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No longer do resource economists merely regard nature as a collection of inert materials to be improved by human labor and manufactured capital; rather, nature is, to an increasing extent, taken to be a mindless producer of economically valuable ecosystem goods and services. Instances of natural capital are frequently said to produce such goods and services in a manner that is relatively detached from human agency. This article argues that, historically, the idea of nature as a systematic original producer capable of self-generation is hardly novel. The eighteenth-century roots of this idea can be found in the writings of Carl Linnaeus who depicted the whole Earth and all of its productions as the “oeconomy of nature.”

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel resource availability assessment for supply chain (SC) configuration. This approach involves understanding both local resource availability and the demand-side implications of supplying global/regional markets as part of a more holistic SC design activity that incorporates local environmental factors.

The proposed framework was derived from literature analysis, bridging relevant literature domains – natural capital theory, industrial ecology and SC configuration – in order to develop design rules for future resource-constrained industrial systems. In order to test the proposed framework, an exploratory case study, based on secondary data, was conducted.

Research findings suggest that this approach might better identify relationships and vulnerabilities between natural resource availability and the viability of regional/global SCs. The research suggests that natural resource availability depends upon three elements – local resource consumption, global resource demand and external environmental factors.

The framework has two main limitations. The current work is focussed on a single industry case study used to exemplify the approach. Second, the framework does not consider other possible industries, which might enter or leave the specific location during the company’s operation. Furthermore, no assessment was made of the migration of populations within the area.

For practitioners, such as those in the agri-food sector, the resource availability assessment framework informs SC configuration design. For policymakers, the research aims to provide policy guidelines, which can help to improve water-saving strategies for a particular region. At a broader societal level, the research raises awareness of resource scarcity amongst industrial players and the wider public.

A resource availability assessment framework has been proposed, suggesting that the dynamics of both global and local resource demand, in conjunction with changing local environmental factors, can over time significantly deteriorate a firm’s natural resource impact on the local environment. Thus, the framework seeks to deliver mechanisms to evaluate potential vulnerabilities and solutions available to firms using a more proactive SC design method and to apply reconfiguration processes that account for natural resources, based primarily on network and resource attributes.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new ecological-issues-centered accounting research agenda, at the crossroads of accounting research and conservation science.

Based on a case study of the Natural Capital Project, the research examines the efforts and challenges of conservation practitioners regarding the use of evaluative information systems for conservation (EISC) in complex social and ecological contexts. It discusses why and how, to address these challenges, EISC promoters would benefit from theoretical and empirical insights coming from accounting research.

The paper suggests that the use of new information systems centered on organized collective action for biodiversity conservation should be regarded as a new type of accounting for the management of ecosystems, complementary to organization-centered biodiversity accounting and to ecosystem accounting at the national scale. A research agenda inspired by critical accounting should be developed for EISC design and use by: critically analyzing the organizational models currently underlying the use of new calculative practices for ecosystems; and developing new analytical and practical avenues on the basis of more explicit and powerful theories adapted to collective action for conservation perimeters.

The paper shows the importance of combining three domains of research and practice that are usually disconnected: the design and use of innovative information systems in biodiversity conservation research and practice; accounting research; and theories and conceptual models of collective action to resolve ecological challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights toward the potential of lean healthcare organization for environment sustainability and develop propositions for future studies.

This is a conceptual paper to study the inbuilt capacity of lean healthcare organization to mitigate environmental footprint. As a result, lean compatibility with environmental sustainability (ES) has been explored in areas like manufacturing, supply chain, aviation, construction, etc. The lean philosophy, lean culture and lean tools were analyzed to identify their contribution to ES in the context of healthcare organizations.

Based on the analysis of lean philosophy, culture and tool, this paper theorizes that lean healthcare organizations have huge potential to mitigate environmental footprints. Lean healthcare organizations need not to do any extra effort for ES albeit it is inbuilt in it. Lean philosophy provides a vision to the healthcare organization for ES whereas lean culture bestow healthcare with an epistemology for the same.

This paper provides insight that ES is embedded in lean healthcare organizations. Lean healthcare organizational culture is ideal for application for constructivism theory where employees construct a new knowledge from their experiences to minimize the waste that eventually help in ES.

