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Book part
Publication date: 2 August 2021

Max Crumley-Effinger, Tavis D. Jules and Syed Shah

Increasing awareness around the world of the environmental impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from human activities such as air travel warrants consideration of…

Abstract

Increasing awareness around the world of the environmental impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from human activities such as air travel warrants consideration of the effects of research and activities within the field of Comparative and International Education (CIE). The authors hypothesize that consideration of CIE research’s environmental impact is seldom, if ever, discussed in the literature. To test this hypothesis, the authors conduct a content analysis of articles published in selected major CIE journals to analyze how researchers account for their environmental impact. In addition to presenting the findings of this analysis, the authors provide a selection of queries for examining one’s own practices as a CIE researcher in relation to environmental sustainability. The authors provide preliminary suggestions for ways to reduce GHG production and the environmental impact of continued CIE research and call for acknowledgement of these impacts in publications. Ultimately, the authors suggest that more needs be done to examine CIE scholars’ ecological impact in conducting research and use this chapter as a starting point for conversations in this vein.

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Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2020
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-907-1

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Book part
Publication date: 28 March 2022

Mumbi Maria Wachira and David Mutua Mathuva

Over the last few decades, corporate environmental reporting (CER) has received substantial attention due to complex societal and ecological challenges experienced at a global…

Abstract

Over the last few decades, corporate environmental reporting (CER) has received substantial attention due to complex societal and ecological challenges experienced at a global scale. While there has been growth in CER research across the world, we know very little of the state of CER research in Africa. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive literature review of CER in sub-Saharan Africa to demonstrate its current state, uncover gaps in extant studies and identify areas for further research in the region. We perform a metasearch on the Financial Times Top 50 journals in addition to wider analyses using African Journals Online (AJOL) and Google Scholar between 2008 and 2020. Though there is some progress in interrogating CER in the region, there is much leeway for further research into how public and private corporations provide an account for their interaction with nature. Extant studies have examined how CER is often subsumed within corporate social responsibility initiatives while other studies explore ways in which CER can provide accountability mechanisms in the mining sector of select countries. Important areas of future research include the influences of legal, cultural and political systems on the level of CER, the tensions between economic development driven by multinational corporations and the necessity for ecological protection. Finally, further research could investigate the role CER can play in encouraging specific corporate disclosures around GHG emissions, especially given global efforts being undertaken to mitigate the effects of climate change.

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Environmental Sustainability and Agenda 2030
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-879-1

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 January 2004

Rebecca Gasior Altman is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. Her focus is on medical sociology, environmental sociology, organizational theory…

