Business Sustainable Development Other Emerging Issues

This book seeks to answer the questions: how do the rules of international treaties on trade and investment apply to the new laws and policies relating to energy-related trade, and do the rules of the multilateral system contribute to or detract from sustainable development? An emerging set of new problems in the law of international trade is how to reconcile the rules of the multilateral trading system with shortages of certain natural resources and the necessity to develop renewable energy resources. The chapters in this book provide a comprehensive analysis of the international trade issues presented by national trade laws and policies with regard to natural resources and energy. This book is about the extent to which we are interpreting existing rules to cover emerging problems and how the rules of the multilateral trading system can be adapted to achieve sustainable development in natural resources and energy. The book begins with a survey of selected national laws relating to recent restrictions on the export of natural resources, both resources used to produce energy as well as natural resources essential for industrial production. After examining the range of such laws in selected important countries, we turn to the application of the rules of the multilateral trading system to such export restrictions. We discuss the major rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as well as the natural resources rules in selected regional preferential free trade agreements. While there is not a comprehensive global legal regime on competition law, we believe it is also important to examine how selected national competition laws impact export restrictions on natural resources. This book will be a major contribution to the international dialogue on international economic law issues with respect to trade in natural resources and energy.

Selling products used to be the standard way of doing business. Traditionally, it is left to the user to transform the purchase of a product into something that fulfils effectively a final-user need. Today, two streams of research – business management and sustainability – normally with very distinct perspectives on the world, have surprisingly converged to form a common conclusion: selling products is old-fashioned business. Companies should switch their focus to selling need fulfilment, satisfaction, or experiences. Or, in other words, selling integrated solutions or product-services. The business management literature argues that, by focusing on the integrated, final-client needs, and delivering integrated solutions fulfilling these needs, companies will be able to improve their position in the value chain, enhance added value of their offering, and improve their innovation potential. In a business world where many products are becoming equally well-performing commodities, this strategy is one of the ways to avoid a sheer competition on price – a type of competition that Europe never can win with emerging and low-cost economies such as China. In that sense, product-services can mean new business for old Europe. The sustainability knowledge stream argues that need-focused solutions could be inherently more sustainable than products. Product-services could offer the value of use instead of the product itself and decrease the environmental load in two ways. First, companies offering the service would have all the incentives to make the (product-)system efficient, as they get paid by the result. Second, consumers would be encouraged to alter their behaviour as they gain insight into all the costs involved with the use. Until today, the connections and interchange between the two research streams have been quite limited. The question of whether product-services truly are the avenue to a sustainable world is still under discussion. This book aims to develop a systematic view on this issue. The potential of product-services to enhance competitiveness and contribute to sustainable development prompted the EU to invest heavily in the theme under the EU's 5th Framework Programme (FP5; 1997-2002). A variety of research and development projects in the field were supported under the umbrella of the Sustainable Product Development Network (SusProNet). These included MEPSS (Methodology Product Service Systems); Home Services; HiCS (Highly Customerised Solutions); Prosecco (Product-Service Co-design); and Innopse (Innovation Studio and exemplary developments for Product-Service). The projects were undertaken by a mix of European research institutions and companies including Orange, Philips and Nokia. Some of these projects focused on developing methods that could help industries change their output from a product to a service. Others focused on the development of new product-services or solutions (HiCS, Prosecco, Innopse), and yet others tried to analyze under which circumstances product-services are likely to be implemented and accepted by consumers (Home Services). One project focused on dissemination of the concept to SMEs (Lean Services). Other projects focused purely on new product-service development, such as Brainfridge (an intelligent fridge managing its supply chain), ASP-NET (application service providers), Protex (intelligent enzymes) and IPSCON (receivers for wireless telephones). New Business for Old Europe brings together the key outputs from all of these groups to present a state-of-the-art collection on product-service development, prospects and implications for competitiveness and sustainability. The book has a number of aims. First, it attempts to bridge the gap between business and sustainability literature to lead to a better-founded understanding of the business drivers for embarking on product-service development, and its relation with sustainability and competitiveness. Second, the book reviews the large amount of studies that have developed toolkits, methods and approaches that can support marketers, product developers and strategists in business to develop product-services, selects the best-practice approaches and analyses any gaps. Third, the book examines what opportunities there are for product-service development in a variety of key areas including base materials, information and communication technologies, offices, food and households. Each chapter in this section discusses the area, developments that will stimulate or hinder the market opportunities for product-services, product-service examples, and typical implementation challenges for product-services in that area. These chapters serve as a quick introduction for companies interested in developing product-services in a specific area. Fourth, the book translates all the lessons into suggested approaches for product-service development by companies. Annexes include a lightweight "product-service development manual" and an alphabetical list of useful underlying tools.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of sustainability and management in India and through its insightful essays highlights the complex and multifaceted nature of sustainability as a concept. It also demonstrates the debates surrounding the concept of sustainability and its ramifications for ground-level practice in managing organisations and for public policy. The contributions from sustainability enthusiasts, practitioners from disparate fields and academics working at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, have been divided into five themes: (1) sustainability as a normative concept; (2) sustainability concept at the global level, (3) sustainability practices in Indian organisations and consumer behaviour; (4) sustainability, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility and (5) sustainability: a critique of organisational practice and government regulation. The themes reflect both new and continuing issues confronting management in the country today. Examples and in-depth studies make it relevant to the grounded reality in India. The expertise and experience of the contributors ensure that readers are left with a grasp of our current understanding of how sustainability is related to society and business, the direction this understanding will take in the future.

