importance of partnerships, demonstrating how value cascades from the company through the value network.Originality/valueAs far as is known to date, this is the first study investigating the influence of competitive criteria in the circular economy context. Furthermore, it sheds light on the direct and indirect effects of the technical cycles on value captured by organisations and flow shared value with other players.

Dam breach is a large-scale, highly unsteady, and complex water-sediment flow. Dam breach events span scenarios involving natural dams (created following valley blocking landslides) to scenarios involving anthropogenic structures such as water-retaining dams and dams designed specifically to store mine waste (e.g. tailings). Management of the risk posed by a potential breach of a dam structure requires a careful analysis of the consequences of failure. These analyses, often called dam breach studies, aim to improve safety and risk management through the prediction of travel time, flow velocity, and spatial extent of the hazard (e.g. map of depth of inundation) in the event of a breach. These factors in turn define the consequence classification of a dam and guide the development of emergency preparedness plans. The key boundary condition required for flood routing numerical simulations often conducted for dam breach studies is the outflow hydrograph which describes the relationship between outflow of the retained volume with time. In this study we explore the effect of failure mechanism on the characteristics of the outflow hydrograph of otherwise identical physical model dams. Physical model dams of 1 m in height were constructed of fine sand near the midspan of the 36 m long, 2.1 m wide, and 1.2 m high large landslide flume facility at Queen’s University Coastal Engineering Laboratory. Three failure mechanisms are explored; a) notch overtopping, initiated by incising a v-notch into the dam crest and allowing the impounded reservoir to intersect this local low point; b) wide-width overtopping, where a retaining wall placed along the crest of the dam allows for an additional reservoir capacity above the height of the crest that when rapidly removed a full width sheet of water cascades over the dam; and c) geotechnical seepage failure, where closing the toe drain allows a seepage face to develop that causes a failure in the downstream face of the dam. The reservoir surface elevation during breach was monitored with a series of five Akamina AWP-24 wave capacitance height gauges distributed centerline in the upstream reservoir. The evolution of breach shape is captured every 3 s using five Canon EOS Rebel T5 Digital Single-lens Reflex (DSLR) that capture a plan view area of the entire 2.1 m width of the dam and a combined upstream and downstream length of 4.3 m. To further capture the evolution of failure a Blickfeld LiDAR sensor was positioned oblique to the downstream slope to capture a point cloud scan ever 1.4 s. These data sets are then used to compare the physical characteristics of each breach process and the resulting implications for the observed outflow hydrographs for each failure mechanism.

Peer reviewed: True, The global market for Additive Manufacturing (AM) is expected to grow, which may increase the prominence of sustainability aspects in the manufacturing process. A growing number of AM academics and practitioners have started to pay attention to the environmental and societal impacts of AM instead of only focusing on its economic aspect. Yet, AM is still not widely adopted, and the research on AM sustainability is still at the nascent stage. This paper aims to better understand AM’s sustainable adoption and seeks to address three questions: what the sustainability implications of AM are; what challenges may prevent the broad adoption of AM; and what opportunities can enable AM sustainability. The research adopts a multiple case study method to investigate six AM companies that play different roles in the AM ecosystem, including AM design, AM machine, AM material, AM service, AM education, and AM consulting. The results from these studies reveal that AM has the potential to reduce environmental and social impacts; however, it might also cause negative consequences and lead to some rebound effects. We identified 43 categories (synthesized from 199 examples) of key challenges for AM adoption and proposed 55 key solutions in moving AM towards sustainability. It is evident that AM acts as a promising digital technology for manufacturing and has the potential to pave the way for a new era of sustainable manufacturing.

In order to reach sustainable consumption and production patterns at scale, the implementation of a circular economy (CE) and the corresponding circular business models (CBM) increasingly need to become competitive with linear alternatives. This is inhibited by a lack of customer focus when implementing circular projects today. To address this challenge, this study presents an in-depth study of a real-world project on repurposing electric vehicle batteries in stationary battery energy storage systems in Germany, which serves to investigate the role of market- and customer requirements in implementing CBM. By combining quantitative analysis based on sec- ondary sources with primary qualitative data collected at different stages of the project, the study offers unique insights into the practical key tasks for ensuring economic viability of circular projects from a multi-stakeholder perspective. These are identified as: i) Develop the product platform, ii) assess multiple value streams, iii) lever- age on resource value, iv) provide risk assurances on product quality, v) observe trends in targeted downstream markets, vi) acquire access to suitable financial capital and vii) carry out pilot projects under market conditions. By addressing these tasks, the value captured in terms of the contribution of repurposing to the reduction of bat- tery life cycle cost is found to be 109€/kWh in the case investigated. Based on the findings, the study concludes that implementing circular projects requires companies to provide resource, time and technical expertise for co- ordinating the identified key tasks and achieve competitiveness with linear alternatives. For future research, we hence suggest further investigation of the use of customer-oriented methods for assessing and developing CBM, as well as required policy-action to ensure commercial viability of CE strategies in industry.