Abstract

Rebecca Gasior Altman is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. Her focus is on medical sociology, environmental sociology, organizational theory, and social movement theory. Her current research projects analyze narratives about community toxics activism, environmental advocacy support organizations, and medical waste.Phil Brown is Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at Brown University. He is currently examining disputes over environmental factors in asthma, breast cancer, and Gulf War-related illnesses, as well as toxics reduction and precautionary principle approaches that can help avoid toxic exposures. He is the author of No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action (Phil Brown & Edwin Mikkelsen), co-editor of a collection, Illness and the Environment: A Reader in Contested Medicine, and editor of Perspectives in Medical Sociology.Daniel M. Cress is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Western State College of Colorado. His research and teaching interests include social movements – particularly among poor and marginalized groups, environmental sociology, and globalization. His published work has focused on protest activity by homeless people.Jennifer Earl is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research areas include social movements and the sociology of law, with research emphases on the social control of protest, social movement outcomes, Internet contention, and legal change. Her published work has appeared in a number of journals, including the American Sociological Review, Sociological Theory, and the Journal of Historical Sociology.Myra Marx Ferree is professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work on social movements has focused on women’s mobilizations and organizations in Germany, the U.S., and transnationally, most recently looking at interactions between American and Russian feminists (Signs, 2001), German and American abortion discourses and the definition of radicalism (AJS, 2003), and the European Women’s Lobby in relation to transnational women’s organizations on the web (Social Politics, 2004).Joshua Gamson is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. He is author of Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Chicago, 1998), Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (California, 1994), and numerous articles on social movements, gay and lesbian politics, popular culture and media. He is currently working on a biography of the disco star Sylvester.Teresa Ghilarducci is Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the Higgins Labor Research Center at the University of Notre Dame. She is author of Labor’s Capital: The Economics and Politics of Private Pensions (MIT Press) and Portable Pension Plans for Casual Labor Markets: Lessons from the Operating Engineers Central Pension Fund (with Garth Mangum, Jeffrey S. Petersen & Peter Philips). She is a former Board of Trustees member of the Indiana Public Employees Retirement Fund, a former advisory board member for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Social Insurance.Brian Mayer is a doctoral student in the Sociology Department at Brown University. His interests include environmental and medical sociology, as well as science and technology studies. His recent projects include an investigation of the growth of the precautionary principle as a new paradigm among environmental organizations and a study of social movements addressing environmental health issues.Sabrina McCormick is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. She is a Henry Luce Foundation Fellow through the Watson Institute of International Studies. Her main interests are environmental sociology, medical sociology, and the politics of development. As a Luce Fellow, she is engaged in comparing environmentally-based movements in the U.S. and Brazil. Additional special interests include the social contestation of environmental illness, the insertion of lay knowledge into expert systems, and the role of social movements in these struggles. She has recent publications by Ms. Magazine and The National Women’s Health Network related to these areas.Rachel Morello-Frosch is an assistant professor at the Center for Environmental Studies and the Department of Community Health, School of Medicine at Brown University. As an environmental health scientist and epidemiologist, her research examines race and class determinants of the distribution of health risks associated with air pollution among diverse communities in the United States. Her current work focuses on: comparative risk assessment and environmental justice, developing models for community-based environmental health research, children’s environmental health, and the intersection between economic restructuring and environmental health. Her work has appeared in Environmental Health Perspectives, Risk Analysis, International Journal of Health Services, Urban Affairs Review, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and Environment and Planning C. She also sits on the scientific advisory board of Breast Cancer Action in San Francisco.Daniel J. Myers is Associate Professor, Chair of Sociology, and Fellow of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He has published work on collective violence, racial conflict, formal models of collective action, urban poverty, and the diffusion of social behavior in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Mobilization. He is also author of Toward a More Perfect Union: The Governance of Metropolitan America and The Future of Urban Poverty (both with Ralph Conant), and Social Psychology (5th edition) with Andy Michener and John Delamater. He is currently conducting a National Science Foundation-funded project examining the structural conditions, diffusion patterns, and media coverage related to U.S. racial rioting in the 1960s.Sharon Erickson Nepstad is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Duquesne University and the author of Convictions of the Soul: Religion, Culture, and Agency in the Central America Solidarity Movement (Oxford University Press, 2004).Francesca Polletta is Associate Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. She is the author of Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements (University of Chicago, 2002) and editor, with Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, of Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (University of Chicago, 2001). She has published articles on culture, collective identity, emotions, law, and narrative in social movements, and on the civil rights, women’s liberation, new left, and contemporary anti-corporate globalization movements.Nicole C. Raeburn is Assistant Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of the book, Changing Corporate America from Inside Out: Lesbian and Gay Workplace Rights (University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Her new research project compares the adoption of gay-inclusive workplace policies in the corporate, educational, and government sectors.Leila J. Rupp is Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A historian by training, her teaching and research focus on sexuality and women’s movements. She is coauthor with Verta Taylor of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (2003) and Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (1987) and author of A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Sexuality in America (1999), Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (1997), and Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939–1945 (1978). She is also editor of the Journal of Women’s History.David A. Snow is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. He taught previously at the universities of Arizona and Texas. He has authored numerous articles and chapters on homelessness, collective action and social movements, religious conversion, self and identity, framing processes, symbolic interactionism, and qualitative field methods; and has authored a number of books as well, including Down on Their Luck: A Study of Homeless Street People (with Leon Anderson), Shakubuku: A Study of the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist Movement in America, 1960–1975, and The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (edited with Sarah Soule & Hanspeter Kriesi). His most current research project involves an NSF-funded interdisciplinary, comparative study of homelessness in four global cities (Los Angeles, Paris, São Paulo, and Tokyo).Sarah A. Soule is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona. Her research examines U.S. state policy change and diffusion and the role social movements have on these processes. Current projects include the NSF-funded “Dynamics and Diffusion of Collective Protest in the U.S.” from which data for this paper come; an analysis of state-level contraception and abortion laws; an analysis of state ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment; and an analysis of state-level same-sex marriage bans. She has recently completed an edited volume, The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, with David Snow and Hanspeter Kreisi.Verta A. Taylor is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is coauthor with Leila J. Rupp of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (University of Chicago Press) and Survival in the Doldrums : The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (Oxford University Press); co-editor with Laurel Richardson and Nancy Whittier of Feminist Frontiers VI (McGraw-Hill); and author of Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help and Postpartum Depression (Routledge). Her articles on the women’s movement, the gay and lesbian movement, and social movement theory have appeared in journals, such as The American Sociological Review, Signs, Social Problems, Mobilization, Gender & Society, Qualitative Sociology, Journal of Women’s History, and Journal of Homosexuality.Nella Van Dyke is currently an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Washington State University. Her research focuses on the dynamics of student protest, social movement coalitions, hate crimes, and the factors influencing right-wing mobilization. Her recent publications include articles in Social Problems and Research in Political Sociology. She is currently conducting research on the AFL-CIO’s Union Summer student internship program and its influence on student protest, how the tactics of protest change over time, and how movement opponents influence the collective identity of gay and lesbian movement organizations.Stephen Zavestoski is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. His current research examines the role of science in disputes over the environmental causes of unexplained illnesses, the use of the Internet as a tool for enhancing public participation in federal environmental rulemaking, and citizen responses to community contamination. His work appears in journals such as Science, Technology & Human Values, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Sociology of Health and Illness, and in the book Sustainable Consumption: Conceptual Issues and Policy Problems.

