ALBERT

Description: The rise of global supply chains as well as attention to the Triple Bottom Line provides organizations with new conditions and strategy paradoxes to be dealt with when it comes to sustainability in supply chain management. This study of a large multinational organization with a strong Triple Bottom Line focus provides a comprehensive analysis of the use of control and governance mechanisms in supply chain context. Through the Levers of Control framework, the application of these mechanisms both internally and across organizational boundaries is shown. The interplay between levers helps in dealing with the in itself paradoxical nature of Triple Bottom Line goalsetting. The results show that the “softer” elements of the Triple Bottom Line, i.e., People and Planet, are approached with the lever associated with the beliefs system, which in turn enforces the boundary and interactive control systems. Ultimately, applying the Levers of Control in supply chain context might contribute to pursuing a holistic approach of sustainable supply chain management.

Description: Turbulence experienced in the business and social realms resonates with turbulence unfolding throughout the biosphere, as a process of accelerating change at the stratigraphic scale termed the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is understood as a multi-dimensional limit point, one dimension of which concerns the limits to the lineal epistemology prevalent since the Age of the Enlightenment. This paper argues that future conditions necessitate the updating of a lineal epistemology through a transition towards resilience thinking that is both adaptive and ecosystemic. A management paradigm informed by the recognition of multiple equilibria states distinguished by thresholds, and incorporating adaptive and resilience thinking is considered. This paradigm is thought to enhance flexibility and the capacity to absorb influences without crossing thresholds into alternate stable, but less desirable, states. One consequence is that evaluations of success may change, and these changes are considered and explored as likely on-going challenges businesses must grapple with into the future.

Description: Professional truck drivers are prone to both physical and psychological stress. Such stress can lead to burnout. Drawing on Job Demands Resources literature and stress research, we investigate the relationship between job related role stressors and three components of burnout, among professional truck drivers who are based in the Netherlands. They were surveyed with a time-lagged design (interval of two months). In the first wave, the different potential causes of burnout were measured (role conflict, role ambiguity, quality of sleep, and the perceived emotional intelligence of the dispatcher). In the second wave, the three elements of burnout were measured: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low personal accomplishment. The results of our study indicate that role conflict relates positively to all three components of a burnout. The emotional intelligence of the dispatcher—as perceived by the truck drivers—was negatively related with the three components of a burnout. Finally, the quality of sleep had an impact on depersonalization and emotional exhaustion. Theoretically, several job specific role stressors are confirmed to play a role in truck driver burnout. However, the top three role stressors all appeared to be related to the trucking industry, instead of a particular employer, and they may therefore require national policy measures.

Description: Transport and logistics activities contribute heavily to global sustainability problems, yet the implementation of corporate social responsibility and sustainability reporting in the sector lags behind. This paper aims to analyze sustainability reporting in the logistics sector, with focus on environmental, social and economic indicators. An extensive operationalization of sustainability indicators is used to examine and analyze the sustainability reports of 52 organizations in the logistics sector worldwide. Results show that the sector does not agree on the materiality of sustainability indicators. Furthermore, sustainability reporting seems to be incompatible with daily operations, leading to obscurity in reports. This contrast, between the necessary existence of organizations in the logistics sector and their undesirable environmental and social effects, calls for future research into how organizations are coping with this paradox. A viable way forward is needed in order to ensure materiality in the sectors’ efforts toward sustainability reporting.

Description: This study analyzes whether customer perceptions towards sustainability are affected by a company’s country of origin and sourcing strategies. This study builds upon the literature regarding customer interest in sustainable products. It adds the country of origin to the link between customer and company, and analyzes if and how customer perceptions change when they are introduced to a sustainability scandal, hence analyzing possible ‘association by guilt’. It compares their reactions to offshore scandals and to local scandals, therefore taking psychic distance as an important variable into consideration. Customer perceptions of company sustainability was found to have an impact on purchasing behavior. Findings show that perceptions are influenced by psychic distance. Furthermore, companies should take into account the risk of association by guilt when developing their global sourcing strategies.

Description: Despite the booming interest in determinants of green (i.e., sustainable) consumption, the psychological factors that influence pro-environmental consumption patterns are not yet fully understood. To answer this call, we developed and analysed a model that offers an integrative approach to sustainable consumption patterns by addressing the full palette of consumers’ personal value orientations. Specifically, we linked consumers’ egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric values at the personal level to pro-environmental purchasing intentions, behaviours, and experiences. Furthermore, we examined whether implicit beliefs about the balance between humanity and nature (i.e., worldviews) moderate these relationships. To support the theoretical propositions in our model, we drew on the key premises of the theory of planned behaviour. Data from 291 Polish respondents were analysed by using multiple linear regression analysis, and the moderating effect of worldviews was investigated with simple slope analysis. While controlling for cultural values, the findings show that personal values, specifically biospheric values, predict sustainable consumer patterns and that consumers’ worldview moderates this relationship. Our study offers a novel holistic approach to analyse sustainable consumption patterns, which will assist environmental management scholars and practitioners who seek to understand and stimulate pro-environmental consumer behaviour. Our findings may help practitioners to develop strategies to influence consumer intentions and behaviours concerning green products.

Description: Corporate Social Responsibility has multiple faces that contradict each other. On the one hand there is the communication of great aspirations and ambitions. On the other hand, there is the unruly practice that complicates living up to those ambitions. These contradictions are, without being exhaustive, caused by a focus on economic performance, organizational behavior, adherence to leading supply chain paradigms, and reputation management. In general, corporate communication about social responsibility is perceived as hypocritical. This research looks at how these communications initiate sustainability measures in the distribution and supply chain functions of a large multinational company. In a single embedded case study, data collection took place using semi-structured interviews complemented with document research. The empirical results show that the supply chain managers were positively critical of the communication about implemented sustainability measures and considered them as an invitation to act. However, they assessed the organization that surrounded them to be less lenient due to the different objectives of the various functions. The respondents diverged about which sustainability measures to apply and embed in the supply chain organization. It became clear that the knowledge base of the respondents was fragmented and incoherent. Reflecting on the research results, the role of top management seems crucial when it comes to coherent policy, knowledge development, and the prioritization of sustainability measures.