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Organizations recycle waste material for several reasons though ideally for the benefits of pollution prevention and resource use efficiency. Only limited empirical study of the relationship between an organization's performance and its waste re-management choices has been undertaken. Recycling that occurs for only legal or social reasons may produce environmental performance benefits with high management costs. Evidence suggests that performance gains from recycling are significantly influenced by the availability of waste-specific information. Using a sample of US metals and chemicals manufacturers, results revealed significant differences in information profile across environmental and economic performance outcomes. Similar recycling levels between two groups with significantly different performance levels, suggested variable performance conversion from recycling activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate requirements for modern slavery-type risks in global supply chains, have gained increased attention in recent years. Limited research however has sought to address the context-relevant implications of the contractual mechanisms used to distribute and 'enforce' such requirements. In particular, the socio-economic and cultural factors that underpin and facilitate modern slavery and how these inform supplier and worker choices, have not been addressed by prior SCM scholarship. Ensuring suppliers meet modern slavery requirements, in ways that create legitimate change in the sub-tier environment, remains a complex problem that remains unresolved. For modern slavery type exploitation, the suppliers most at risk of violation exist in the sub-tiers, and in operating environments culturally removed from western-headquartered ideologies. We interviewed 36 executive level Purchasing Directors, from medium to large size firms with headquarters in Australia, the US and Finland. We employed agency and construal level theories to frame our analysis. Overall, several themes emerged regarding the limitations of the principal-agent relationship to address modern slavery risks at a supply chain scale, that reflect significant social, hypothetical and spatial psychological distance between principals, and agents. Importantly, our research drew out a range of significant themes surrounding the conflicts purchasing executives face when attempting to align western policy with complex global operating conditions, and the actual workers they seek to support. Our study sheds light on the challenges of agency theory and highlights the complexity of operationalizing modern slavery type requirements in global supply chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abstract of the article "The Odd Couple: Managing 'Ideological Distance' in the Corporate-Nonprofit Relationship," by Kathryn Lefroy, Dayna Simpson, and Yelena Tsarenko is presented.

In recent years, sustainability in supply chains has become a topic of strategic priority for supply chain management. Still, doubts have been raised about the substantive commitment of large, international corporations to really improve global social welfare and to preserve the natural environment. The objective of this panel symposium is to stimulate and inspire new managerial approaches to achieve substantive sustainable improvements in supply chains. It offers a platform for exchanging first ideas and, thereby, stimulates research on sustainable supply chain management to move to the next level. The panelists will, among others discuss questions such as (1) how to enable corporations to give substantial weight to environmental protection and social welfare?; (2) how to move beyond our dominant Western perspective on sustainability and consider the values of different societies, in particular different value systems in emerging economies?; and (3) how to change the strategies and structures of supply chains such that they become truly sustainable? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]