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1 – 10 of over 5000The issue of energy efficiency is becoming increasingly prevalent globally due to factors such as the expansion of the population, economic growth and excessive consumption that…
Abstract
Purpose
The issue of energy efficiency is becoming increasingly prevalent globally due to factors such as the expansion of the population, economic growth and excessive consumption that is not sustainable in the long run. Additionally, healthcare facilities and hospitals are facing challenges as their operational costs continue to rise. The research aim is to develop strategic frameworks for managing green hospitals, towards energy efficiency and corporate governance in hospitals and healthcare facilities.
Design/methodology/approach
This research employs a qualitative case study approach, with a sample of ten hospitals examined through interviews with senior management, executives and healthcare facilities managers. Relevant data was also collected from literature and analysed through critical appraisal and content analysis. The research methodology is based on the use of grounded theory research methodologies to build theories from case studies.
Findings
The research developed three integrated conceptual strategic frameworks for managing hospitals and healthcare facilities towards energy efficiency, green hospital initiatives and corporate governance. The research also outlined the concepts of green hospitals and energy efficiency management systems and best practices based on the conclusions drawn from the investigated case studies.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited to the initiatives and experiences of the healthcare facilities studied in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Originality/value
The research findings, conclusions, recommendations and proposed frameworks and concepts contribute significantly to the existing body of knowledge. This research also provides recommendations for hospital managers and policymakers on how to effectively implement and manage energy efficiency initiatives in healthcare facilities.
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Derya Çevi̇k Taşdemi̇r, Güfte Caner Akin and Yakup Durmaz
The aim of this study is to reveal the effects of “safety climate” on “productive organizational energy”, based on the idea that higher energy and productivity will be seen in…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this study is to reveal the effects of “safety climate” on “productive organizational energy”, based on the idea that higher energy and productivity will be seen in employees with the improved safety climate in the working environment.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, data were collected using an online questionnaire from 426 employees of small and medium-sized textile enterprises in the Organized Industrial Zone in the Turkish province of Gaziantep. The “easy sampling” method was applied, one of the sampling techniques not based on probability. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to examine the effects of the “Management's perspectives and rules” and “Colleagues and safety trainings” sub-dimensions of the safety climate on the “emotional”, “cognitive” and “behavioral” components of productive energy.
Findings
The findings showed that the safety climate in the workplace positively and significantly affects the productive organizational energy of employees. In addition, it was observed that the management's perspective and rules had a higher impact on productive organizational energy in attitudes towards the safety climate and productive energies of these employees compared to safety pieces of training.
Practical implications
First of all, the result of this study and the positive results that the safety climate in organizations might cause have been noted. It has been demonstrated that the productive energies of the employees will increase if the necessary safety climate is established in the enterprises. In addition, despite the importance attached to the safety training of the employees, as a result of the analysis, it has been determined that the management's perspective and rules (ß = 0.61; p < 0.01) have a higher positive effect on the productive energy of the employees. If these situations are considered by the managers, it is expected that the occupational health and safety management strategies created for the employees will contribute to the formation of positive behaviors in the employees.
Originality/value
The driving force of the present study is that, to our knowledge, there has been no research on this issue related to employees who are mentioned as a critical force in solving productivity and whose number is about 26 million in Turkey's population.
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Constantin Bratianu, Alexeis Garcia-Perez, Francesca Dal Mas and Denise Bedford
Sankaa Sepee and Azmeraw Ayehu Tesfahun
The use of energy efficient cookstoves (EECS) has been promoted for a long and considered as instrumental in the efforts to mitigate the multiple social, economic and…
Abstract
Purpose
The use of energy efficient cookstoves (EECS) has been promoted for a long and considered as instrumental in the efforts to mitigate the multiple social, economic and environmental consequences of traditional biomass cookstoves. Despite this, the adoption of EECS in pre-urban and rural Ethiopia is still very low. In response to this, the government of Ethiopia, in collaboration with international development organizations, implemented numerous initiatives aimed at improving the availability and use of EECS as part of the effort to support sustainable development. However, very little is known about the impact of the introduced EECS on improving the welfare of women. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to assess the impact of improved cookstoves projects on the welfare of women in Yaya Gullele district, Ethiopia.
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed research design was adopted to conduct the study. The quantitative data for the study were collected using a structured questionnaire by interviewing 388 randomly selected respondents. The data were analysed using both descriptive and inferential data analysis techniques, including the propensity score matching model using STATA.