Major contributions of the study include a new approach for mitigating the environmental footprints by adopting lean in healthcare organization.

We explore what health-capital theory has to offer in terms of informing and directing research into health inequality. We argue that economic theory can help in identifying mechanisms through which specific socioeconomic indicators and health interact. Our reading of the literature, and our own work, leads us to conclude that non-degenerate versions of the Grossman (1972a, 1972b) model and its extensions can explain many salient stylized facts on health inequalities. Yet, further development is required in at least two directions. First, a childhood phase needs to be incorporated, in recognition of the importance of childhood endowments and investments in the determination of later-life socioeconomic and health outcomes. Second, a unified theory of joint investment in skill (or human) capital and in health capital could provide a basis for a theory of the relationship between education and health.

Although well established in North America and Europe, the study of supply chain management (SCM) is still at a relatively early stage in its development in China. The transformation and rapid growth of the Chinese economy has, nevertheless, created major supply chain challenges for the country making SCM a very fertile area of business research. In Western countries, research on SCM is now mature and underpinned by a solid body of theory. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which research on SCM in China has also developed a theoretical basis.

The research involved a systematic review of 150 papers published in 18 journals in the fields of SCM, logistics, operations management and marketing during the period 2004-2014. A three-step process was adopted to select appropriate journals, identify relevant articles and classify them in terms of their theoretical content.

The study has confirmed that, because of its unique economic, political and cultural setting, supply chain development in China has presented new research challenges. Many examples were found of researchers conducting quasi-experiments to test the applicability of established theories to Chinese supply chains while others have tried to develop new ones that are more closely aligned with the Chinese economy and management practices. Researchers have exhibited a heavy reliance on existing theories, with relatively few attempting to customise them to the Chinese context or to construct new ones.

Given the broad scope of SCM, it is possible that the journal and paper selection processes have accidentally screened out relevant papers. The total sample of papers is, nevertheless, large for an explorative study of this type and should, therefore, give an overall impression of the level of theory development in Chinese SCM research.

This study provides a general framework within which to assess the application and development of theories in the Chinese SCM context. It is principally concerned with three components: the SCM phenomena studied, the Chinese business environment and the theoretical contribution of the research. The paper is targeted more at an academic audience than practitioners, though provides an overview of the research so far undertaken on SCM in China that should be of wider interest.

This study is the first of its kind to review China-based SCM research systematically from the perspective of theory development. It should support the evolution of SCM theory not only in China but also more generally.

The assumption that a set of observed variables is a function of an underlying common factor plus some error has dominated measurement in marketing and the social sciences in general for decades. This view of measurement comes with assumptions, which, however, are rarely discussed in research. In this article, we question the legitimacy of several of these assumptions, arguing that (1) the common factor model is rarely correct in the population, (2) the common factor does not correspond to the quantity the researcher intends to measure, and (3) the measurement error does not fully capture the uncertainty associated with measurement. Our discussions call for a fundamental rethinking of measurement in the social sciences. Adapting an uncertainty-centric approach to measurement, which has become the norm in in the physical sciences, offers a means to address the limitations of current measurement practice in marketing.

Land‐use and cover change threatens remaining urban green areas and the provision of ecosystem services. The purpose of this paper is to address the importance, sufficiency and needs of local recreational ecosystem services in urban areas.

The case study area is the City of Helsinki, Finland. In total, 30 key informants representing 19 neighbourhood associations in the urban‐rural gradient within the city were interviewed.

The results of the Helsinki case show that residents visit the focused nature areas frequently and spend considerable amount of time there. All the mentioned activities during visits were associated with getting recreational experiences. Of these the most frequently mentioned were getting “feel‐good feeling” and physical exercise, which were closely associated with walking and sports‐like activities. The importance of easy accessibility to local nature areas was emphasized. Recreational ecosystem services partly result from specific landscape features in the nature area and from biologically diverse nature.

Planners, managers and decision makers can use the findings from this study in determining the values of similar urban green areas in urban development.

The Helsinki case shows that these local nature areas are appreciated and attractive and that the residents of the focused study areas perceive the numerous benefits that the local nature areas provide as very important. It appears that conserving a considerable amount of remnant nature amongst urban housing has paid off in flourishing recreational ecosystem services in the studied area.