This investigation studies advanced practitioners of maintenance management and seeks to uncover the related impacts and contributions of best practice maintenance toward sustainable manufacturing operations. This exploratory research conducted a novel empirical analysis focused on maintenance functions in nine manufacturing companies from diverse sectors. The analysis uncovered insights related to the economic, environmental, and social benefits of deeper involvement of maintenance function in plant operations and decision-making. We observed links of maintenance function with product competitiveness and with energy management activities that were unexpected. We confirmed benefits from keeping machinery in good working conditions and restoring promptly good working conditions when an issue happens. The depth of maintenance contribution on each area identified in this study will depend on the operational and business context of the manufacturing company; thus, companies need to reflect on these based on their specific processes, business needs and goals. Ultimately, this work can inspire managers in manufacturing companies to organise maintenance functions strategically toward fostering long-term competitive, responsible and sustainable performance.

PurposeBusinesses are under pressure to ensure social responsibility in their globalised supply chains. However, conventional factory audits are not providing adequate data about production workers’ well-being. Industry attempts to measure working conditions have shown bias and inconsistency, and there is no consensus on what to measure, or how. Well-being can be intangible and difficult to capture without appropriate theoretical and methodological frameworks. This paper investigates factors influencing the well-being of a Chinese factory’s workers, tests an innovative research method, and proposes interventions to improve well-being in factories.Design/methodology/approachThis is a longitudinal study using the diaries of production workers at a large assembly manufacturing site in China. Workers left daily digital voice diaries about their day, which were analysed to identify factors related to their well-being at work.FindingsThe picture is more complex than the concerned Western narrative suggests. Workers’ personal and professional concerns extend beyond the criteria currently measured in audits, tending to be more relational and less about their physical state.Practical implicationsThe current approach of auditing management practices neglects workers’ well-being. This study offers a more comprehensive view of well-being and tests a new method of investigation.Originality/valueThis is the first study to use diary methods in a Chinese factory. It addresses an issue supported by little empirical evidence. It is the first longitudinal study to hear from factory workers themselves about how they are and what impacts their well-being daily.

Being widely responsible for environmental degradation, industry represents a key asset to manage for a more sustainable and healthier living environment. However, factories affect more than just the physical sphere of the landscape, also impacting social and economic spheres as their intense perceptual-aesthetic interferences with the scenery can disturb neighbours and damage corporate images. In the recent past, policy-makers, practitioners and communities have demonstrated that the harmonization of industry with the landscape can produce several positive effects. In this framework, multicriteria systems to assess the impact have been developed, but they are mainly focused on reducing negative environmental effects rather than perceptual ones, while a holistic approach appears to be needed. Therefore, a method of analysing how facilities interfere with the landscape is proposed, along with the development of a set of strategies to lessen detrimental effects on the physical, perceptual-aesthetic and social/cultural dimensions of the landscape. This paper presents the main outputs of the research, including the structure of the assessment system and a catalogue of case studies selected for good design practices, from which general mitigation tactics have been retrieved. The result is a protocol composed of an assessment system and a design support tool available to companies and designers to be inspired by.

