Editor's Note & Industry Digest

In view of current economic and industrial growth, the whole world is facing various Sustainability challenges like Climate change and Global warming, energy management, food security, poverty, water scarcity and many more. To address these issues properly, it is necessary to mainstream sustainability in every sector of operations and it is the responsibility of every industry and every individual to contribute towards various sustainability issues / challenges for achieving long term sustainability goals. Globally, the Information Technology (IT) sector has grown up in multiple folds in a short span of time with substantial contribution to global economy and business. Rapid growth of IT industry is positively contributing to higher growth of infrastructure development (commercial & residential) and employment generation. But, along with the contribution to economical, industrial and developmental aspects, IT sector is also contributing to increased energy and natural resources consumption, generation of electronic waste (E-Waste) and increased carbon emissions (due to energy consumption and increased business travel activities.) The rapid economic growth and changes in IT sector has made it necessary for the companies to update and monitor their own technological competence. This further leads to additional resource consumption and E-waste generation. With high business growth potential and rising demand, IT sector is going through various major sustainability issues and challenges including high energy consumption, waste management, carbon emissions and human resource management. To the many fold growth of IT sector in last decade, IT sector SME is also one of the major contributors and the sector is growing continuously. But due to many constrains, IT-SME sector focus is mainly on business development and economic growth to sustain in the highly competitive market by providing different value added, cost effective services and sustainable solution to the clients. Including effective use of cloud computing, which is considered as one of the energy efficient option for the services offered. If we consider the environmental impact for an SME in view of above challenges of IT sector, it is not significant. However, considering the huge number of SMEs operating globally, the cumulative impact is significant and cannot be ignored. The detailed paper will include analysis of the current scenario of overall IT sector including SMEs of India and Global, in view of their awareness about the sustainability issues, possible measures of improving sustainability contribution and the challenges faced by them for implementation of sustainability measures. Further the paper will also discuss about how the sector can embrace sustainability to reduce environmental impact by energy conservation, carbon footprint reduction along with a goal to achieve Profit Growth and Stakeholder welfare.

Route selection is a complex issue in simulating the pedestrian’s walking behaviour during the evacuation. In many current studies, the agent-based model has been widely used to simulate the individualized behaviour, and growing concern is given to the cognitive aspects in route selection. However, the influence of incomplete spatial knowledge and the preferences for different routing strategies has not been fully considered. To represent more reliable route choice by different pedestrians, this study presents an individual cognitive evacuation behaviour model which is mainly focusing on the individual differences in routing strategy and spatial knowledge. The model consists of two major components, namely the multiple routing strategies and personalized spatial cognitive road network. Based on a review of the previous studies, the potential factors that may affect the evacuation behaviour were discussed. The quantitative relationships between these potential factors and the pedestrian’s routing preference, as well as the possibilities of recognizing different roads, were explored using the regression method. As a case study, the proposed model was implemented using the data collected from a field survey of a real outdoor event. When applied in an agent-based simulation, the implemented model will support more reliable simulation of route choices corresponding to the pedestrians’ behaviour in the real event.

Research SummaryMultinational enterprises create and capture value through appropriate business models that fit both distinctive capabilities and dynamic markets. The key elements of a global business model include propositions for adding customer value and capturing a share of that value, methods to control, deploy, and utilize critical resources, and integrated processes that deliver value to target global customers. These factors explain the diversity in business models, with international competition in geographically dispersed markets further fortifying this diversity and complexity. This article demonstrates ways forward in theorizing about business models, applying these models in the global context, discussing capabilities and strategies necessary for value generation from a global business model, and relating the choice of model to the strategic context of the modern multinational firm.Managerial SummaryMNEs seek value in the global marketplace through distinctive business models, as is the case in other markets. Global markets add layers of complication, as the MNE needs both a global umbrella business model and a local business model for each product and international host market. Because the global business environment is highly dynamic and each host market offers unique contextual characteristics, simple and fixed business models are not feasible. This article offers insights into how aspects of the business model and the multinational firm must be adapted to locational characteristics.A video abstract is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGSNWO4zk2Q.

