Search results
1 – 10 of 699The Black Sea region has become as an important energy transit route for Caspian and Russian oil and natural gas to western markets. Since 1996 the quantity of oil exported from…
Abstract
The Black Sea region has become as an important energy transit route for Caspian and Russian oil and natural gas to western markets. Since 1996 the quantity of oil exported from the Black Sea through the Turkish Straits and the number of transiting tankers has doubled and will continue to expand. However, these are also two waterways where the risk of either an accidental or intentional disaster is significant bringing serious repercussions for energy supply security. This paper will analyze measures taken by Black Sea coastal States to provide for secure ports and shipping against accidental and intentional disasters. The paper will examine the role of technology, such as satellite based VTS providers in the Black Sea, implementation of the ISPS Code, the role of the relatively new BlackSeaFor in providing both port and navigational security. The paper will further make recommendations for further improvements for enhancement of security emergency response planning. In addition, the paper will examine current security measures taken by the Turkish Administration for oil transportation through the Turkish Straits.
Details
Keywords
Helena Kahiluoto, Hanna Mäkinen and Janne Kaseva
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the theory and practice of supply chain management in terms of how an organisation should structure its supply base to be resilient…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the theory and practice of supply chain management in terms of how an organisation should structure its supply base to be resilient to supply uncertainties and disruptions. An empirical assessment of supplier response diversity is demonstrated, and the following research question posed: Is response diversity of suppliers positively associated with supply chain resilience, more positively than mere supplier diversity is?
Design/Methodology/Approach
Resilience is operationalised as the maintenance of sales of two food products in 27 southern Finnish retail stores during two distinct disruptions. Response diversity is operationalised as 1) diversity in the personnel sizes of slaughterhouse suppliers of pork under domestic strikes and as 2) evenness in the proportions of imports and domestic supply of food oil under global price volatility. A five-step quantitative assessment is performed.
Findings
Response diversity is positively related to the maintenance of sales, more positively than diversity of individual suppliers is.
Research limitations/Implications
Response diversity is an advancement to the theory of supply chain resilience and supply base management, and access to big data increases practical potential.
Practical implications
Empirical assessments of response diversity of suppliers provide buyer companies an effective means to enhance their supply base management for resilience.
Social implications
The proposed approach is useful for teaching and for authorities to enhance food security.
Originality/value
This first assessment of response diversity of supply chain operations presents an important advancement in the theory and practice of supply base management for resilience.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of sustainability governance through the unfolding hybridisation process between corporate governance and corporate social…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of sustainability governance through the unfolding hybridisation process between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility and the implications of this for understanding patterns in sustainability reporting over time.
Design/methodology/approach
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill incident is an extreme case study undertaken to examine its implications on the organisational legitimacy of British Petroleum (BP) and the latter’s response to the incident and beyond. The paper draws on Suchman’s legitimacy framework (1995) to understand sustainability governance as an organisational practice that evolved post the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to manage BP’s legitimacy. It draws on archival records and documentation from 2008 to 2017, as key sources for data collection, using interrogation by NVivo software.
Findings
Sustainability governance is a sound practice that was socially constructed to manage the re-legitimatisation process following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It is characterised by broadness (the interplay between the corporate governance and corporate social responsibility disciplines), dynamic (developing the tactics to repair and maintain legitimacy), agility (conforming to the accountability for socially responsible investment and ensuring steps towards geopolitically responsible investment) and interdependence (reflecting composition and interactions).
Practical implications
This paper has practical implications for organisations, in terms of sustainability governance’s constitution, mechanism and characteristics.
Social implications
This paper has implications not only for organisations, in terms of sustainability governance’s characteristics, but also for policy-makers, regulators and accounting education. However, the present paper’s insights are achieved through an in-depth and longitudinal case study.
Originality/value
This paper has problematized the concept of sustainability governance and elaborated its evolution (the emergence, enactment, deployment and interplay) process. The sustainability governance showed an otherwise organisational response that moves our understanding of the deployment of disclosure for complex organisational change as a way to discredit events.
Details
Keywords
Carlo D'Augusta, Francesco Grossetti and Claudia Imperatore
The authors study the effect of increasing environmental awareness on shareholders' activism. Specificallly, this study aims to examine whether growing environmental awareness is…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors study the effect of increasing environmental awareness on shareholders' activism. Specificallly, this study aims to examine whether growing environmental awareness is reflected in more aggressive environmental shareholder proposals.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster as an exogenous event that increased shareholders' environmental awareness. This study analyzes the spill’s effect on the tone of proposals about environmental issues and nonenvironmental topics.