Sustainable Economy and Emerging Markets provides a snapshot of the different dimensions of sustainability and analyses how they interact and configure themselves, case by case, in selected emerging economies. The parameters of economic growth in developing economies are explored in the context of systems, climate change, and environmental challenges. With contributions from a range of business academics, economists, and practitioners, this book conveys a picture of the complex nature of the new global business environment, especially the geopolitical dynamics of emerging countries, and breaks down the challenges across geographic fault lines, offering insights into current business practice. By adopting an in-depth case study approach, this edited book offers and discusses examples from several emerging markets and elucidates how these organisations have modelled business based on sustainable development in its various forms. This book will prove valuable reading for students and scholars of international business, international trade, sustainability, and development.

The book discusses new and emerging economic models, that respond to 'Pulling' and 'Pushing' forces. Today we are poised at an interesting juncture, with favourable conditions making it easier to be a sustainable organization acting as a ‘Pulling’ Force and the climate crisis, rise in social-economic equities thereby ‘Pushing’ for urgent action. The book analyses economic models that look at value propositions, creation and capture with ‘People, Planet and Profit’ deeply embedded in each stage of the value chain. The contributions bring out the interplay between new standards, evaluation frameworks, technology innovation and other emerging tools to show how they create a sustainable business. For this, they lean on learnings from successful sustainable businesses. Business leaders will find that this book provides deep insights on improving their existing sustainable practices, and speeding up the transition from linear to circular, narrow stakeholder driven to community driven. For prospective entrepreneurs the book provides the nudge needed to start up a sustainable enterprise. Students and researchers can benefit from real-life examples of how sustainable transformations unfold. The book thus creates an easy guide for those willing to make the transition to sustainability, start a sustainable business and most of all, to motivate those who may not yet be convinced about the long-term sense of taking care of our people and our earth.

This two-volume set presents the conference papers from the 1st International Conference on Economics, Development and Sustainability (EDESUS 2019), organized by the University of Economics and Business, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. The collection addresses global changes and sustainable development in Vietnam and other emerging market economies in Asia, and covers wider topics such as economics and business (e.g. economic theory, national and international income distribution, macroeconomic policies, sectors of economy, productivity developments, financial market, business governance, bank financing), development and sustainability (e.g. developing process, development policy, public policy, sustainable growth, sustainability tools, sustainable livelihood, sustainable tourism, green growth), and resources and global change (e.g. human resources, natural resources, climate change, globalization, global challenges). The books are of interest to professors, researchers, lecturers, and students in economics and geography, consultants, and decision makers interested in global changes and sustainable development. Volume 2 focuses on global changes and sustainable development in Vietnam and other emerging market economies in Asia. This covers topics such as sustainability (e.g. sustainable growth, sustainability tools, sustainable livelihood, sustainable tourism), and change in resources globally (e.g. human resources, natural resources, climate change, globalization, global challenges).