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Green logistics is an important aspect of production system in today’s world. It combines various efforts to quantify and control the environmental effect of production activities in an enterprise. This research is intended to emphasize upon the ways by which organizations can accomplish positive ecological effects simply by modifying their logistics practices. This paper presents a case study of an Indian automobile company by analyzing alternatives for green practices along with organizational objectives. It is imperative to focus on the green practices in context of Indian automobile sector as the volume of vehicles in India has increased considerably during last few decades. Accordingly, this paper attempts to improve the performance for sustainable adaptation of green practices of an Indian company by selecting the best alternative obtained from the use of Analytical Hierarchy Process to analyze alternatives for green practices in the assembly and packaging processes. Alternatives have been evaluated on the basis of three criteria i.e. green efficiency, factor of safety and ease of operation. The study revealed that clinch joint is the most appropriate alternative for assembly operation while carbon positive packaging material is the best alternative for packaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cleaner technology strategy is a firm's long term planning to avoid negative externality to the natural environment and remain competitive in future markets. The paper proposes a comprehensive definition of cleaner technology strategy and presents its important aspects to derive competitive advantages based on an empirical study of sixty firms across the industry sectors in India. A measure of cleaner technology strategy was constructed and, tested for its reliability and validity. Descriptive statistics was used to understand the relative importance of competitive aspects of cleaner technology strategy in Indian firms. The result shows that cleaner technology strategy derived from top management's vision of future technologies and ability to manage risk due to natural environment play a critical role in implementation of cleaner technology strategy. Firm's ability to pursue regulators for additional benefits, ability to manage risk associated with failures and imitation, and focus on up-gradation of in-house technological capabilities help in re-positioning to derive competitive advantages. The results also indicate that sustainable solutions offer differential competitive advantages across the industry sectors and firm's focus to update skill set of employees is also linked with industry sectors. The paper contributes to existing literature by making distinction between cleaner technology strategy and other strategies like pollution prevention and product stewardship. It further argues the strategic perspective of cleaner technology, cleaner production and eco-friendly products to develop necessary attributes for competitiveness. It also provides a measurement tool for the managers to check the performance of their firm to achieve the goals of cleaner technology strategy. Further, the paper provides important managerial, policy and research implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous empirical and conceptual studies describe waste minimisation as a key environmental performance indicator for industry. ISO 14001certification in this regard is widely considered the tool of choice for driving waste minimisation efforts. To this day, however, the evidence remains mixed as it pertains to the effectiveness of ISO 14001 in helping firms reduce waste, especially in developing countries. This paper explores the waste minimisation efforts among Indian small and medium enterprises. Specifically, improvements in waste minimisation are analysed from small and medium enterprises operating in the cities of Delhi and Noida. Our proposed model is tested for a model-fit, and the hypotheses are tested through regression coefficient (β) scores to determine the influence of ISO 14001 on the degree of waste minimisation among certified and non-certified companies. The data reveal that ISO 14001 certification alone helped account for a 25% increase in waste minimisation in certified companies after controlling for other critical factors (correlated to the variable ‘waste minimisation’) that may influence this relationship. The analytical tools described in this paper lend themselves to be applied to similar research problems in future studies. The study provides baseline data for further research into ISO 14001 effectiveness in the Indian SME context – a field with still only limited research insights – and offers policy prompts for targeted environmental management improvements in Indian firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategy that targets pollution prevention shall be the first one among sustainability strategies to be implemented to achieve early cost advantages and mitigate litigation risk. This article aims to isolate pollution prevention strategy (PPS) from other similar sustainability strategies and provides an independent scope of PPS. A questionnaire based survey was conducted among 689 managers of 60 Indian firms known for their orientation towards sustainability. Factorial analysis delivered five factors highlighting the composition of associated variables. Descriptive statistics was used to understand the relative importance of various aspects of PPS and status of implementation of this strategy in Indian firms. The results show that firms are paying higher attention to structured waste management and the priority is early cost advantages hence prefer less investment prone processes modifications. The initiatives are geared mainly due to short term advantages than top management commitment and pro-activeness to comply with environmental regulations. Firms