Environmental Resource Scarcity Research Articles

CEO regulatory focus and environmental resource scarcity on employee downsizing

PurposeThis study aims to address the question of why managers make different decisions in employee downsizing when their firms face external threats. Our research intends to shed light on whether and how CEOs' cognition (motivational attributes associated with regulatory focus) influences their decision-making and firms’ strategic actions on downsizing under high resource scarcity in the industry environment.Design/methodology/approachWe used a longitudinal panel of 5,544 firm-year observations of US firms from 2003 to 2015 to test our conceptual model. The data was obtained from various sources, including corporate earnings call transcripts and archival databases. We used panel logistic regressions with both fixed and random effects in our research design.FindingsOur results suggest that CEOs' motivational attributes could influence their employee downsizing decisions in response to external threats. We find that CEOs who are more promotion-focused (a stronger drive towards achieving ideals) are less likely to lay off employees during high resource scarcity. Conversely, CEOs with a higher prevention focus (a greater concern for security) do not have a meaningful impact on employee downsizing during periods of external resource scarcity.Originality/valuePrevious research has argued that a significant external threat would diminish individuals' impact on firm strategies and outcomes. Our findings challenge this idea, indicating that CEOs with a stronger drive towards achieving ideals are less inclined to lay off employees when resources are scarce in the environment. This study contributes to behavioral strategy research by providing new insights into how upper echelons’ cognition can influence their decision-making and firms’ employee downsizing.

Nudging Sustainable Development: Reviewing Energy Transition and Economic Development

Recently, as more countries and regions have embarked on the path of energy transition, the speed and manner of economic development have been influenced in varying degrees. However, the relationship between energy transition and economic development remains unclear, as research conclusions are inconsistent. The aim of this study is to systematically examine the relationship between energy transition and economic development using the literature review approach. This study selected 102 studies from Scopus that explicitly address energy transition and economic development as our final sample for this investigation, aiming to clarify the current research status on factors, barriers, and pathways of energy transition, and discuss related theories about energy transition. The results indicate a significant increase in research volume on this topic over the past four years, with nearly half of the studies focusing on cross-regional countries or economic entities. The sampled literature reveals various relationships between economic development and energy transition, including one-way promotion, one-way inhibition, bidirectional causality, and ineffectiveness. Factors influencing energy transition include technology, financial support, environmental governance, human capital, taxation, rents, and foreign direct investment (FDI). The main obstacles to energy transition lie in the scarcity of environmental resources, path dependence, and uneven development. Based on these research findings, this study discusses prospects and potential directions for future studies.

Future Temporal Focus and Proenvironmental Behavior: A Trait Activation Perspective

Environmental protection is not only a social dilemma, it is also a temporal dilemma influencing the survival of all human beings. Drawing from the temporal focus literature, we proposed that individuals with a stronger (vs. weaker) future temporal focus would engage in more proenvironmental behaviors via greater environmental commitment. Integrating trait activation theory, we further proposed that environmental resource scarcity would strengthen the process we had already proposed. We tested our proposals with 591 university students in Eastern China, who completed an anonymous survey. The data were collected in three waves with a 2-week interval between each wave. A structural equation model was applied to test the hypotheses. Future temporal focus significantly influenced participants' proenvironmental behavior via their environmental commitment, and the positive influence was stronger when the environmental resource was scarce. This study enriches the environmental protection literature by providing a temporal framework. The theoretical and practical implications of proenvironmental behavior are discussed.

Maya Ta Maya Ho (Love is Love): A Qualitative Study on LGBTQI+ Experiences in Hospice & Palliative Care in Nepal.