The Tuscan Region spends about 12 million euro every year in the prevention and suppression of forest fires. In this context, this study aims to verify the economic and environmental benefits derived from the activities of the prevention and suppression of fires. Starting from a case study of a real fire event in Tuscany, we have simulated three hypothetical scenarios (with different fire durations) without fire extinction activities planned. These hypothetical scenarios have been obtained using the open source software FARSITE, and georeferred data concerning meteorological data, territory and forest characteristics were used to run the three simulations. A monetary approach to the quantification of avoided damage thanks to fire extinction activities has been applied. Quantification of the economic avoided damage has been calculated through the estimation of the total economic value of forest destroyed by fire. Total economic value is represented by the value of economic and environmental benefits provided by the forest (ecosystem services). Total economic values of forest surfaces burned by real event and simulated fire have been calculated: the difference between these values represent the avoided damages (from an environmental point of view) thanks to fire extinction activities. The completely avoided damage was calculated in a second phase by considering the real estate values of buildings that the extinction activities had protected and safeguarded. The results achieved confirm how forest fire services and forest management are important from both economic and environmental points of view.

Recent flood disasters caused by extreme meteorological events highlight the need of fast and reliable tools for flooding forecast. For our purposes, the danger associated with floods is embodied in a single risk-level flag which considers both local water depth and velocity. The methodology here derived is applied and validated for the case study of the St. Lucia island in the eastern Caribbean Sea that experiences flash flooding as a result of combined intense rainfall and steep slopes, difficult to predict with traditional early-warning systems. A multi-layer perceptron neural network is trained on a high-fidelity dataset generated through full two-dimensional shallow water simulations of real and synthetic events. The dataset is validated against social markers obtained from real events. The predictive capabilities of the neural network model are tested on the out-of-box case of the Dean and Tomas hurricanes and compared with the solutions of the shallow water solver. The surrogate solver allows a significant speed-up in the prediction time with respect to traditional CFD (seconds vs hours), showing a high precision and accuracy, with accuracy, precision and F1-score above 0.99.

Writing a novel about recent controversial and tragic events is a difficult, even potentially daunting challenge, for an author. The ethical considerations of including such facts in fiction often result in writers adopting the approach of applying a paper thin veneer of fiction to real events and people. In this article, novelist Tracey Iceton examines her approach to a creative writing project firmly rooted in reality, part two of her Celtic Colours Trilogy, the novel entitled Herself Alone in Orange Rain. The novel, which deals with real events from the Provisional IRA’s 1980s campaign and employs real people as characters, was the creative component of Iceton’s Creative Writing PhD thesis. Explaining both her decision to include real events and people in her novel and the research methods and writing practice used to construct a fictional text from factual accounts, Iceton exemplifies how she addressed both ethical and creative considerations in the writing of this novel. Drawing on the ideas of creative writing scholars (including, among others, De Groot, White, Watt, Neale, Steel and Southgate) particularly in relation to historical fiction, realism and representation, Iceton argues that, while such writing projects may always becontroversial to some readers, they are not inherently unethical as long as the writer is prepared to take responsibility for their creative production.

While there is a large body of management education literature focused on conducting service-learning projects for students in support of addressing today’s sustainable development challenges, the majority of articles in this area focus on the graduate student population. What’s more, there is a lack of emphasis on the importance of incorporating cultural context when designing and implementing service-learning projects on a global scale. Based on our experiences creating and carrying out a semester-long consulting class where US-based undergraduate students worked with Costa Rican rural entrepreneurs in support of building their sustainable livelihoods, we examine the benefits, challenges, and outcomes related to conducting service-learning projects for undergraduate students in a global context. We focus, in particular, on projects designed to address sustainable development challenges. In doing so, we identify critical success factors related to designing and implementing global service-learning projects for this student population. When these critical success factors are utilized, we argue that such global service-learning projects can be beneficial for undergraduate students and partners alike.

As cities across the globe continue to increase in size, due to the twin phenomenon of population growth and unprecedented urbanisation, the challenges of sustainability and socioeconomic inequality seem to follow exponentially. Such challenges however are surmountable if deliberate attention and efforts are incorporated in the lifecycle of Smart Cities. This calls for a wide scope consultation between different stakeholders, such that a wider scope of solutions that addresses a majority of concerns, especially relating to environmental sustainability, inclusivity, security and privacy and economic dimension can be identified. There are different ways through which smart cities could be fashioned to offer solutions for both sustainable and inclusivity concerns, as proposed in global policy documents such as the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, the NUA and UN-HABITAT III and others. However, the proposal in these documents need to be complemented by spirited and concerted human efforts, especially in view of the urgency need to mitigate the escalation of challenges such as climate change and the impacts of COVID-19, which have already prompted widespread incidences in diverse regions.

