• Energy Research
• Open Access close
• Closed Access close
• Embargo close
• 9. Industry and infrastructure close
• English close

PhD (Business Administration), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2019 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly becoming the productive drivers of economic growth and development in South Africa. This is so because SME sector is the engine of employment creation and the key contributor to the GDP of the country. Despite their contribution to the development of the economy, the rate of failure and discontinuity of SMEs in South Africa is still one of the highest in the world. A lot of business scholars have addressed the issue plaguing the sector by identifying the causes of SME failure but have not provided a solution on what needs to be done for these business ventures to become sustainable. The purpose of this study therefore was to develop a framework for enhancing the sustainability of SMEs in municipalities of the North West province of South Africa. A number of objectives were set to accomplish the purpose of the study that built up to the development of the proposed framework to enhance the sustainability of SMEs in this region. In order to attain the objectives of this study, the study used five principal theories that address the sustainability of SMEs: the financial gap theory, the resource dependence theory, the theory of mergers and acquisitions, investment theory and trickle-down theory. The pragmatist research paradigm underpinned supported the adoption of a sequential explanatory mixed method approach for collecting and analysing quantitative data in a first phase, while the qualitative phase was built on the outcomes of the preliminary quantitative results. The target population of this study was drawn from the current number of formal (duly registered) SMEs in the North-West province as indicated by the Central Supply Database of the Provincial Department of Finance. This population was chosen from the four district municipalities of the North-West province of South Africa and a non-probability sampling method was used to select a sample size of 400 small business owners and managers for the quantitative phase and 20 for the qualitative phase. The Statistical Package for Social Science was used to analyse quantitative data and Atlas-Ti software was used to analyse qualitative data. The findings of the study indicate that the major causes of SME failure and discontinuity in the North West province is due to various factors such as lack of strategic business planning, lack of sufficient finance, poor management, lack of innovation, lack of business research and low level of human capital education and training. Therefore, it is imperative for SME owners and managers to formulate and pursue a strategic business plan for their businesses, seek for measures to foster an improved flow of finances and implement strategic management in their businesses. More so, it is necessary for SME owners and managers to be innovative in business, conduct business research and upgrade the level of education and training of their human capital to ensure successful and sustainable business enterprises. More importantly, because of their contribution to economic growth of the country, the government should endeavour to support and encourage this sector to develop by offering financial and technical assistance to small business enterprises through relevant departments and agencies. Doctoral

The study elucidates key defining features of Russia's economic development in the new economic context that made it necessary to reconsider energy policy priorities. We present the initial conditions, targets, and strategic directions for development of the energy sector in the eastern regions of the country. The study highlights priority areas of energy cooperation in technological innovations between Russia and countries of Northeast Asia and lists prerequisites and initiatives needed for their successful implementation.

Bio-based and biodegradable plastics (BBPs) are innovative materials, wholly or partially produced from biomass, with the potential to enhance the circulation of resources in the biological cycle of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s butterfly diagram. Although BBPs are generally considered more environmental-friendly than conventional plastics, robust scientific evidence is still missing. The lack of tools and metrics to assess the circularity and sustainability of the BBPs industry poses relevant challenges for its upscaling and contribution to climate neutrality goals in Europe. It calls for adopting system and life cycle thinking, guided by multi-level and multi-dimensional examinations, which led researchers to build a comprehensive picture of trends, gaps and future orientations that may boost a sustainable circular bioeconomy in the sector. The value- chain based and multi-faceted SWOT analysis that emerged from the intersection of system and corporate data reveals the need to establish a combined circular bioeconomy strategy where incentives to integrated local supply chain, dedicated EPR scheme, eco-design guidelines, revised EoL standards, new clear labelling schemes and harmonised sustainability criteria should be prioritized and conjointly pursued to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable circular bioeconomy of the BBPs value chain. European Journal of Social Impact and Circular Economy, V. 4 N. 2 (2023)

This thesis reports the results from an in-depth longitudinal study of how a new strategy actually forms in practice. The focus is on a Swedish multinational firm called the “MECH Group” and its efforts to combine environmental and business concerns in the new strategy called “Positive Impact.” Detailed examinations of people and their activities and practices uncover the dynamic and firm-wide aspects of strategy formation in general, and the greening of business in particular. The study shows how the combination of the strategy-as-practice and strategy process traditions can yield new insights. It contributes to the theorizing about strategy formation in three ways. First, it provides detailed real-time activity-level descriptive accounts about this phenomenon. Four kinds of activities that have strategic outcomes are identified and analyzed: visionary, prescribed, evaluative, and unrecognized. Second, it broadens the focus from top management and their intended activities to include other people in the organization and their activities, which can emerge with little or no involvement from top management. Six types of internal strategy practitioners are shown to be influential in the strategy formation process, either consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly: top management, strategy task force, corporate staff management, temporary governance, operational middle management, and operational-level employees. Third, it connects activity- and firm-level findings. More specifically, it lets a rich understanding about an actual practice inform the theorizing about the convergence of deliberate and emergent strategies. Three different kinds of integrating functions are identified: i. downward implementation, ii. upward recognition, and iii. horizontal facilitation. The findings also contribute to the knowledge about the greening of business. By developing a detailed empirical account about the practice of integrating environmental issues into business strategy, the study provides a descriptive view as a complement to the many normative ideas that are found in the existing literature. It also connects the greening of business to general strategic management theorizing. Furthermore, this study provides a methodological contribution in terms of how the richness of strategy formation can be researched, especially concerning the capturing of relevant empirical material in real time. It demonstrates the importance of having significant access to, and knowledge about, the organization under scrutiny. Moreover, it shows how a focus on the practitioners and their doing in the intermediate micro-context can enable the study of multiple people involved in various activities that have strategic outcomes. Finally, the improved understanding of both how a new strategy actually forms in general, and of how environmental issues are integrated into business strategy in particular, provides more realistic grounds upon which implications for practicing managers can be derived.