LGBTQI+ disparities in hospice and palliative care have been vastly underrecognized in medical practice and research. This may result in LGBTQI+ community members distrusting health care professionals, avoiding encounters due to fears of discrimination or mistreatment, and seldom disclosing their identities to health care professionals. LGBTQI+ patients often lack familial emotional and caregiver support, a central theme of hospice and palliative care - for example, older LGBTQI+ people are twice as likely as cisgender heterosexual people to live alone and four times as likely to not have children. LGBTQI+ populations are also highly intersectional; therefore, members may be further stigmatized. Blue Diamond Society is a non-governmental organization in Nepal that specializes in LGBTQI+ advocacy and patient care. Our main objective in this study was to explore Nepali LGBTQI+ patients' experiences in hospice and palliative care. 29 interviews were conducted with patients, health care professionals, family members, and administrators involved with Blue Diamond Society (BDS), a Nepali NGO that serves Nepal's LGBTQI+ community. Questions were developed based on open-ended questioning to abstract relevant life and health history information pertaining to experiences with BDS and palliative care. These interviews were translated and transcribed verbatim. Qualitative Content analysis was conducted to identify prevalent themes. Four themes were identified: Fear of Dying without Family; Understanding Oneself and Sense of Community; Patient as Advocate; and Intersectionality and Eliminating Reductionism. This study elucidated themes inherent to the experiences of LGBTQI+ Nepali people receiving palliative and hospice care, ultimately describing the unique needs of LGBTQI+ Nepali patients in palliative and hospice care settings. In doing so, this study presents an intersectional focus on palliative and hospice care, elaborating on challenges specific to a deeply marginalized community that remains underrepresented in academia. Findings from this study describe an expanded notion of "palliation" to embody "whole-person care," that is, the palliation of social and structural pain, in addition to the more traditional conceptions of palliation as purely physical, emotional, and/or spiritual. This study also identified the importance of acknowledging and affirming the intersectional marginalization at which LGBTQI+ Nepalis live, ranging from experiences with socioeconomic status, family and communal conflict, ethnicity, race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, and environmental resource scarcity. In further understanding and improving upon intersectional LGBTQI+ cultural humility, this study provides opportunities for further research on cross-cultural LGBTQI+ patient needs in hospice and palliative care in a variety of resource settings.

Environmental Resource Scarcity and Peaceful Co-existence between Refugees and Host Communities in Uganda

Environmental Resource Scarcity and Peaceful Co-existence between Refugees and Host Communities in Uganda

Determinants of Farmers’ Intention of Straw Recycling: A Comparison Analysis Based on Different Pro-Environmental Publicity Modes

Promoting the intention of farmers to participate in straw recycling is an effective way to alleviate the contradiction between environmental pollution, scarcity of environmental resources, and sustainable development. In this study, social trust and value perception were integrated into the theory of planned behavior to build a theoretical framework of farmers’ intention to participate in straw recycling, considering the influences of three different pro-environmental publicity modes. A field investigation was used to collect research data in six sample villages. Finally, 761 valid questionnaires were collected, and partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied to test the research hypotheses. The results showed that the influence of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavior control, value perception, and social trust on farmers’ straw recycling intentions was different among different pro-environmental publicity modes. Among the three pro-environmental publicity modes, the concentrated pro-environmental publicity mode has the best effect of promoting straw recycling intentions among farmers. This study introduces some targeted suggestions on the aspects of pro-environmental publicity theory and management practice based on the above research results.

Narratives of environmental munificence of 3PL firms on the relationship between dynamic capabilities, strategic management and organizational performance

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how the mediating effect of strategic management impacts the relationship between dynamic capabilities and firm performance concerning environmental munificence in 3rd party logistics (3PL) firms operating in Turkey.Design/methodology/approachVariance-based structural equation modeling algorithm and correlation analysis were applied to survey data obtained from (n = 482) a top manager from 3PL companies.FindingsResults revealed that dynamic capabilities were a strong predictor for organizational performance, environmental munificence also emerges as a key predictor for dynamic capabilities and strategic management, and strategic management fully mediates the link between dynamic capabilities and organizational performance, suggesting that they function as substitutes in affecting performance outcomes.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper provides empirical evidence of the relationship between the dynamic capability adaptation, strategic management, environment and performance of 3PL firms. As a limitation, the results are based on survey research with a limited sample size.Practical implicationsOrganizations should manage not only dynamism but also the scarcity of environmental resources found to be significant on both dynamic capabilities and strategic management. Additionally, in the logistics sector, managers should focus on the big picture while they empower and lead capable followers to transform this strategic view into operational-level changes.Originality/valueDepending on the relationships between constructs, studying environmental munificence is a different topic than the dynamic environment concept in the effectiveness of dynamic capabilities of 3PL firms. As well as dynamic capabilities at the level of individual and strategic management relationship on organization performance are confirmed.

