Search results

Traces the term “library consortium” as a form of co‐operation among libraries. Focuses on reasons for forming consortia and types, ranging from highly decentralised to highly centralised. Literature on consortia is mostly reported in four sources. Highlights the formation of the International Association of Library Consortia in 1997. The current trend is one of sharing integrated library systems and computer databases, collection development, purchasing of electronic journals, and staff development. What has been achieved is the provision of resources to patrons that did not have them before the consortia, as well as increased levels of services and convenience of patrons. By libraries banding together, cost savings come through reduced cost per unit as the group of libraries in the consortium shares the expenditure.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the application of project management principles to retrospective conversion of a library catalogue and to share the experience with other libraries.

Presents the case of retrospective conversion involving the conversion of card catalogue records and the serials automation at the Faculty of Engineering and Technology Library of the University of Botswana.

Highlights project management concepts as a means of managing library projects for the optimum benefit of the institution, staff and patrons.

The project involved the conversion of 10,000 manual records and the automation of 250 current journals.

Identifies constraints such as staffing, training and retraining; equipment malfunction and access to online resources; and conflict of work priorities.

A case study of project management applications in academic libraries. Both projects involved project scheduling, staff training, scheduling of duties, and writing of in‐house manuals, all based on project management principles.

This paper aims to focus on the nexus between sustainability and desired outcomes for smart cities. The main focus is on how green leadership influences the relationship between smart and sustainable activities and stakeholder management.

The work is essentially a non-empirical review of the literature to develop a conceptual model to be tested in a subsequent study.

The findings indicate that smart cities and their sustainability activities can drive desired outcomes through green leadership. Also, green leadership has an indirect relationship with the desired outcomes of smart cities; hence, managers in the tourism and hospitality industries should cultivate their green leadership style to assist smart cities in accomplishing their goals.

This research is conceptual, and the proposed model will need to be evaluated to be more valid. Furthermore, the model is restricted to the tourist and hospitality industry, limiting the generalization and application of the findings to that area. Furthermore, because sustainability activities and smart city leadership differ by region or country, the proposed model will be suitable for more developed economies with more developed sustainability policies.

This paper makes a novel theoretical contribution by using stakeholder management as a mediating variable and green leadership as a moderating variable concurrently.

This model suggests that smart and sustainability activities of cities can lead to desired outcomes for smart cities through effective stakeholder management and green leadership.

The United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs) that became effective at the commencement of January 2016 constitute a global community agreement calling for action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. This chapter looks at the nexus between real estate (RE) and SDGs by investigating the extent to which Ghana's RE sector incorporates, especially, environmental sustainability principles from the design and construction stages to occupation, operation and activities aimed at helping to solve the problem of climate change, thereby, contributing to achieving the SDGs. The chapter is theoretical and, therefore, heavily reliant on critical review of relevant extant literature. The chapter has shown that RE cuts across virtually all the sectors that contribute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which over the years have generally been increasing. Only a few buildings in both the private and public sectors (six located in three of the 16 administrative regions in the country) are officially classified as green based on three sustainability-rating systems currently used in the country, which suggests that the uptake of green building technologies (GBTs) is rather low leading to the conclusion that at the moment, the RE sector is not contributing much towards the attainment of the SDGs. However, it may be the case that there are buildings, which are sustainable in one form or the other, but because they have not been officially certified, they are not regarded as green – employing the services of the sustainability-rating agencies to certify buildings involve significant costs that might serve as a barrier in accessing their services. Thus, there is the need for country-wide, large-scale studies that systematically investigate the uptake of GBTs in the private and public RE sectors (not necessarily based on using the rating systems) as that may reveal the actual uptake of GBTs and what can be done policy-wise based on the outcomes of such studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between environmental management practices (EMP) and competitive operational performance with respect to reduced cost, improved quality, improved flexibility and improved delivery as well as overall environmental performance, of firms, using data from a developing country.

The study employed a survey approach with responses from 164 informants from different industries and used partial least squares structural equation modeling to examine the relationship between EMP and competitive operational performance and their overall impact on the environmental performance of firms.

The results indicate that EMP by firms have a significant positive effect on firms’ competitive operational performance. Again, firms’ competitive operational performance has a partial positive effect on the overall environmental performance. It was also realized that the EMP initiated by a firm have a direct positive impact on the overall environmental performance of the firm.

