Operations Management and Sustainability

New Research Perspectives

Luitzen de Boer, Poul Houman Andersen, Luitzen de Boer, Poul Houman Andersen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319932118
• eBook ISBN: 9783319932125
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

This edited book presents cutting edge international research in operations management sustainability and topical research themes. As the sustainability agenda gains greater prominence and momentum throughout society, business actors and stakeholders are increasingly concerned with the impact of current business operations. There is a growing need for OM research and practice which reflects these concerns. Based on demands from industry and society at large, universities and schools now develop academic programs which are meant to serve this need – yet there is no clear and manifest research program concerning OM and sustainability. This book is of use to both researchers orientating themselves in this new and exciting field and educators seeking inspiration to develop new courses.

© The Author(s) 2019

Luitzen de Boer and Poul Houman Andersen (eds.)Operations Management and Sustainabilityhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93212-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Sustainable Operations Management (SOM): An Introduction to and Overview of the Book

Poul Houman Andersen^{1, 2} and Luitzen de Boer²

(1)

Department of Business and Management, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

(2)

Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

Poul Houman Andersen (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Luitzen de Boer

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Dear reader: thank you for taking an interest in our book on sustainable operations management! This is an edited book about what we and our co-contributors believe to be a topical and highly important issue. We also realize that this is an issue with political overtones that may cause divides and heated debates. Despite several global warnings and calls for action with respect to becoming more sustainable, disagreement and even resistance remains towards the call for action towards more sustainability and the urgency for action. The dissent has moved from outward rejection of any climate change happening, to a discussion regarding the impact of this change on society (Lomborg, 2010). Currently, the debate revolves around whether we understand how and to what extent the current rate of natural resource exploitation affects global climatic conditions, how much and at what rate it will affect us and which route is the most promising to follow in order to become (more) sustainable. Take the case of the Trump administration, which repeatedly has expressed skepticism towards climate change and has withdrawn the United States from the UN climate negotiations. Consequently, the US presidential administration has removed sustainability from the agenda of political aims for the United States and is currently considering rolling back the greenhouse gas emission policies that were put into action by the former president, Barack Obama. Meanwhile, the depletion of resources and the unintended consequences of unlimited growth in production and consumption are increasingly recognized in other parts of the United States and by stakeholders in other societies in-and outside the United States.

We side with the latter side of this debate. In our view, it takes a considerable amount of human resolve to overlook or ignore the consequences of ongoing depletion of natural resources. We are not alone. In most parts of the world, there is an increasing political and public pressure towards improving sustainability in operations from all levels of society. There is an ongoing mental transition from what Kenneth Boulding (1966) in his famous essay on “spaceship earth” named the “cowboy economy”, building on the notion of illimitable plains, where human society can move when the current area’s resources are exhausted, towards a “spaceman economy”, in which resources must be reproduced and recycled as no resource is really unlimited. Although this high-level notion was formulated more than 50 years ago, there has been little agreement among constituents on how to proceed. Several international organizations have provided evidence with respect to the dire climatic consequences of pursuing the existing depletion patterns and how this is already impacting and will impact on societies of the future. Several of the UNs 17 sustainable development goals , formulated in 2015, speak directly to these issues, emphasizing a precautionary approach to environmental challenges and encouraging the diffusion of environmental-friendly technologies.

This book is written both for researchers exploring sustainable operations management as a research field and for reflective practitioners, seeking more insights into the nature of sustainable operations management. We hope you will find this book both illuminating and useful for grasping the current state of the art in sustainable operations management research. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the contributors to this book and the many people who have been involved in reading and commenting on drafts to chapters and so on.

1 Background

For most societal actors, but not least for businesses, sustainability has moved from the periphery to the core. According to the most recent global survey conducted by McKinsey & Company consulting firm (2017), nearly 60% of the more than 2400 respondents asked, report that the organizations they work for are more engaged with sustainability issues than they were two years ago. Companies are focusing on sustainability as a way forward, not only to meet challenges but also to transform these into a profitable and competitive advantage. Furthermore, when asked about the top reasons for addressing sustainability, an increasing number (46%) tick off the organization’s goals, mission or values. Also, expectations of customers and employees towards the organization rank among the important reasons for the firms, which are more engaged than previously in sustainability. In addition, several sustainable technologies have surfaced and become mainstream or serious alternatives to less sustainable options. This includes for instance technologies related to renewable energy, transportation and recycling, but encompasses also a wide range of technologies , which indirectly helps in supporting the minimization of waste, such as data analytics and automation technologies.

However, it seems that many of the initiatives seen are driven from issues pertaining to risk, to external constraints of businesses (such as tougher regulations) or from customer monitoring. Deploying sustainability as a principle for increasing the profitability of business—either through recouping resources and minimizing waste or by developing new products seems to be seen as less achievable than previously (see Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

Survey results from the McKinsey Global Survey (2017); N: 2711, representing the full range of regions, industries , tenures, company sizes and functional specialities

In general, the results from a global survey by McKinsey & Company consulting show that although internal operations is one area where sustainability is formally integrated, companies struggle with integrating sustainability into the operations that extend the corporate boundary, such as procurement and supply chain management. Approximately one out of every four respondents in the survey reported that sustainability was not formally implemented in their company. These findings from the McKinsey survey support the conclusions made by other investigations into the transformation challenges facing companies seeking to develop their abilities within the management of sustainable operations (Loorbach, 2010). Although there is a strong willingness and broad support towards developing more sustainable business models, the challenge of integrating sustainability into the existing way of doing things remains a challenge.

We believe this is the case because transformation towards sustainability is a systemic challenge, calling for fundamental and synchronized changes throughout a widespread network of business actors involved. Rather than seeing sustainability as an organization’s quality (i.e. as an organization being sustainable in its internal operations), sustainable operations can be viewed as an ongoing process constituted through the dynamic relationships between organizational elements. As pointed out by Bateson, a strong proponent of systemic thinking and cybernetics, the unit of survival is a flexible organism-in-its-environment (Bateson, 1973, p. 426). Thus, processing for instance the “ocean garbage patches” (the plastic waste found in the oceans) is not simply a question of finding a way to collect and reuse the plastic. Currently, the Great Pacific patch, one of five ocean garbage patches, is estimated to weigh 80 million tons and covers an area three times the size of continental France (Chen et al., 2018). Trying to recycle or even upcycle this amount plastic calls for system-wide adjustments in the global production and consumption network involved in the processing. It is not a question of finding one solution, but rather for a range of different organizations—each occupied in its own organizational niche, to co-adjust behaviors. Hence, not only a single or organization’s behavior must change—so must the way this and other organizations relates to their specific context. Rather than seeing all organizations as facing the same challenge or seeing the challenge in the same way, an organization interacts and co-specifies its specific part of reality. Taking this view clearly complicates matters. First, understanding the impact realized from any initiative towards sustainability is not an easy task. There are intended as well as unintended consequences of actions which at first glance may seem as a straightforward way to increase sustainable consumption and reduce the impa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Sustainable Operations Management (SOM): An Introduction to and Overview of the Book
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Back Matter