A review of water-forest-energy-food security nexus data and assessment of studies in East Africa

The increasing scarcity of environmental resources and competition among forest, water, food and energy coupled with the ever-growing population and climate change pose a serious threat to natural ecosystems. In an effort to provide an integrated approach towards forest conservation as well as energy, water and food security within the broader context of climate change and variability, this study sought to undertake a literature and data review to provide a critical analysis and synthesis of the baseline and trends of the forest- water-food- energy security nexus in East Africa. The study adopted a nexus-based performance index approach to evaluate the multi-directional impacts of forest, food, water and energy resource use and conservation. The study revealed an urgent need of a holistic approach to harness the forest-water-food-energy security nexus for the realization of the sustainable development goals. It also stresses the need for emphasis on improving food and energy availability, access to water, electricity and clean fuels, and water sustainability. The study also revealed that the region is suffering from water scarcity due to the low level of utilization of available fresh water resources for irrigated agriculture. This is further compounded by inadequate distributions of rainfall and the changing climatic impacts on the hydrological regimes in the region, thus necessitating improvements in water governance. The region was also found to be severely food insecure and a net importer of food due to the low level of utilization of available fresh water resources for irrigated agriculture and inadequate water governance. Overall, the study revealed the high interdependence, synergies and tradeoffs between the components that were considered separately hence the need for consideration of nexus approach as a priority. Policy recommendations are also highlighted to address the challenges hindering sustainable forest, water, food, and energy development and management in the region.

An extension of Schelling's segregation model: Modeling the impact of individuals’ intolerance in the presence of resource scarcity

Individuals often form their identity based on their membership in a group and may exhibit a bias towards favoring members of the in-group (Greenwald and Pettigrew, 2014). When resources are plentiful, individuals are more likely to be tolerant of members of out-group sharing the resources. However, when there is a scarcity of resources, the resource stress could lead to a negative attitude towards members of the out-group as sharing of resources may be viewed as a zero-sum game. Schelling's spatial proximity model (Schelling, 1971; Schelling, 1978) shows how residential segregation emerges even when households only have a slight preference for members of their in-group. The original formulation by Schelling as well as many of its extensions have assumed that the amount of space available to agents to relocate was fixed. Agents' preference for members of the in-group also had been assumed to be invariant during the simulation run. This paper presents an extension of Schelling's model by relaxing these two assumptions to focus on the context of growing scarcity of environmental resources (e.g. habitable land) and the resulting decline in the tolerance for members of the out-group. Drawing upon theories in social psychology, it was assumed that declining resources lead to lower tolerance for members of the out-group as this scarce resource had to be shared. An agent-based simulation examined the impact of varying the degree of intolerance towards members of the out-group on the level of segregation in an artificial society. Several what-if scenarios were analyzed where the availability of an environmental resource (habitable land) declined over time. It was observed that with a high degree of intolerance towards members of the out-group, the degree of segregation in an artificial society while increasing initially became unsustainable and the highly segregated clusters eventually disintegrated.

外部环境资源短缺对员工薪酬奖励偏好的影响与机制

外部环境资源短缺对员工薪酬奖励偏好的影响与机制

A Model of Vegetation Cover in Conditions of Resource Scarcity: Fairy Rings in Namibia

A mosaic of barren grounds (bars) and areas covered by vegetation often forms in grassy or shrubby communities in conditions of scarcity of environmental resources (e.g., water). Such landscapes have been named “two-phase mosaics”; this term emphasizes the discreteness of vegetation cover units. Fairy rings (FRs) are an example of such structures. There are two sets of competing hypotheses on the reasons behind FR formation: insect activity and self-organization. One of the main arguments against the second set of hypotheses is their inability to explain the FR life cycle: their emergence, ripening, maturation, and disappearance (death). The article proposes a simple cellular-automaton model of the vegetation cover formation. The model imitates the scarcity of resources (water and ash constituents) and generates different variants of the two-phase mosaic. The results depend on two parameters: limitation of resource inflow and plant growth rate. Sixteen percent of combinations of these parameters result in the formation of structures similar to FRs. The model reproduces not only the vegetation distribution pattern observed in the nature but also individual FR life cycles that are consistent with field descriptions. Thus, the model removes the main objection to self-organization as the main mechanism of FR formation.

