• Energy Research

Today, there is widespread consensus about the notable, yet simultaneously growing, negative environmental impacts generated by the transportation sector. Experts working in a number of different fields consider the current situation to be unsustainable and possible measures to reduce emissions and foster sustainability are being encouraged. The European Commission has highlighted the need to shift away from unimodal road transport toward a greater use of intermodal transport through, for example, motorways of the sea, in light of the evidence that the former makes a significant contribution to increased CO2 emissions. However, although there is a general perception that sea transport is environmentally preferable to road transport, recent studies are beginning to question this assumption. Moreover, little research has been conducted to quantify environmental aspects and incorporate them into the decision-making processes involved in the modal shift. This study first reviews the existing literature to examine the extent to which environmental aspects are relevant in the modal choice in the case of short sea shipping and motorways of the sea. Related to this, the study also evaluates the role that different agents may play in making decisions about choice of mode, taking into consideration environmental aspects. Secondly, we use the values the European Commission provides to calculate external costs for the Marco Polo freight transport project proposals (call 2013) to estimate the environmental costs for several routes (a total of 72), comparing the use of road haulage with the intermodal option that incorporates the Spanish motorways of the sea. The results of this comparative analysis show that the intermodal option is not always the best choice in environmental terms. Consequently, the traditional environmental argument to justify this alternative must be used carefully.

El impacto de la COVID-19 en la forma de consumir arte ha supuesto cambios de comportamiento hacia modelos más responsables y sostenibles. El arte sigue siendo parte fundamental de la vida de las personas, e influye de manera relevante en la calidad de vida, tanto en el entorno educativo como en el laboral. Durante el confinamiento, las personas que han podido consumir arte lo han hecho según necesidades y contextos diferentes. No obstante, el arte, más allá de sus beneficios sociales, tiene una implicación directa tanto en la sostenibilidad como en el mundo de la empresa. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo conocer el consumo de arte durante la pandemia y su relación con la responsabilidad social y empresarial. El enfoque metodológico es cuantitativo y se fundamentó en un cuestionario ad hoc en el que participaron un total de 308 personas, De los resultados se desprende que a través del consumo de arte se pueden generar comportamientos responsables en las empresas. Además, se pone de manifiesto la relación que se establece entre arte y éxito empresarial, así como la implicación y responsabilidad en la sostenibilidad.

[EN] Top management support is one of the key aspects in the implementation of Industry 4.0 and business digitization, whereas communication is essential to aligning and driving an organization in this task. However, to date, no research has addressed this support from this perspective. To fill this gap, we take a sample of companies (N = 159) listed on the 5 main stock indices in the European Union, and we qualitatively examine the letters issued by chief executive officers and other top managers in their annual reports. We assess whether, to which extent and under which motivations and barriers, the senior management of these companies are supporting this implementation through their discourse. Among other relevant findings, our results show that barely half of the managers make explicit their strong support for this implementation, as a kind of widespread spatial myopia that serves as a meta-barrier in this implementation. In addition, the support given by top executives is mostly driven by business and customer motivations; in turn, they generally fail to present sustainability within their main motivations. Overall, this paper offers a series of relevant contributions and insights with managerial implications taken from a novel approach in this field.