believe in developing expertise and deploying standard practices. It is evident that firms specifically train employees for PPS implantation, but lags in empowerment of employees, resources allocation, cross-functional team formations and rewards for the employees. Also, PPS strategy is implemented as stand-alone strategy and lacks the integration with core corporate strategy. The study adds to existing literature by segregating PPS from other similar strategies like product stewardship and cleaner technology. Tested measure of PPS shall help managers to assess their performance to achieve pollution prevention goals. Further, the paper discusses some important managerial implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Despite growing interest in, and government support for, ISO14001 certification across Asia in recent years, little is known about issues surrounding the uptake and the effectiveness of environmental management systems in this region. There is a particular void of academic work in relation to ISO certification in India and the country's large number of small and medium enterprises; a field of inquiry this paper seeks to advance. Specifically, as a means of providing a basis for classification of firms for an analysis of the state of ISO14001 in India we test the adequacy of critical factors such as nature of business, size, year of establishment and internationalisation among small and medium enterprises and industry best companies. An analysis is presented of secondary data derived from the websites of a sample of ISO14001 certified firms located in the cities of Delhi and Noida. The data show that in the area of manufacturing the highest number of ISO14001 certifications can be recorded and that established small and medium enterprises with high turnover are more likely to adopt ISO14001 certification compared to low turnover firms. The findings inform the status of environmental management systems in India and have implications for government policy intended to foster ISO14001 uptake by Indian firms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) play an important role in the economic development of any developing country due to their innate capability of transforming novel ideas into innovations and thus building profitable enterprises. Globalisation has necessitated smaller firms to target on Sustainable Oriented Innovation (SOI) practices, as an essential parameter for achieving competitive advantage. However, transforming MSMEs towards the incorporation of SOI practices is not an easy task for a developing country like India. For this, MSMEs will have to focus on significant innovation factors that would help them sustain global competition. This paper highlights essential Critical Factors (CFs) to implement SOI practices in MSMEs of the Delhi NCR region of India catering to sector which manufactures products. A novel multi-criteria decision-making technique called an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed in identifying the vital CFs amongst these. The AHP evaluation results' robustness is checked by performing a sensitivity analysis. Research results indicate that 'Top management support'; 'Government initiatives' and 'Financial resources' are the most important factors contributing significantly in implementing SOI practices. This research is useful for developing recommendation for companies, academic experts, and Governmental professionals. The authors believe that research outcomes would be helping India in contributing for the sustainable development of MSMEs. Image 1 • Factors influencing innovation practices towards sustainability are proposed. • The focus is on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), India. • The ranking framework of the identified factors is developed. • Sensitivity analysis is used to validate the developed ranking framework. • Policy implications are derived for sustainably oriented innovation practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to improve the corporate sustainability of agro-food value chains, business organizations need to rely on a higher performing and more reliable logistics system. Particularly, in case of dairy industry, organizations are facing some important challenges containing people management, short shelf life, high food losses and wastage, high greenhouse gas emissions. Based on "Confederation of Indian industry - Dairy Vision 2025", it is believed that the dairy sector in India has high potential if organizations can develop an effective logistics and supply chain system. This article attempts to analyze the interaction between distribution related challenges with a focus operational excellence and higher corporate green growth and sustainability viewpoints in food supply chains by considering the business example of four Indian dairy product based organizations using graph theory and matrix approach. Several key challenges were identified based on a literature survey and experts' views. Graph theory and matrix approach has been applied to select the most significant challenge. The results show that food organizations must work on cold chain to manage logistics and distribution challenges to reduce wastage, decrease financial losses and to take environmental issues into account. This paper ranks the challenges as well as develop an index for the dairy industry to achieve corporate sustainability in its supply chain and logistics network. The present study findings will provide useful knowledge for managers and policy makers managing interaction between people and process aspects and corporate sustainability management in the agro-based diary organizational logistics and supply chains. This is one of the unique studies in food supply chain that helps in improving the logistics and supply performance in diary industries of emerging economies. Image 102787 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]