scholarly journals Editorial: Sustainable Waste Management Innovations: Developing New Ventures for Improved Health and Environmental Wellbeing

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7132
Author(s):  
Joseph Amankwah-Amoah ◽  
Frederick Ahen

In this Editorial, we synthesise the articles in the Special Issue with unique insights into sustainable waste management innovations and sustainable business practices [...]

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6646
Author(s):  
Frederick Ahen ◽  
Joseph Amankwah-Amoah

The need for green business practices and green innovations underscores a growing recognition that climate change is now an existential threat not just to population health but also to the survival of businesses that are unable to embrace green practices with a sense of urgency. This paper contributes to the literature on market violence as an inhibitor of green innovations for sustainable waste management to curb the unneeded health effects of wastes in Africa. Our purpose is to problematize received wisdom, unquestioned assumptions, and incorrect diagnosis of the sources and health consequences of various forms of wastes in Africa. Much of the discourse on this issue remains ahistorical, and that risks leaving aside a vital question of exploitative extraction. By including this ‘out-of-the-box’ explanation through major case references, we are able to shed light on the critical issues that have hitherto received limited attention, thus enabling us to propose useful research questions for future enquiries. We propose a framework that delineates the structural composition of costs imposed by market violence that ranges from extraction to e-waste disposal. We advocate for the engineering of policies that create conditions for doing more with less resources, eliminating waste, and recycling as crucial steps in creating sustainable waste management innovations. Additionally, we highlight a set of fundamental issues regarding enablers and inhibitors of sustainable innovations and policies for waste management worth considering for future research. These include programmed obsolescence, irresponsible extraction, production, and consumption, all seen through the theoretical lens of market violence.


Author(s):  
Timothy Galpin ◽  
Julia Hebard

Purpose – Although founders of start-up ventures seem to hold similar views about ethical, social, and environmental principles as those in large firms, entrepreneurs tend to be focussed on their immediate stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, and investors. The purpose of this paper is to compare founders’ views – “what they say” – about sustainable business practices to their described business models – “what they do.” Design/methodology/approach – An opinion survey of prospective business start-up founders, along with a content analysis of their business plans, is used to compare founders’ views – “what they say” – about sustainable business practices to their described business models – “what they do.” Findings – Findings suggest that prospective business founders do value sustainable business practices. However, the content of their business models does not reflect their espoused importance of sustainability. Research limitations/implications – The main limitation of this study is that university students in a business-planning course were used as surrogates for actual start-up venture founders. That being the case, a small percentage (just under 5 percent) of the students indicated at the end of the course that they would like to continue pursuing the venture they helped develop a business plan for. To address this, future research should focus on actual founders of new ventures. Practical implications – The content analysis of the business plans revealed a marked disconnect between the high-value founders reported to place on sustainability and the actual limited inclusion of sustainability in their business models. Therefore, more work needs to be done to educate, encourage, and coach start-up founders to raise their awareness of and desire to include sustainability as key parts of their business models. Originality/value – To date, no studies have attempted to compare start-up venture founders’ views – “what they say” – about sustainable business practices to their described business models – “what they do.”


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2and3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vibhuti Gupta ◽  
Devalina

The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions postulated by Barbara L. Fredrickson proposes that emotions like joy, interest, contentment, and love enable an individual to broaden his/her patterns of thinking and acting, which in turn build the personal coping resources, whether intellectual, physical, social, or psychological, by way of creating novel ideas, actions or social relationships. This paper is a review of 15 empirical studies carried out during 1998-2012 that support the contributions of this theory to the creation of a healthy workplace by fostering positive emotions in employees. Positive emotions were found to be pivotal in enhancing employee performance, encouraging innovation and creativity that result in sustainable business practices, helping organizations make good decisions, facilitating work-flow and motivation, developing authentic and charismatic leadership styles, job enrichment, better team performance, and satisfactory customer relations. A link between positive emotions and an upward spiral of personal and organizational resources has also been established where positive self-evaluation, development of resilience, a climate of social support, layout of clearer goals, high quality social-interaction, good health and productivity of workers have been found to promote effective coping.


Author(s):  
Arpana Pandit ◽  
Yoshinori Nakagawa ◽  
Raja Rajendra Timilsina ◽  
Koji Kotani ◽  
Tatsuyoshi Saijo

Author(s):  
V.R. Sankar Cheela ◽  
Ved Prakash Ranjan ◽  
Sudha Goel ◽  
Michele John ◽  
Brajesh Dubey

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