Conference Agenda

Research has attempted to develop tools to measure the level of Circular Economy (CE) in organizations taking a holistic perspective. Despite the existence of different tools, research has not yet critically investigated their effectiveness. This work intends to fill this gap by exploring existing CE tools at the micro-level and identifying potential improvement areas. Based on a review of tools, the four most appropriate were selected, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with six Italian SMEs from the manufacturing context. The results have shown that tools can be improved especially in terms of the quality principles of transferability, confirmability fit/understanding and generality. Accordingly, suggestions to revise the CE assessment tools proposed and their holistic applicability is discussed. By comparing and identifying the strengths and weaknesses of existing CE assessment tools, we have shed light on this still underdeveloped topic, which is of interest to both academics and practitioners.

Globally, a public debate has grown on the negative social, environmental, and economic effects of many new big box warehouses built on greenfield locations – what we term warehousification. Opponents want to preserve space for housing, agriculture, and nature, limit nitrogen emissions from construction, limit migrant workers’ strains on the tight housing market, and minimize traffic, while logistics operators and retailers aim to respond to consumers’ demand. To address these challenges, we offer a new perspective of sustainability – spatial sustainability, the need for not only ecological and social sustainability targets, but also the sustainable planning and development of logistics space. We tie this perspective to the relavent US Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Taking a national planner’s perspective rather than the typical firm-level perspective, we discuss the current state of practice in the logistics industry related to these concerns and tradeoffs that must be considered in future research and practice.

This study examines the cumulative findings of eco-friendly personal transportation behavior using three variants of the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Based on 36 independent research publications this study collects the effect sizes on personal transportation behavior within the TPB framework and analyzes them using two-stage structural equation modeling (TSSEM). Overall, the results of this study confirm that ecofriendly behavior on personal transportation is well explained with TPB. The path coefficient from intention to behavior is strong, which supports TPB’s central thesis that intention is a good predictor of behavior. This study has confirmed the strong relationship between intention and eco-friendly behavior by analyzing cumulative findings. Among the three precedents, attitude shows the strongest correlation with Intention. Thus, how to influence individuals’ attitudes should be the focal point of efforts to promote eco-friendly personal transportation behavior.

Sustainability Fitness is a novel concept in Business Management studies. It is a measure of how ‘healthy’ a system is calculated based on how far it is from a zone of collapse.

This paper offers a method of application and illustration of the corporate sustainability fitness (CSF) concept using Tesla’s timeline of events considering external environment events and the company’s key decisions in its recent history.

CSF is a function of firm survival (e.g., being able to meet their own needs), alignment of their activity to essential societal needs, and finally, respect the limits of their operating environment. The method of application and illustration with Tesla’s decisions and operations environment events are its major contribution to theory and practice. Future research will expand the empirical aspects of this study and advance towards manufacturing and services firms within additional geographical contexts.