Sustainability and OR keynote for YOR18 (OR society) 2013

Dr. Miles Weaver,

Andrea Bonfiglioli

School of Management,

Edinburgh Napier University,

E: [email protected]

T: @DrMilesWeaver

YOR18 KEYNOTE

Embedding Sustainability into Strategy: Assessing the OR Society Contribution

Presentation Outline

… Getting here Later today …

• Invitation to participate in a round-table discussion on ‘Embedding Sustainability: An OR Society Perspective’

• Led by Dr. Joao Quariguasi Frota Net, Manchester University

• Establishing a ‘Sustainability and OR’ project team for YOR18 and beyond …

• What is the ‘sustainability’ challenge? How might ‘Sustainability’ be defined?

• What contributions have been made in ORS journals in response to this challenge? During this stream?

• What implications can be drawn ‘towards a ‘call for action’ by the ORS community?

Today we ask ….

What responses have been made in

Operations Research Society (ORS) journals on the sustainability challenge?

OR for Sustainability team

• Andrea Bonfiglioli, Edinburgh Napier University

• Dr. Joao Quariguasi Frota Net, Manchester University

• Altea Lorenzo Aribas, Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland

• Dr. Miles Weaver, Edinburgh Napier University

… Before we doLondon 2012 opening ceremony showed us ….

London Olympics said a lot about our past …

London Olympics said a lot about our past …

Plotted some grand challenges faced …

Most notably …

On the pursuit of growth ….

We began to question the role of business in society ….

… further social change

…. We questioned ourselves and our social norms

Used the past to hint at our future …

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears, and sometime voices,That if I then had wak'd after long sleep,Will make me sleep again, and then in dreaming,The clouds methought would open and show richesReady to drop upon me, that when I wak'd,I cried to dream again. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, III.ii.135-43

And more recently ….

But now … today?

… the greatest of a lifetime

Today’s ‘grand’ challenges …

“For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century”.

– Barack Obama Victory Speech (2008)

"Increasingly, the world around us looks as if we hated it.“

 - Alan Watts

Sketching today’s canvas:

• We are off on a safari, get your binoculars ready.

• Write down three animals and what they may represent on the sustainability debate

On canvas:The sustainability debate

Business and SocietyEmbedding Sustainability

into Practice

Business and Society

Q. What is the role of business in society?

“the business of business is business”

– To increase profits as long as it stays within the rules of the game (no deception or fraud) (Freidman, 1962)

= Ought to be little consideration beyond profit and shareholder return

Or

2. Prospects for social responsibility and for business to play a critical and positive role in society

= Business must consider it’s responsibility in society

Embedding sustainability into practice

Q. Why, what, how can business embed sustainability into strategy, operations and supply?

– Source of business opportunity (Ghobidian et al., 1995)

• Cost e.g. eliminate waste• Quality e.g. underpins trust

– ‘The next big …’ competitive advantage? (Laszlo and Zhexembayeva, 2011)

Corporate Responsibility: the emerging agenda

The UN Global Compact makes this explicit:

• Never before has there been a greater alignment between the objectives of the international community and those of the business world. Common goals, such as building markets, combating corruption, safeguarding the environment and ensuring social inclusion, have resulted in unprecedented partnerships and openness between business, governments, civil society, labour and the United Nations’.

Catalysts for change

Recent sustainability (and governance) failures

Recent sustainability (and governance) failures

Not all so bad …

M&S: Response to this challenge

Who is following suit?

“To be the worlds most sustainable major retailer by 2015”

“But we can only make that happen with your continued support”

M&S Plan A

Defining sustainability

“meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” •

(Sanders, 2012)

OrganisationInputs Outputs

All issues involved in resource consumption

All issues involved with pollutant emissions

Assessing impacts along the value chain

Laszlo (2008)

Corporate responsibility to sustainability (I)

• Research has tended to focus on ‘green’ issues– Cleaner production, pollution prevention, pollution control, minimisation of resource

usage, eco-design and others (Glavic and Lukman, 2007)

• Different cultural and economic influences on the definition (Dahlsrud, 2006 – reviewed 37 definitions)

• Common in the definition is philanthropic responsibilities: ethical, legal and economical (Caroll, 1991) with an emphasis on an organisation obligation to constituent organisations other than shareholders – ‘stakeholder theory’ as well as the natural environment

• Understand environmental ‘harms’/ ‘impacts’ and ‘contributions’ made by stakeholders to successful business operations

Corporate responsibility to sustainability (II)

• Triple bottom line approach (Elkington, 1998)

• Sustainable development– Development that meets the

needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland Commission for the United Nations, 1987)

Sustainability and competitive advantage• ‘few’ or ‘many’?