Sustainability has become an increasingly important issue in today’s business world. All firms operating in domestic and global business must be cognizant of all the myriad aspects of sustainability. All areas of Marketing, including Supply-Chain Management {SCM} have to operate in this new environment. This paper looks at sustainability and its importance in today's business world from the perspective of marketing and Integrated Marketing Communications {IMC}. More and more online marketing is helping businesses build and develop new, innovative and successful IMC programs, and special attention will be given to this function and how it works with other components. This paper will focus on the interaction between IMC and SCM in terms of sustainability. The paper first examines SCM macro aspects. Next several SCM micro examples are used to show how various SCM members tackle the challenge of sustainability from the perspective of IMC. These firms and organizations will be selected from different components of the supply-chain. For example, there will be a railroad {CSX}, a trucking company {YRC-The merged Yellow Freight and Roadway Express}, a distribution center {Giant Food}, a freight forwarder {UPS}, and a port {Port of Baltimore}. The paper will wind up with a relevant summary and conclusions section. The paper emphasizes the synergistic importance in developing excellent IMC programs to promote sustainability and for individual SCM members to promote their sustainability efforts.

This study develops and applies a framework to evaluate undergraduate Global Business Literacy (GBL) learning outcomes, which is defined here as the ability to adapt and function in the global business context and to be knowledgeable about its core issues and trends. As a first step in a multi-stage research process, we used extant expatriate and global business education literature to develop a 58-item survey. Exploratory factor analysis of pre-test survey data from 166 seniors revealed five explanatory factors that we labeled self-efficacy (SE), willingness to learn (WTL), relationship development (RD), technical competence (TC), and self-awareness (SA). Next, we used the framework to complete a post-test study of the effectiveness of a classroom-based Global Business Colloquium at improving students' perceived GBL. A paired-samples t-test revealed mean increases/decreases in scores from Time 1 to Time 2 on four factors: SE, WTL, RD, and TC, but no significant difference in SA. We discuss future research directions and recommend potential pedagogical augmentation.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to communicate and share experiences with stakeholders on how the sustainability threats and challenges associated with managing Lake Kariba and the Kariba Dam wall are being managed by the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA).Design/methodology/approachThe case study area is Lake Kariba and Kariba Dam wall located in the mid‐Zambezi river basin. The data and information for the case study is from ZRAs own records.FindingsThe case study concludes that the threats and challenges so far experienced have been mitigated adequately with management programmes and tools having been put in place. However, a lot still needs to be done to improve the socio‐economic living conditions of the displaced Tonga/Korekore people.Originality/valueLake Kariba was created in the late 1950s to provide water primarily for hydro‐power production. However, this water resource now serves many users and has its sustainability threats; invasive weeds, water pollution, cyclic drought and flood events, the competing uses and multiple legislative provisions. The Kariba Dam wall, as an engineering structure, has its own sustainability challenges; effects of alkaline aggregate reaction, the spillway plunge pool stability and the general ageing of the dam structure. The Tonga/Korekore people, who were displaced on both banks of the Zambezi River when Kariba Dam was built, still feel short‐changed. Stakeholders will be able to associate and relate to similar threats, challenges and experiences and use the management solutions being applied at Kariba. The opinions and conclusions drawn in this case study are those of the author.

Związki między polityką i kulturą popularną są długotrwałe i różnorodne, choć tradycja ich naukowego badania sięga ostatnich kilkunastu lat. Zależności te badać można z dwóch perspektyw: wykorzystania elementów kultury popularnej przez polityków do osiągania ich celów, ale również obrazowania przez kulturę popularną polityki. Artykuł wpisuje się w drugą z tych perspektyw, dotyczy bowiem telewizyjnego serialu politycznego będącego jednym z elementów politicotainment, czyli zjawiska reprezentacji i negocjowania polityki w gatunkach rozrywkowych. Seriale telewizyjne zwykle nie stanowią udramatyzowanej relacji z wydarzeń rzeczywistych, jednak w dużym stopniu są wypadkową obserwacji i doświadczeń ich twórców, których inspiracją są prawdziwe sytuacje i postaci. W artykule przedstawione są typologie filmów i seriali politycznych, omówione sposoby prezentowania polityki w politycznej fikcji fabularnej, a także wskazane przyczyny popularności niektórych z nich. Dla zobrazowania złożoności analizowanego fenomenu posłużono się dwoma popularnymi serialami politycznymi: "House of Cards" i "Borgen", które w odmienny sposób przedstawiają świat polityki.