A measure of the net value of ecosystem services and the evaluation of Beijing Plain Afforestation Project

Landscapes generate a wide range of valuable ecosystem services, and valuation of these services provides support for land-use decisions. The most common approach to identifying these tradeoffs is called “payment for ecosystem services” (PES), and when this approach is carefully applied, it has the potential to enhance how ecosystem services are used and improve their protection by signaling the development of a scarcity of environmental resources. However, this approach often ignores the opportunity costs of these services, thereby making the net benefit of the ecosystem services and their responses to land-use change unclear. Therefore, there must be a fuller accounting for both the costs and the benefits of various alternatives, and such an accounting must become the basis for developing policy, reaching ethical decisions, and taking appropriate actions. Through the evaluation of net value of ecosystem services, we can compare the maximum net benefits of alternative land uses, thereby providing basis for decision-making during land use planning, industrial and agricultural programs and ecological and environmental restoration programs as well as socioeconomic and national economic development planning.

Global economic crises, environmental-resource scarcity and wealth concentration

Three new structural factors underlie the most recent global crisis: (i) the fact that several high-population countries have joined the growth process; (ii) the increasing scarcity of environmental and certain natural resources; and (iii) the extraordinary concentration of income and wealth that has occurred in the advanced economies over the last two decades. These structural changes have significantly strengthened the links between global growth and commodity demand; they have made world commodity supply increasingly inelastic, and have rendered economic growth more dependent on easy monetary and financial policies. The combination of these factors could make the world economy highly crisis-prone and may hinder recovery from the current one.

On the Relation between Discounting of Climate Change and Edgeworth-Pareto Substitutability

Abstract To justify substantial carbon emission reductions, recent literature on cost-benefit analysis of climate change suggests discounting environmental quality at a lower discount rate than the standard consumption discount rate. Recent literature also shows that a theoretical foundation for such a lower environmental discount rate requires rising willingness-to-pay for environmental quality (WTP). A widely believed better alternative is however to adjust instead future environmental benefits for rising WTP and to discount those benefits at the consumption discount rate. According to this latter approach, rising WTP is usually assumed not to change the consumption discount rate itself. Assuming environmental resource scarcity, the present paper shows that an unchanged consumption discount rate is however, by and large, only an appropriate assumption in the knife-edge case in which environmental quality and goods consumption are neither substitutes nor complements in the Edgeworth-Pareto sense (substitutes, respectively, complements in the Edgeworth-Pareto sense implies the marginal utility of goods consumption to be decreasing, respectively, increasing in environmental quality).

On the Relation Between Discounting of Climate Change and Edgeworth-Pareto Substitutability

To justify substantial carbon emission reductions, recent literature on cost-benefit analysis of climate change suggests discounting environmental quality at a lower discount rate than the standard consumption discount rate. Recent literature also shows that to theoretically justify such an environmental discount rate to be lower than the consumption discount rate requires rising willingness-to-pay for environmental quality (WTP). A prominent better alternative is however to adjust instead future environmental benefits for rising WTP and to discount those benefits at the consumption discount rate. According to this latter approach, rising WTP is usually assumed not to change the consumption discount rate itself. Assuming environmental resource scarcity, the present paper shows that an unchanged consumption discount rate is however, by and large, only an appropriate assumption in the knife-edge case in which environmental quality and goods consumption are neither substitutes nor complements in the Edgeworth-Pareto sense (substitutes, respectively, complements in the Edgeworth-Pareto sense implies the marginal utility of goods consumption to be decreasing, respectively, increasing in environmental quality).