• The ‘next de facto standard’ – a ‘threshold capability’?

Hart (2005) proposed:

– One of the most important drivers of new resources and capability development for firms will be the constraints and challenges posed by the natural environment

– Competitive advantage, is to be rooted in capabilities that facilitate environmentally sustainable activity

– It appears inevitable that business (markets) will be constrained by and dependent upon ecosystems (nature).

Assessing OR society response to the sustainability challenge

What responses have been made in ORS publications on the sustainability challenge to date?

• Draw on some comparisons with:– systems/OR research in general (to

be extended)– Research in supply chain

management journals (See Ashby et al., 2012)

– Stream contributions

No. of papers per journal title using pre-defined search terms

Journal Title ABS ranking (2010)No. of papers

All termsSupply chain

relatedEuropean Journal of Information Systems

3 0 0

Health Systems (launched in 2012) 0 0

Journal of Simulation - 0 0

Journal of the Operational Research Society

3 26 15

Knowledge Management Research & Practice

1 1 1

OR Insight 1 2 0Total N/A 29 16

No. of OR society reviewed papers per year (all search terms)

19901991199219931994199519961997199819992000200120022003200420052006200720082009201020112012

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Search terms

Boundary Search terms

No of papers in operations and supply journals

noted in Ashby et al., (2012)

No of papers in IAOR

No of papers in OR society

specific journals

Organisational

Sustainability16

60 8sustainable development* 33 4Corporate social responsibility 8 2 0Social sustainability 7 4 0Life cycle analysis (LCA) 3 8 1

Supply

Green supply chains 35 15 1Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM)

14 1 0

Closed loop supply chains 7 23 1Integrated supply chain 1 10 0

* The term sustainable development was searched with sustainability by Ashby et al., (2012). For the purposes of this review the terms are split to ensure that no papers are omitted from the search.

Occurrences in the ORS literature per sustainability dimension

  N° Paper 1 2 3   4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 TOTAL

Dimensions

Environmental / green • •  • • •    • •  • • • • 11

Social • •   •  •  • • • •  • •   • 11

Economic   •  •    • •    •   • • • 8

Governance         •      • •   •      • 5

Snapshots (all OR ABS ranked journals):Tools discussed in 172 papers …

No. of OR ABS ranked journals reviewed papers per year (all search terms)

Making connections: Sustainability and OR

• OR have been slow to define and claim a strategic role for OR (Bell, 1998). – May help explain lack of research on sustainability?– Community should discuss OR as a strategic asset– Exciting future to provide a vision

• OR/MS retains the ability to do high stake work and capable of high level interventions (Lane, 2010)

• Both do not cite the sustainability challenge

• Just as ‘strategic OR’ is not oxymoronic, same is true for ‘sustainability and OR’

Towards a call for action• White et al., (2009) the ‘OR’ label appears to have a low profile in the

discourse and appropriate methodologies and methods in sustainability

• Midgley and Reynolds (2004) suggested an agenda for systems/OR research– OR has considerable scope to address to address sustainability issues, citing three

essential characteristics of OR:• OR has a systems orientation | boundary setting – who ‘controls’ / ‘governs’ a supply

chain? How are ‘relationships’ forged and managed?• Being of an interdisciplinary nature • Being explicitly purposeful

• Lack of concentration of research activity (i.e. conference streams, special interest group, special issues in OR journals) except narrower streams (e.g. greening)

Implications for the OR community• Lane (2010) argues, so do we, that OR research has considerable

advantages to deal with strategic issues and grand challenges

“There is no limit, just give me somewhere to stand, and I shall move the Earth”

Drachmann (1958, p. 281)

… in terms of sustainability?

• across the EESG dimensions• Use of OR methodologies, methods and tools

Opportunity for future research activity

Systematic literature review and survey of ORS members

– How has sustainability been represented in OR/systems research to date?

– What are the key similarities and differences in focus and findings/outputs?

– What research methodologies, OR/systems methods and tools have been used, which dominate and why?

– What contribution can the OR community offer in the future?

I came to your door as a stranger,

I lived in your house as a guest,

I leave your door as a friend,• My earth

Rabindranath Tagore, - 1st non-European to be awarded a Nobel prize for literature in 1913,

- Bengali poet, novelist, musician, playwright.

• Towards a ‘Call for action’ – Participate in today round-table discussion to find out more.

Any questions?