There is the need for organizations to take steps to plan and implement EMP since it is likely to enhance their competitive operational performance as well as their overall environmental performance.

The findings demonstrate the impact of EMP on competitive operational performance as well as on the overall environmental performance of firms. This is important as firms struggle with balancing investments in those practices against the perceived benefits that might be obtained from the practices.

The work provides insights and adds to the literature in the area of EMP and firm performance by providing evidence from a developing country environment. This study is among the few that have investigated the impact of EMP on firm performance in developing country environments.

Although a basic need, housing and its development activities impinge on the environment. As part of efforts to promote sustainability, there have been several initiatives since the Brundtland Commission's work in 1987 to minimise the adverse impact of housing development activities on the environment in the developing world such as sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This chapter explores housing development activities in Ghana within the context of environmental sustainability based on the extant literature. The aim is to examine the state and promotion of environmental sustainability in the housing development sector. The chapter establishes that although there are some efforts to promote environmental sustainability within the housing development sector, uptake of environmental sustainability practices has been less satisfactory due to lack of incentives as stakeholders perceive that environmentally sustainable homes are more expensive than conventional ones. The chapter, therefore, recommends further investigations into the cost and benefit of environmentally sustainable homes as well as other drivers in Ghana to give additional insights to provide the appropriate doses of incentives both contrived and instinctive to drive uptake.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the mediating effects of transformational and transactional leadership styles on the relationship between organizational ethics and workplace incivility.

The study employed cross-sectional survey design. Data were obtained from 209 employees from the telecommunication sector. The structural equation model was employed as the analytical tool to test the hypotheses of the study.

Organizational ethics was negatively related to workplace incivility. Both transformational and transactional leadership styles mediated the relationship between organizational ethics and workplace incivility.

Human resource developers and managers can employ, appraise, train and develop managers who can ethically demonstrate transactional, and transformational leadership behaviors to deal with workplace incivilities.

The paper makes an important contribution to the existing organizational literature by establishing the relevance of transformational and transactional leadership styles as mediators of the nexus between organizational ethics and workplace incivility in the telecommunication sector.

The priority giving to green practices in today's competitive market has made green logistics management practices (GLMPS) a significant driver of organizational performance. The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of GLMPS, logistics ecocentricity and supply chain traceability on sustainability performance.

The study uses structured questionnaires to gather data from 274 managers of manufacturing firms in Ghana. The partial least square structural equation modeling approach is used to analyze the data to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results obtained from the analysis indicate that GLMPS positively influence social sustainability and environmental sustainability. However, GLMPS negatively influence business performance. The results further reveal that logistics ecocentricity and supply chain traceability augment GLMPS to achieve significant improvement in both business performance and environmental sustainability through the mediation effect approach.

The study proposes a conceptual framework that tests the combined effect of GLMPs, logistics ecocentricity and supply chain traceability on environmental sustainability, social sustainability and business performance from the Ghanaian perspective.

The aim of this study is to explore the link between green manufacturing practices, operational competitiveness, firm reputation and sustainable performance dimensions as well as advance a mediation approach.

The study resorted to structured questionnaire to collect data from 158 manufacturing firms from different industries, and partial least square–structural equation modelling is used to test all hypothesized relationships.

The results indicate that green manufacturing has a positive significant impact on social, economic and environmental performance. However, firm reputation and operational competitiveness were found not to significantly influence economic performance. The mediation analysis also showed that operational competitiveness, firm reputation and environmental performance play no mediation role between green manufacturing and economic performance. Furthermore, social performance is found to mediate the relationship between green manufacturing and economic performance.

The study did not consider any moderator variables. Also, the universal applicability and generalizability are somewhat a problem since data was mainly collected from Ghana, an emerging country.

The results provide managers with reasonable evidence to proactively implement and invest in green manufacturing practices because such practices will not only have a positive impact on their sustainable performance dimensions but further enhance operational competitiveness and provide firms with superior reputation.

The study provides significant findings that contribute to and expand the literature on green manufacturing, and it is among the relatively few studies that has investigated the link between green manufacturing, sustainable performance dimensions, firm reputation and operational competitiveness, especially from a mediation analysis perspective.