Information asymmetries and the agency relationship are two defining features of the healthcare system. These market failures are often used as a rationale for government intervention. Many countries have government financing and provision of healthcare in order to correct for this, while health technology agencies also exist to improve efficiency. However, informational asymmetries and the resulting principal-agent problem still persist, and one example is the lack of cost awareness amongst clinicians. This study explores the cost awareness of clinicians across different settings.We targeted four clinical cohorts: medical students, Senior House Officers/Interns, Mid-grade Senior Registrar/Residents, and Consultant/Attending Physicians, in six hospitals in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Spain. The survey asked respondents to report the cost (as they recalled) of different types of scans, visits, medications and tests. Our analysis focused on the differential between the perceived/recalled cost and the actual cost. We explored variation across speciality, country and other potential confounders. Cost-awareness levels were estimated based on the cost estimates within 25% of the actual cost.We received 705 complete responses from six sites across five countries. Our analysis found that respondents often overestimated the cost of common tests while underestimating high-cost tests. The mean cost-awareness levels varied between 4 and 23% for different items. Respondents acknowledged that they did not feel they had received adequate training in cost awareness.The current financial climate means that cost awareness and the appropriate use of scarce healthcare resources is more paramount than perhaps ever before. Much of the focus of health economics research is on high-cost innovative technologies, yet there is considerable waste in the system with respect to overtreatment and overdiagnosis. Common reasons put forward for this include defensive medicine, poor education, clinical uncertainty and the institution of protocols.Given the role of clinicians in the healthcare system, as agents both for patients and for providers, more needs to be done to remove informational asymmetries and improve clinician cost awareness.

The majority of UK food recalls are due to allergen mislabelling, misleading allergen claims and/or the unintentional presence of allergens – representing a significant food safety risk and cost to industry. Labelling legislation must be followed to ensure food is safe and what it says it is, and this requires good allergen management and accurate allergen information communication down the supply chain. Distilling this information accurately, to inform labelling and/or communication of allergen information, can be particularly challenging for small to medium food businesses due to the low adoption of advanced labelling technology. In November 2018, a joint FSA/EIT (European Institute of Innovation & Technology) workshop discussed potential solutions to tackling the increase in food allergen mislabelling incidents. It was concluded that the situation could be improved by developing accessible and affordable tools for food businesses, to aid in the automation of food data collection, validation and management. As a result, the FSA are funding this initial development project that aims to develop an online system targeted at small and medium-sized food businesses, to help reduce the number of product recalls due to allergen mislabelling. The tool is also predicted to support more reliable knowledge transfer and incident tracking when things do go wrong.

This research combines corporate sustainability performance and sustainable business model concepts to improve the corporate sustainability of organizations. The main objective of this article is to propose and apply a tool to identify sustainable innovation opportunities through a structured brainstorming process while providing a systemic business perspective and a strong multi-stakeholder orientation. The present qualitative research was carried out in two phases. The first phase consisted of a critical analysis of literature that enabled the proposition of the Two-Lenses Model (2LM) for sustainability innovation. The corporate sustainability performance lens encompasses strategic drivers, business processes, capabilities, stakeholders’ satisfaction and contributions. The sustainable business models lens considers value proposition, value creation and delivery system and value capture and sharing. The second phase consists of applying the 2LM in two industrial cases. The results show that the proposed model has the potential to trigger the identification of opportunities through two mechanisms: misalignments between performance dimensions and gaps in stakeholder satisfaction. Further research opportunities lie on deepening into these findings and investigating the implementation process for the identified innovation opportunities.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hillman Cancer Center Academy (Hillman Academy) has the primary goal of reaching high school students from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds and guiding them through a cutting-edge research and professional development experience that positions them for success in STEM. With this focus, the Hillman Academy has provided nearly 300 authentic mentored research internship opportunities to 239 students from diverse backgrounds over the past 13 years most of whom matriculated into STEM majors in higher education. These efforts have helped shape a more diverse generation of future scientists and clinicians, who will enrich these fields with their unique perspectives and lived experiences. In this paper, we describe our program and the strategies that led to its growth into a National Institutes of Health Youth Enjoy Science-funded program including our unique multi-site structure, tiered mentoring platform, multifaceted recruitment approach, professional and academic development activities, and a special highlight of a set of projects with Deaf and Hard of Hearing students. We also share student survey data from the past six years that indicate satisfaction with the program, self-perceived gains in key areas of scientific development, awareness of careers in STEM, and an increased desire to pursue advanced degrees in STEM.

This regional profile for the UK was developed in the context of the BEIS COP26 Futures We Want project. It has been developed with input from in-country academic experts Dr Emily Shuckburgh (University of Cambridge, UK) and Professor Steve Evans (University of Cambridge, UK). It sets out a synthesis of the available evidence base on regional challenges and opportunities for mitigation, adaptation, and resilience measures for the UK associated with climate change and a global transition to an inclusive, desirable, and resilient net-zero future.