Findings
After the disaster, the tone of environmental proposals (i.e. the treatment group) is significantly more negative. In contrast, the tone of nonenvironmental proposals (i.e. the control group) is unaffected. This study interprets this finding as direct evidence that the oil spill led to increased shareholder environmental activism through proposals that targeted the environmental risks surrounding the business more aggressively. By contrast, this study finds no effect of the oil spill on the tone of managers' responses to the proposals, consistent with managers refraining from emphasizing environmental threats.
Originality/value
Anecdotal evidence and recent studies suggest a link between environmental disasters and shareholder pressure for corporate change. However, no prior research has investigated the channel through which shareholders could have exerted such pressure or has looked for direct evidence of it in the negotiations between shareholders and managers. By finding such evidence in shareholder proposals, this study fills in this gap.
Details
Keywords
Jagjit Singh Srai, Gary Graham, Remko Van Hoek, Nitin Joglekar and Harri Lorentz
The new geopolitical context being created by the Ukraine–Russia war highlights the need for structured approaches to planning and implementing unhooking strategies and developing…
Abstract
Purpose
The new geopolitical context being created by the Ukraine–Russia war highlights the need for structured approaches to planning and implementing unhooking strategies and developing associated supply chain reconfigurations.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors have interviewed six supply chain executives to begin the investigation of the key supply chain risks and disruptions caused by the Ukraine–Russia war.
Findings
Initial corporate responses to the Ukraine–Russia conflict were significant, perhaps unprecedented. However, as institutional, corporate and consumer sentiment influence reconfiguration responses, the authors have identified three supply chain pathways that underpin unhooking actions.
Research limitations/implications
The authors selected respondents from each different type of supply chain interaction with the conflict zone (inbound, outbound and within), covering both components/intermediate products and finished goods. Therefore the sample size was small and designed to fit in with the spirit of the pathway initiative.
Practical implications
The authors reinforce the key role of procurement and supply chain management in not just supply but also in downstream markets that can accelerate decoupling and mitigate the associated supply chain disruptions.
Social implications
The authors observe that supply chains are increasingly being weaponized, as external institutional and consumer influences necessitate companies to unhook from conflict zones, countries, or regimes. They are becoming increasingly intertwined with foreign policy.
Originality/value
The novelty of the contribution to the associated discourse is the perspective that after decades of increasing globalization and geographic dispersion of supply chains, the unhooking effort is not limited to a firm and its internal operations but involves multiple stakeholders. For instance, the full extent of the complex linkages of supply chains, networks and relationships that touch conflict zone geographies must be considered, particularly those that are incompatible with the firm's values and aims, including those of their stakeholders.
Details
Keywords
Aleksandrs Urbahs and Vladislavs Zavtkevics
This paper aims to analyze the application of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) for remote oil spill sensing.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the application of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) for remote oil spill sensing.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is an analysis of RPA strong points.
Findings
To increase the accuracy and eliminate potentially false contamination detection, which can be caused by external factors, an oil thickness measurement algorithm is used with the help of the multispectral imaging that provides high accuracy and is versatile for any areas of water and various meteorological and atmospheric conditions.
Research limitations/implications
SWOT analysis of implementation of RPA for remote sensing of oil spills.
Practical implications
The use of RPA will improve the remote sensing of oil spills.
Social implications
The concept of oil spills monitoring needs to be developed for quality data collection, oil pollution control and emergency response.
Originality/value
The research covers the development of a method and design of a device intended for taking samples and determining the presence of oil contamination in an aquatorium area; the procedure includes taking a sample from the water surface, preparing it for transportation and delivering the sample to a designated location by using the RPA. The objective is to carry out the analysis of remote oil spill sensing using RPA. The RPA provides a reliable sensing of oil pollution with significant advantages over other existing methods. The objective is to analyze the use of RPA employing all of their strong points. In this paper, technical aspects of sensors are analyzed, as well as their advantages and limitations.
Details
Keywords
N. Orkun Baycik and Shimon Gowda
This article aims to understand where industry is in terms of digitalizing their operations, what features of this transformation are essential for practitioners, and what…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to understand where industry is in terms of digitalizing their operations, what features of this transformation are essential for practitioners, and what barriers they are facing during their journey. In addition, the authors aim to provide recommendations for organization to start their digital transformation.