Findings
Results of the study revealed that adoption of EECS has reduced fuel wood expense (124.65 Ethiopian Birr [ETB]/week), reduced five-year stove expense (404.67 ETB) and increased regular savings (116.58 ETB/month), which contributed for an increased annual income of participants (5,594.42 ETB). The result of the study also indicated that the use of EECS enabled the beneficiary women to reduce the amount of fuel wood use by 29.4 kg/week, which in turn reduced forest degradation and emission by 2.34 tons of CO2e/year/household. Besides, it reduced the drudgery on women in terms of reduced time to cook (53 min/day), reduced time to collect fuelwood and prepare food (3.95 h/week) and reduced frequency of fuelwood collection trips (3.42 trips/week). The study results, in general, indicated that the adoption of EECS improved the welfare of women in the study area, where the majority of women have been suffering from the burden of using traditional stoves and associated impacts for a long.
Practical implications
Energy is central to most of the development-related challenges and opportunities every country faces today. The result of the study implied that policies and strategies intended at improving the availability and use of EECS as part of the effort to support sustainable development need to consider integrating such context-referenced, locally manageable and affordable EECS into the clean developmental strategies of the country.
Originality/value
Insights from this study can support development practitioners and policymakers to make informed decisions regarding future interventions in the use of energy efficient that have the potential to several economic, social and environmental positive development outcomes.
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Chiara Bertolin and Filippo Berto
This article introduces the Special Issue on Sustainable Management of Heritage Buildings in long-term perspective.
Abstract
Purpose
This article introduces the Special Issue on Sustainable Management of Heritage Buildings in long-term perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
It starts by reviewing the gaps in knowledge and practice which led to the creation and implementation of the research project SyMBoL—Sustainable Management of Heritage Buildings in long-term perspective funded by the Norwegian Research Council over the 2018–2022 period. The SyMBoL project is the motivation at the base of this special issue.
Findings
The editorial paper briefly presents the main outcomes of SyMBoL. It then reviews the contributions to the Special Issue, focussing on the connection or differentiation with SyMBoL and on multidisciplinary findings that address some of the initial referred gaps.
Originality/value
The article shortly summarizes topics related to sustainable preservation of heritage buildings in time of reduced resources, energy crisis and impacts of natural hazards and global warming. Finally, it highlights future research directions targeted to overcome, or partially mitigate, the above-mentioned challenges, for example, taking advantage of no sestructive techniques interoperability, heritage building information modelling and digital twin models, and machine learning and risk assessment algorithms.
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Hannah Hammond, Rosie Meek and Emily Glorney
The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors which influence male prisoners’ motivation for, and engagement in, exercise and subsequent healthy behaviours.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors which influence male prisoners’ motivation for, and engagement in, exercise and subsequent healthy behaviours.
Design/methodology/approach
The first authors conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with male prisoners inside an English medium-security male prison. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, themes were identified using thematic analysis and a critical realist perspective applied to understand objective processes behind prisoners’ experiences and shared meanings of exercise and engaging in healthy behaviours in prison.
Findings
Emerging themes indicate that in the context of healthy behaviours male prisoners aspired to a masculine ideal that was characterised by a culture of either adaptive behaviours, or maladaptive behaviours. The former fostered an adaptive exercise culture which promoted psychological well-being through an autonomy-supportive environment, consequently internalising motivation and minimising perceived barriers to engaging in healthy behaviours. Conversely, a culture of maladaptive behaviours fostered a maladaptive exercise culture which led to negative psychological well-being, underpinned by external forms of motivation which emphasised barriers to engaging in healthy behaviours.
Practical implications
Findings emphasise the need for prisons to promote an internal perceived locus of control for male prisoners when engaging in healthy behaviours.
Originality/value
The authors adopt a rare interdisciplinary approach combining a psychological theory of motivation and criminological perspectives of prison culture to understand how best to minimise the impact of prisons as an institution on the psychological well-being of male prisoners.
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Edmond Wai-Ming Lam, Albert P.C. Chan, Timothy O. Olawumi, Irene Wong and Kayode Olatunji Kazeem
Sustainability has been the subject of several scientific investigations. Many researchers in the construction industry have also examined a range of sustainability-related…
Abstract
Purpose
Sustainability has been the subject of several scientific investigations. Many researchers in the construction industry have also examined a range of sustainability-related studies. However, few studies have thoroughly reviewed implementing sustainability concepts in high-rise residential buildings (HRRBs).
Design/methodology/approach
By adopting scientometrics and systematic review (SR), this study seeks to map out recent sustainability trends and concepts in the design, development and operation of HRRBs worldwide and in Hong Kong. With a focus on bibliographic records from the Web of Science (WoS) database, 1,395 journal articles from 2013 to 2022 were analysed. Furthermore, thirteen studies were systematically reviewed.