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Authority in Contention
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-037-1

Book part
Publication date: 10 December 2013

Giovanni Battista Derchi, Michael Burkert and Daniel Oyon

Organizations’ increasing concern for environment shows the interest in appropriate mechanisms that account for relevant flows of environment-related information. Today managers…

Abstract

Purpose

Organizations’ increasing concern for environment shows the interest in appropriate mechanisms that account for relevant flows of environment-related information. Today managers and researchers are promoting environmental management accounting (EMA) systems mechanisms as a means to incorporate the full spectrum of ecological data into day-to-day business decisions and foster green management execution. However implementation remains a challenge and many of the difficulties are associated with conceptual and practical problems in integrating ‘green’ information and providing guidance on effective implementation. In this context academics might investigate on further explanations on how to achieve excellence in both environmental and financial performance. Hence this chapter substantiates the need for more theoretical and empirical studies on EMA practices and proposes avenues for future research.

Approach

We review the growing body of EMA research to inform the reader of what has been studied to date and indicate the necessity for further investigation. In addition, we suggest areas for future research.

Findings

Our synthesis highlights the relevant aspects of EMA examined in prior studies. The review reveals unexplored facets that need to be investigated to complement existing knowledge. In particular researchers might explore the concept of environmental performance and the application of different forms of EMA within organizations. Moreover academics have the opportunity to further examine the role of EMA mechanisms in companies that do not pursue environmental results for economic benefits.

Value

The chapter sheds some light on EMA literature and emphasizes the opportunities that new theoretical developments and appropriate research designs offer in the investigation of the remaining gaps in the literature.

Details

Accounting and Control for Sustainability
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-766-6

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 25 July 2008

Sally Russell and Andrew Griffiths

In this chapter we argue for further research that examines the role of the individual in addressing environmental issues. We review current research that examines emotionality as…

Abstract

In this chapter we argue for further research that examines the role of the individual in addressing environmental issues. We review current research that examines emotionality as it relates to issues of the natural environment and identify disparate findings in the literature. In order to integrate findings from environmental psychology and management we draw on the theories of issue ownership, and organizational identification as a frame with which to examine emotionality and pro-environmental behavior in organizations. In doing so, we put forward a conceptual model and testable propositions as a basis for future research.

Details

Emotions, Ethics and Decision-Making
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84663-941-8

Book part
Publication date: 20 October 2015

Mohammad Shamsuddoha

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured…

Abstract

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

Details

Sustaining Competitive Advantage Via Business Intelligence, Knowledge Management, and System Dynamics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-707-3

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 January 2004

Stephen Zavestoski, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Phil Brown, Brian Mayer, Sabrina McCormick and Rebecca Gasior Altman

Health social movements address several issues: (a) access to, or provision of, health care services; (b) disease, illness experience, disability and contested illness; and/or (c…

Abstract

Health social movements address several issues: (a) access to, or provision of, health care services; (b) disease, illness experience, disability and contested illness; and/or (c) health inequality and inequity based on race, ethnicity, gender, class and/or sexuality. These movements have challenged a variety of authority structures in society, resulting in massive changes in the health care system. While many other social movements challenge medical authority, a rapidly growing type of health social movement, “embodied health movements” (EHMs), challenge both medical and scientific authority. Embodied health movements do this in three ways: (1) they make the body central to social movements, especially with regard to the embodied experience of people with the disease; (2) they typically include challenges to existing medical/scientific knowledge and practice; and (3) they often involve activists collaborating with scientists and health professionals in pursuing treatment, prevention, research, and expanded funding. We present a conceptual framework for understanding embodied health movements as simultaneously challenging authority structures and allying with them, and offer the environmental breast cancer movement as an exemplar case.