Issues of environmental compliance in developing countries

Environmental laws define the scarcity of environmental resources as they affect the factor endowment of a country and therefore its position in the international division of labour. There is now also a general agreement that applying the "polluter pays" principle should solve environmental problems. As the burden of abatement increases, as measured by the ratio of abatement expenditure to sales, there is definitely an incentive for firms to either invest in cleaner technology or more efficient abatement technology. There is also evidence that taxes and charges, designed to internalise externalities, can actually affect trade. It is interesting to know if the developing countries face particular market access problems in the face of stringent environmental standards and regulations. While it is true that stringent measures impose market access restrictions and cause limitations on competitiveness, this is much more widely felt by the developing countries because of lack of infrastructure and monitoring facilities, limited technology choices, inadequate access to environment-friendly raw materials, lack of complete information, presence of small-scale exporters and emergence of environmental standards in sectors of export interest to developing countries. The small and medium enterprises often divert sales either to the domestic market or to external markets where environmental requirements are less stringent, in order to save on their costs. In developing countries, 80% of the tanning industry is comprised of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) processing raw to semi-finished leather, usually less than 2 tons per day. In Europe and other developed countries the SMEs in the leather sector have vanished due to strict environmental legislation and this will likely occur in developing countries also. The environmental legislation has not always been practical, either because the laws are too ambitious or unrealistic in certain parameters, or because they have lacked effective instrumentation and institutional support. Some environmental regulations have not succeeded as they do not match the technical requirements and economic reality of the country or region, or because they do not take the institutional capabilities of the society that has to implement them into consideration. For the survival and sustenance of the SMEs in the leather industry, it may be a viable alternative to carry out the tanning process in a decentralized fashion such that the raw to semi-finished process is carried out in the large scale sector while the semi-finished to finished process could either be reserved or open to competition as per the countries' requirements. But the issue of concern is whether it is fair that the raw to semi-finished tanning process, containing 70% of the pollution discharge should be undertaken by developing countries alone, especially if it is at the cost of their survival! However, the game analysed in the paper reveals that tanning units in developing countries would prefer to comply with the regulations and stay in the industry, the alternatives being to collude or to compete!

Planning, Design, and Management of Hazardous Waste Disposal by Environmental Systems Engineering Approach

In the past century, the natural environment has provided for our development needs in support of rapid industrialization and urbanization. As the world’s population grows over time, human beings have progressively made greater demands on the environment through an increase in technology capacity, energy demand, international trade, and social complexity. To explore the ultimate limitation of nature, an analysis of the environment in terms of the physical, chemical, and biological processes, and the relationship of these processes as well as the interactions between them and human society is essential. While certain facets of the various processes may be overlooked in the analysis, the seamless integration of them after respective analysis can be even more complicated and difficult to model. The fragmented analytical effort by accounting for individual components separately is no longer acceptable in decision analysis. Recent challenges in decision making require development of a radically different approach for assessing management options by using various tools and methodologies that can be broadly applied for conducting integrated assessments in conjunction with the embedded complexities of interest. Such integration of scientific research into policy formulation requires covering not only pertinent quantitative costbenefit data but also relevant risk information and social response. While state-of-the-science models characterizing the transport of contaminants in different environmental compartments are indeed necessary to rigorously understand the long-term dynamics of pollutant behavior, they may be of limited value in immediate policy planning and regulatory studies. Hazardous, toxic, and radioactive waste management frequently involves tremendous managerial efforts in dealing with social, economic, environmental, and ecological impacts when making disposal options safe, cost-effective, risk-informed, and consensus-oriented. Irrespective of the adopted methodologies, policy formulation with respect to planning, design, and management of waste disposal requires several critical decisions that eventually direct the path, progress, and success of such endeavors. However, a number of important conceptual ideas in the area of systems science and systems engineering have emerged when we consider the interactions between living systems and the nonliving environment in making critical decisions with respect to waste disposal. The system-based approach enables us to investigate the complex interactions fundamental to the coevolution of engineered and natural systems. Recent advances in environmental systems engineering lean toward making effective the search for the sustainable development strategy, via integrative efforts, that could intimately link domain knowledge with the envisioned system-based approach as the availability and scarcity of environmental resources become critical. Nevertheless, capturing the social, economic, ecological, and environmental objectives into a

Interorganizational cooperation in community mental health: a resource-based explanation of referrals and case coordination.

Using data collected from mental health services delivery systems in 4 cities, this study examines the relationship between resource acquisition, resource utilization, and 3 types of cooperative, client-based interorganizational relationships: referrals received, referrals sent, and case coordination. Relationships were first explored for all 138 agencies in all 4 systems and then under conditions of environmental resource scarcity versus munificence, as measured by per capital mental health spending by the state. Results generally supported the 3 hypotheses proposed but were strongest for case coordination and for systems embedded in resource-scarce environments. Implications of the results for policy and research are discussed as they pertain to building a better understanding of conditions conducive to cooperation among health and human service agencies that provide community-based services to the severely mentally ill and other client groups with long-term needs.