Findings
The SR indicated that sustainable practices in developing Hong Kong's HRRBs emphasised zero-carbon buildings, reduced energy usage and energy-efficient retrofitting. Likewise, terms such as BIM, urban density, life cycle assessment and system dynamics are strongly connected with clusters that include “residential buildings”, “high-rise buildings” and “high-rise residential buildings”. The study identified significant themes in establishing HRRBs by combining sustainable practices, emphasising urban governance and policy management, building performance and thermal comfort, energy and design optimisation, occupant behaviour and sensitivity analysis. Core sustainability ideas have improved resource management, air quality management and knowledge of user behaviour in HRRBs.
Originality/value
The study allows researchers and practitioners to explore future research directions in the built environment per the application of sustainable concepts in the development of HRRBs from design, construction and post-construction phases.
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In 2023, the Leadership Pulse project will have been running for two decades. Since the inception of the program, we have engaged thousands of leaders around the world to quickly…
Abstract
In 2023, the Leadership Pulse project will have been running for two decades. Since the inception of the program, we have engaged thousands of leaders around the world to quickly learn from them via short pulse surveys conducted multiple times per year. This chapter is the first overall discussion of what we learned during the last 20 years about leader energy, energy flow, predictors of energy, and outcomes of energy, which have been focused on individual and firm-level performance. Over the years, we learned that leaders are not immune to personal energy challenges; in fact, we find that their energy is continually tested by extreme demands within and outside their organizations. Also, we learned that there are solutions for helping leaders manage their energy better, and these do not have to be expensive, outsourced programs. In this chapter, we review key findings from the data and hope to help leaders continue learning to help themselves, their employees, customers, and the organizations they work in overall. I also will review three different interventions that we found to help leaders and employees work and stay at their best and enhance overall organizational goals and outcomes.
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Esra Kurul1 and Maurizio Sibilla
This document presents BasES, which is a tool kit disseminated as an open educational resource. BasES is focused on the topic of buildings-as-energy services, promoting the…
Abstract
This document presents BasES, which is a tool kit disseminated as an open educational resource. BasES is focused on the topic of buildings-as-energy services, promoting the knowledge integration to envisage buildings as components of future distributed renewable and interactive energy systems (DRIs). BasES will allow users of exploring and analysing DRIs' emergent properties at the local level, developing, and implementing the tool kit proposed. The specific objective concerns the use of the tool kit in the organisation of a technology support net (TSN) for buildings-as-a-service. TSN is composed of a multitude of actors, who often have different perspectives and scopes, but they are called to work collaboratively in order to establish work rules, requisite skills, work contents, standards and measures, culture and organisational patterns with regard to the emergent systems. Buildings-as-a-service is a completely new topic, and thus, an appropriate TSN is needed urgently. Our tool kit (i.e. Buildings-as-Energy-Services; BasES) will be a ground-breaking cognitive apparatus for involving stakeholders in knowledge transfer and integration processes. Thus, a new generation of product-service systems will be promoted. BasES is expected to configure a multi-stakeholder co-designed UK roadmap on socio-technical innovation in DRIs transition.
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Reza Esmailzadeh-Shahri and Sassan Eshghi
Nonlinear dynamic analyses are employed for seismic collapse risk evaluation of existing steel moment frame buildings. The standards, such as ASCE 41-17, often define collapse…
Abstract
Purpose
Nonlinear dynamic analyses are employed for seismic collapse risk evaluation of existing steel moment frame buildings. The standards, such as ASCE 41-17, often define collapse thresholds based on plastic deformations; however, the collapse process involves several factors, and plastic deformation is only one of them. An energy-based approach employs deformation and resistance responses simultaneously, so it can consider various factors such as excessive deformation, stiffness and resistance degradation, and low-cycle fatigue as cumulative damage for seismic assessment. In this paper, an efficient energy-based methodology is proposed to estimate the collapse threshold responses of steel moment frame buildings.
Design/methodology/approach
This methodology uses a new criterion based on the energy balance concept and computes the structural responses for different seismic hazard levels. Meanwhile, a pre-processing phase is introduced to find the records that lead to the collapse of buildings. Furthermore, the proposed methodology can detect failure-prone hinges with a straightforward probability-based definition.
Findings
The findings show that the proposed methodology can estimate reasonably accurate responses against the results of the past experiment on the collapse threshold. Based on past studies, ASCE 41-17 results differ from experimental results and are even overly conservative in some cases. The authors believe that the proposed methodology can improve it. In addition, the failure-prone hinges detected by the proposed methodology are similar to the predicted collapse mechanism of three mid-rise steel moment frame buildings.
Originality/value
In the proposed methodology, new definitions based on energy and probability are employed to find out the structural collapse threshold and failure-prone hinges. Also, comparing the proposed methodology results against the experimental outcomes shows that this methodology efficiently predicts the collapse threshold responses.
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