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This study aims to illustrate how retail chains with a green image align sustainable logistics actions, logistics measurements and contracts with logistics service providers (LSPs), and to develop a classification model that allows for a description of the various shades of green within companies.

We carried out a multiple case study of four retail chains with a green image operating in the Swedish market, collecting empirical data from the retail chains’ sustainability reports and home pages and conducting interviews with logistics, transportation and supply chain managers.

Based on the literature, we developed a classification model for judging green image, green logistics actions, green measurements and green contracts. The model is used to illustrate the different shades of green found within the respective retail chains. A green image seems well-aligned with green logistics actions. However, there are more levels to judge, and the measurement systems are not sufficiently developed to track green logistics actions. Contract handling is more developed among retail chains than measurements, which is positive, as this is a way of ensuring that LSPs are involved. In our classification model, greenwashing can be judged in a more nuanced way, delving deeper under the surface.

The provided classification model adds to our knowledge and illustrates the alignment within companies’ sustainable logistics. The robustness of the model can be strengthened by applying it to a larger number of cases and by continually validating its content and evaluation criteria.

The study’s main practical contribution is the classification model, which may potentially serve as a method for managers to easily judge the green alignment of a retail chain’s logistics.

Few empirical studies capture how retail chains measure environmental logistics performance, and even fewer concern contracts stipulating the environmental demands placed on LSPs.

This article discusses how the concepts of exploration and exploitation are fruitful for understanding individual fantasies of escape from the demands of contemporary workplaces. We examine one influential articulation of such fantasies, namely the best-selling self-help book “The 4-Hour Workweek.” This book advocates that individuals outsource the bulk of the routine (“exploitation”) tasks of their lives, leaving themselves free for creativity, play, and leisure (“exploration”). In this way, a radical separation of exploitation and exploration at the individual level is proposed. We examine the meanings and contradictions of such ideas by discussing how they may function as powerful escape fantasies for those facing corporate overwork. However, we argue that the solution proposed is unsatisfactory because of its individualism, which fails to see the inherently social nature of work and life.

This chapter focuses on the common occurrence of wholesale electricity prices that fall below the cost of production. This “negative pricing” in effect represents payment to high-volume consumers for taking excess power off the grid, thus relieving overload. Occurrences of negative pricing have been observed since the wholesale electricity markets have been operating, and occur during periods of low demand, while generators are being kept in reserve for rapid engagement when demand increases (it is expensive and time-consuming to shut down generators and then restart them, so they are often kept in “spooling mode”). In such situations power production may temporarily exceed demand, potentially overloading the system. When the federal government began subsidizing the construction of wind generation projects, with regulations in place requiring transmission grids to accept all of the electricity produced by the wind generators, negative pricing became more frequent.

Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, Inc. (MISO) is a nonprofit regional transmission organization (RTO) that oversees electricity production and transmission across 13 states and 1 Canadian province. MISO also operates an electronic exchange for buying and selling electricity for each of its five regional hubs.

MISO oversees two types of markets. The forward market, which is referred to as the day-ahead (DA) market, allows market participants to place demand bids and supply offers on electricity to be delivered at a specified hour the following day. The equilibrium price, known as the locational marginal price (LMP), is determined by MISO after receiving sale offers and purchase bids from market participants. MISO also coordinates a spot market, which is known as the real-time (RT) market. Traders in the RT market must submit bids and offers by 30minutes prior to the hour for which the trade will be executed. After receiving purchase and sale offers for a given hour in the RT market, MISO then determines the LMP for that particular hour.

The existence of the DA and RT markets allows producers and retailers to hedge against the large fluctuations that are common in electricity prices. Hedge ratios on the MISO exchange are estimated using various techniques. No hedge ratio technique examined consistently outperforms the unhedged portfolio in terms of variance reduction. Consequently, none of the hedge ratio methods in this study meet the general interpretation of FASB guidelines for a highly effective hedge.