Details

Authority in Contention
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-037-1

Book part
Publication date: 22 July 2011

Neil Thompson, Kip Kiefer and Jeffrey G. York

In this chapter, we review and examine the differences and similarities between social, sustainable, and environmental entrepreneurship. We explore the concepts, key questions…

Abstract

In this chapter, we review and examine the differences and similarities between social, sustainable, and environmental entrepreneurship. We explore the concepts, key questions, empirical methodologies, and disciplinary roots that differentiate and relate these emergent interest areas. The result of this comparative analysis inevitably raises the question of whether these new literature streams are inclusive or separate from the traditional domain of entrepreneurship research. We find that these three areas share many similarities, yet are distinguishable from one another and from more traditional, commercial forms of entrepreneurship. However, we determine that although these three areas of entrepreneurial scholarship raise unique questions and highlight different types of phenomena, they are not their own fields of study, but rather promising contexts for studying key questions of the entrepreneurship field.

Book part
Publication date: 11 December 2007

Sara Shostak and Erin Rehel

As environmental health scientists increasingly take up genetic/genomic modes of knowledge production and translate their work for applications in biomedicine, risk assessment…

Abstract

As environmental health scientists increasingly take up genetic/genomic modes of knowledge production and translate their work for applications in biomedicine, risk assessment, and regulation, they “bring the human in” to environmental health issues in novel ways. This paper describes the efforts of environmental health scientists to use molecular technologies to focus their research inside the human body, ascertain human genetic variations in susceptibility to adverse outcomes following environmental exposures, and identify individuals who have sustained DNA damage as a consequence of exposure to chemicals in the environment. In addition to transforming laboratory research, they see in these such practices the opportunity to advance public health, through innovations in biomedical practice and refinement of environmental health risk assessment and regulation. As environmental health scientists produce and translate these new forms of knowledge, they simultaneously assume and instantiate specific notions of the human subject and its agency, possibilities, and responsibilities vis-à-vis health and illness. Because dimensions of human subjectivity remain under-theorized in bioethics, sociological approaches to understanding and situating the human subject offer an important means of elucidating the consequences of genetics/genomics in the environmental health sciences and highlighting the social structures and processes through which they are produced.We are responsible for the world in which we live not because it is an arbitrary construction of our choosing, but because it is sedimented out of particular practices that we have a role in shaping. –Barad, 1998

Details

Bioethical Issues, Sociological Perspectives
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1438-6

Book part
Publication date: 23 November 2016

Hank C. Alewine and Timothy C. Miller

This study explores how balanced scorecard format and reputation from environmental performances interact to influence performance evaluations.

Abstract

Purpose

This study explores how balanced scorecard format and reputation from environmental performances interact to influence performance evaluations.

Methodology/approach

Two general options exist for inserting environmental measures into a scorecard: embedded among the four traditional perspectives or grouped in a fifth perspective. Prior balanced scorecard research also assumes negative past environmental performances. In such settings, and when low management communication levels exist on the importance of environmental strategic objectives (a common practitioner scenario), environmental measures receive less decision weight when they are grouped in a fifth scorecard perspective. However, a positive environmental reputation would generate loss aversion concerns with reputation, leading to more decision weight given to environmental measures. Participants (N=138) evaluated performances with scorecards in an experimental design that manipulates scorecard format (four, five-perspectives) and past environmental performance operationalizing reputation (positive, negative).

Findings

The environmental reputation valence’s impact is more (less) pronounced when environmental measures are grouped (embedded) in a fifth perspective (among the four traditional perspectives), when the environmental feature of the measures is more (less) salient.

Research limitations/implications

Findings provide the literature with original empirical results that support the popular, but often anecdotal, position of advocating a fifth perspective for environmental measures to help emphasize and promote environmental stewardship within an entity when common low management communication levels exist. Specifically, when positive past environmental performances exist, entities may choose to group environmental performance measures together in a fifth scorecard perspective without risking those measures receiving the discounted decision weight indicated in prior studies.

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