Search

Copyright of Environmental & Social Management Journal / Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental is the property of Environmental & Social Management Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose -- European paper industry has been struggling with margins and profitability for more than decade time period. At typical in markets of west, paper product demand is at long-term decline, mostly driven by continuously increasing internet use. However, in emerging markets demand still exists, and in Europe numerous small markets in east have even some growth available. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach -- The authors analyse in this research work with longitudinal data (period of 2002-2009) from one large Finnish paper mill and data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach, how distribution efficiency to selected eight East European markets has evolved. Findings -- In general distribution efficiency has improved, but this has taken place in step-wise manner rather than being linear year-to-year development (year 2006 found to be the threshold). Reason is mostly in better management of transportation costs, and in particular lower monthly deviation of these costs. It is surprising that case paper mill has been able to manage transportation costs in rapidly increasing energy cost environment so efficiently. Maybe European Union enlargement of 2004 and 2007 has had its effects on distribution efficiency. Research limitations/implications -- The research is limited to the deliveries of one paper mill located in Finland. Also East European markets in the early periods of this study were emerging papers markets, and distribution practices were clearly evolving. Practical implications -- Based on the study East European paper market distribution should give more attention on transportation cost control, and trying to find solutions to minimize it with low monthly fluctuation. Originality/value -- Very few studies exist from East European distribution issues, and particularly that of paper industry. Also used quantitative method of DEA is relatively new in this context and gives valuable insights for the distribution efficiency development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To deal with the undesirable factors in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a non-linear DEA model was previously developed for a paper production system, where the desirable outputs are increased and the undesirable outputs are decreased for efficiency improvement. To convert the proposed non-linear model into a linear one, a linear approximation to the non-linear constraint is used and an approximate efficiency score is obtained. In this paper, we propose a new method to solve the non-linear programming problem and calculate the efficiency scores accurately, in which a second-order cone programming (SOCP) is defined and applied to transfer the non-linear programming model into a linear one. We applied the proposed model to measure the environmental performance of 30 paper mills along the Huai River in China. It was found that the efficiency scores obtained by our model is obvious different with the ones by approximate models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses mechanisms for the allocation of emission permits (AEP) among a group of manufacturing companies aiming at controlling the total emission level of the group. Data envelopment analysis is adopted and extended to construct the AEP models. Proposed methods allocate the permits on the basis of the current input and output levels of individual firms, rather than historical records. Two variations of AEP mechanisms are considered. One situation is that one of the member firms dominates the responsibility of allocating emission permits on behalf of the group (individual AEP scenario). This dominating firm will maximise its own emission permit before allocating permits among other members in the group. The other situation is that a third-party central governing body is centrally responsible for coordinating the AEP among all group members (Central AEP scenario). Proposed mechanisms are applied to analyse efficiencies of a group of paper mills. The result shows that the mode of central AEP mechanism is a better choice than that of the individual AEP mechanism. Central AEP not only maximises the whole efficiency of the group but also improves efficiencies of individual firms. In contrast, with individual AEP, one firm gains efficiency at the loss of others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Supply chain finance (SCF) as a crucial approach plays a key role in improving commitment, trust, financial flows, and profitability in a supply chain (SC). Many industrial organisations finance their SC through two resources: internal financing (buyer) and external financing (bank). The main objective of this paper is to develop an advanced data envelopment analysis (DEA) model for measuring the sustainability of financing resources of Industry 4.0 technologies. To do so, for the first time a non-radial DEA model in the presence of both zero inputs and ratio data is proposed. In this paper, the sustainability factors, including economic, environmental, and social factors are incorporated into the proposed approach. The developed DEA model, for the first time, is applied in SCF. The results show the most sustainable financial resource for investing in Industry 4.0 technologies. Also, the inputs and outputs' inefficiencies are determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]