Design/methodology/approach
Through literature review, the authors summarize the emerging tools and technologies in operations and supply chains to inform the practitioners. Then, the authors use surveys conducted on 183 operations and supply chain professionals, and use statistical tools to examine the association between variables of the data set. The authors present real-life case studies to explain important steps of a digital transformation project.
Findings
The survey results indicate that real-time monitoring and data analytics are viewed as the most important and needed tools for organizations. High cost, lack of stakeholder buy-in and lack of successful business use cases are major barriers for companies when starting a digital transformation.
Practical implications
The authors provide recommendations for practitioners based on the survey responses, and outline that starting small, focusing on stakeholder buy-in and implementation of software are the three key steps for a successful transformation journey.
Originality/value
Main contributions of this article are to understand practitioner perspectives in digitalization and provide guidelines for organizations to follow when transforming their operations. This research closes the gap between academic research and practice by collaborating with operations and supply chain professionals.
Details
Keywords
The Arab world is made up of 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa. These countries are subjected to many social, economic, political and geographical vulnerabilities…
Abstract
Purpose
The Arab world is made up of 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa. These countries are subjected to many social, economic, political and geographical vulnerabilities contributing to increased risks or ineffective emergency and disaster management. This paper examines these vulnerabilities, how they may impact the country's ability to face disasters, and how they can improve disasters' overall management.
Design/methodology/approach
The author selected Qatar, Oman to represent the Arab oil-rich countries, while Jordan, Egypt and Morocco to represent non-oil rich countries. The research was conducted in a qualitative, inductive systematic literature review based on a well-established systematic literature review methodology. Selected literature was based on its recency and the countries in question.
Findings
The review reveals population gaps that could threaten the social system in the event of a disaster in countries like Qatar and Oman. The majority of the countries lack community engagement and pre-planning for emergency preparedness due to social and cultural barriers. Other nations like Jordan, Egypt and Morocco are prone to long-lasting economic challenges due to lack of resources, mismanagement or corruption. The paper also highlights the need to raise the educational attainment among citizens to understand disaster risk reduction.
Originality/value
This study utilized the research method developed by Williams et al. (2017) to present a comprehensive systematic and comparative review of disaster management in the Arab world. Considering that disaster and emergency management has remained disproportionately unexplored in the Arab world, this paper reviewed several vulnerabilities and how those vulnerabilities may affect disaster and emergency management efforts in the Arab countries.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether management strategies implemented by non-commercial traders may be identified as a key factor in affecting oil price paths in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether management strategies implemented by non-commercial traders may be identified as a key factor in affecting oil price paths in the conventional pre- and post-financialization periods.
Design/methodology/approach
By using a vector autoregressive approach the dynamic analysis of the daily stock indexes for some of the most important world economies and the oil prices is conducted starting from 1992 to the end of 2020.
Findings
The findings do not support the idea that the financial markets act as a privileged conduit in transmitting the shocks to the oil spot quotations.
Originality/value
Such a direct assessment has not been previously proposed in literature wherein – under a financial perspective – the returns are generally taken into consideration.
Details
Keywords
Fabrizio Flavio Baldassarre, Savino Santovito, Raffaele Campo and Giacomo Dilorenzo
Palm oil is widely used in the food industry; however, there are two main controversies connected to its use, namely, its nutritional value and the environmental consequences…
Abstract
Purpose
Palm oil is widely used in the food industry; however, there are two main controversies connected to its use, namely, its nutritional value and the environmental consequences deriving from its crop. In Italy, the use of palm oil has recently been criticized, insomuch that some important bakery companies decided to substitute it, creating a real food marketing case. Through a focus on biscuits, this study is aimed at profiling consumers with regard to palm oil issue to better comprehend if the presence of this ingredient truly influences their food purchases and if they care about the nutritional and environmental aspects, highlighting the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on consumers' consumption.
Design/methodology/approach
A questionnaire was administered to 243 subjects in Italy, in order to apply a cluster analysis.
Findings
The findings show the presence of three main kinds of consumers: (1) compromise finders (sensitive to cost savings but trying to privilege palm-oil free food), (2) brand-loyal consumers (palm oil does not influence their preferences) and (3) healthsensitives (the presence of palm oil profoundly affects their choices), who represent the majority of our sample. The results and implications are discussed.
Originality/value
Research on palm oil is essentially focused on chemistry, natural sciences or on its industrial uses: this study analyzes the consumer point of view by applying a different methodology compared to existing studies.
Details