PurposeThis paper has the purpose of introducing the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Wine Business Research after the re‐launch from the International Journal of Wine Marketing including rationale, scope, goals, and objectives.Design/methodology/approachThe paper provides a rationale for a journal such as IJWBR. It starts by outlining the global wine business as a complex and fruitful field to study, describes some streams of research, and identifies issues for future studies as potential further contributions to this journal.FindingsThere is a critical need for an outlet that provides an overview on current issues and topics in the wine business, promotes high quality research on all aspects related to managing wine and related businesses, and is accessible to both academics and the global wine trade.Originality/valueThis paper is essential for current and prospective readers of the journal and those who consider submitting to IJWBR.

As the world moves towards the Anthropocene, it becomes increasingly important to understand how the natural environment shapes innovation, industry dynamics, and sustainability challenges. We suggest that studying innovation in natural resource based industries yields important insights. Despite the importance of innovation in and transformation of natural resource based industries for development and sustainability, the issue has received limited scholarly attention. To advance our thinking about innovation in these industries, we explore and elaborate on the notion of ‘natural resource knowledge idiosyncrasy’ which describes how heterogeneity of natural environments often generates a need for unique innovations that require development and application of in situ knowledge. We draw on theories of knowledge stickiness and user-driven innovation to conceptualize natural resource knowledge idiosyncrasy. We qualify and elaborate that conceptualization through a review of case studies. On that basis we discuss implications for innovation policy, sustainability challenges, and further research.

Contents: Preface PART I: RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE: CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS AND PRACTICAL REALITIES 1. Towards a Framework of Responsible Leadership and Governance Jonathan P. Doh and Stephen A. Stumpf 2. Strategic Leadership: Strategy, Resources, Ethics and Succession Michael A. Hitt, R. Duane Ireland and Glenn W. Rowe 3. What Leaders and their Organizations Can Do to Develop Ethical Leaders Robert M. Fulmer 4. The Leadership Challenge: Building Resilient Corporate Reputations Charles J. Fombrun PART II: RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE: INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVES 5. Leadership: Making Responsible Decisions Michael Useem 6. Developing Strategies and Skills for Responsible Leadership Kim Cameron and Arran Caza 7. Leadership and the Social Construction of Charisma Rakesh Khurana 8. Foundations of Responsible Leadership: From Self-Insight to Integrity and Altruism John Alexander and Meena Wilson PART III: RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE: ETHICS, SOCIAL IMPACT AND THE GLOBAL COMMON GOOD 9. Integrating Leadership with Ethics: Is Good Leadership Contrary to Human Nature? Joanne B. Ciulla 10. Corporate Responsibility, Accountability and Stakeholder Relationships: Will Voluntary Action Suffice? Sandra Waddock 11. The Influence of CEO Transformational Leadership on Firm-Level Commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility David A. Waldman and Donald Siegel 12. Is There Free Will in Business? Leadership and Social Impact Management Mary C. Gentile PART IV: RESPONSIBLE GOVERNANCE IN CORPORATIONS AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES FIRMS 13. Management, Governance and Corporate Responsibility Shawn D. Howton, Shelly W. Howton and Victoria B. McWilliams 14. Corporate Governance Reform: Global, North American and European Trends Christine Mallin 15. Management and Governance of Professional Services Firms Kevin D. Clark, Jonathan P. Doh and Stephen A. Stumpf PART V: RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE: INTERNATIONAL, CROSS-CULTURAL AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES 16. Responsible Leadership: A Cross-Cultural Perspective Sonja A. Sackmann 17. Comparative Models of Corporate Governance: A Sociocultural Perspective Andre A. Pekerti 18. Responsible Leadership and Governance in a Global Context: Insights from the GLOBE Study Narda R. Quigley, Mary Sully de Luque and Robert J. House 19. Responsible Leadership and Governance in Global Business: The Role of Business Education Ernest J. Scalberg Index