Global trends in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) such as the welfare of employees and the shortage of natural resources, along with technological innovations have all resulted in a new set of stakeholder requirements. Stakeholders are nowadays demanding not only for sustainable products and/or services, but also require the corporations behind the brands they are consuming to offer greater transparency and reveal their accountability with regards to the way they carry out business. Consequently, to meet the needs of stakeholders, many corporations have already incorporated the sustainability discourse in their business strategies. More recently, corporations have started to publish sustainability reports, as a means of informing their stakeholders and shareholders about their organizations’ environmental and social performance. Previous studies within the hospitality sector, indeed confirm that hoteliers have already started to incorporate CSR and the reporting practise in their businesses, as they have documented an increase in sustainability reporting in the hotel sector over the past few years. Evidence suggests that by incorporating sustainability in their business strategies, hotels can decrease their operating costs, differentiate their product, and enhance their brands’ image. In addition, by drafting sustainability reports to comment upon these issues, hotels can attract more customers, provide better hospitality products, assist in the formation of sustainable tourism destinations, and improve their overall performance efficiency. The paper reaches the conclusion that sustainability reporting within the hotel sector will gain more momentum in the near future as it will become a valuable tool for gaining a competitive advantage With this in mind, the purpose of the paper is to explore the notion of CSR within the hotel industry and to document the benefits derived by the reporting practise. For the purposes of the paper, the researchers will review existing literature in the field of CSR, sustainability and sustainability reporting in the hotel industry and retrieve data regarding the environmental and social performance from the hotels’ corporate websites.

The main objective of the COST Action C25 ‘Sustainability of Constructions: Integrated Approach lo Life-time Structural Engineering” is to promote science-based developments in sustainable construction in Europe through the collection and collaborative analysis of scientific results concerning life-time structural engineering and especially integration of environmental assessment methods and tolls of structural engineering. Sustainability of Construction, European Science Foundation : Cost C25

Presented at: 2nd International Conference on Sustainability Transitions Diversity, plurality and change: breaking new grounds in sustainability transition research June 13-15, 2011 Lund University, Lund, Sweden

Effective decision making to allocate public funds for energy technology research, development, and demonstration (R&D) requires considering alternative investment opportunities that can have large but highly uncertain returns and a multitude of positive or negative interactions. This paper proposes and implements a method to support R&D decisions that propagates uncertainty through an economic model to estimate the benefits of an R&D portfolio, accounting for innovation spillovers and technology substitution and complementarity. The proposed method improves on the existing literature by: (a) using estimates of the impact of R&D investments from one of the most comprehensive sets of expert elicitations on this topic to date; (b) using a detailed energy-economic model to estimate evaluation metrics relevant to an energy R&D portfolio: e.g., system benefits, technology diffusion, and uncertainty around outcomes; and (c) using a novel sampling and optimization strategy to calculate optimal R&D portfolios. This design is used to estimate an optimal energy R&D portfolio that maximizes the net economic benefits under an R&D budget constraint. Results parameterized based on expert elicitations conducted in 2009-2011 in the United States provide indicative results that show: (1) an expert-recommended portfolio in 2030, relative to the BAU portfolio, can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 46 million tonnes, increase economic surplus by $29 billion, and increase renewable energy generation by 39 TWh; (2) uncertainty around the estimates of R&D benefits is large and overall uncertainty increases with greater investment levels; (3) a 10-fold expansion from 2012 levels in the annual R&D budget for utility-scale energy storage, bioenergy, advanced vehicles, fossil energy, nuclear energy, and solar photovoltaic technologies can be justified by returns to economic surplus; (4) the greatest returns to public R&D investment are in energy storage and solar photovoltaics; and (5) the current allocation of energy R&D funds is very different from optimal portfolios. Taken together, these results demonstrate the utility of applying new methods to improve the cost-effectiveness and environmental performance in a deliberative approach to energy R&D portfolio decision making.

Bioenergy enterprises have been granted an official role in the UK in order to make a significant contribution to sustainability targets and yet our understanding of attitudes amongst farmers and rural entrepreneurs to these enterprises is yet to be fully understood. Financial support, electricity tariffs, the availability of advice and the profit foregone from other enterprises have all fluctuated. The level of adoption of the new technology is not as advanced as in other EU countries. This study seeks to discover why this could be by exploring the entrepreneurial, financial and motivational environments that bioenergy adopters are working in. The following hypotheses have been developed: 1. The entrepreneurial environment for bioenergy development in the UK is sympathetic to the needs of this emerging industry; 2. Adopters of bioenergy are positively motivated towards the venture; and 3. Farm based bioenergy enterprises make a positive contribution to overall farm business viability. The UK government is looking to rural entrepreneurs to play a role in this through the adoption of bioenergy technologies which can contribute towards achieving the country’s energy and climate change targets and at the same time offer potential farm enterprises that could be viable long-term contributors to farm enterprise sustainability (NFU, 2008). This study extends and applies the concepts of entrepreneurship environment and country institutional profiles to a specific domain of entrepreneurship in the land based bioenergy sector in the UK.