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DURING the War the use of spot welding became general in the United States. It is used in various ways by the different firms visited.

THE importance of the electrodes has been realized in America and the number used is surprisingly large.

India generates around two million tonnes of e-waste every year, and it is increasing at a very high rate of 30%. However, due to inefficient handling of infrastructure and limited number of collection centres along with the absence of proper incentive structure for producer and recyclers, 95% of e-waste reaches to unorganized sector for disposal. Consumers are not aware of the need of proper e-waste disposal and in absence of proper motivation and they are not inclined towards recycling process. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the best practices of e-waste take adopted all over the world to implement effective policy interventions for e-waste management in India and other emerging economies.

This paper has recommended preventive as well as curative policy interventions on the basis of best e-waste management practices of Germany, Italy and Japan; life cycle assessment of e-waste; and SWOT analysis of Indian electronic product industry.

Preventive measures include a deposit refund scheme wherein a consumer will be responsible for depositing a refundable fees during the purchase of the product. The amount should be arrived at keeping in mind cost involved in handling e-waste and ensure some motivation for the consumers to give back used product. To ensure proper tracking of the product, Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be used which will be activated at the time of sale of product and remain so until product reaches some designated recycling space or recycler and consumer is returned back his deposit fee. Subsidy to the producers and recyclers can also be provided by the government to further incentivize the whole process. An example of mobile phones has been used to understand the proposed deposit fees and associated cost structure. Curative measures to reduce the generation of e-waste in long run for managing the discussed issue have also been proposed.

This study is an initiative for proposing and implementing best e-waste take back techniques in a developing economy like India by acquiring learnings from best/advanced economies in terms of e-waste take back.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new statistical approach to evaluate complex open innovation projects on a quantitative basis. In certain circumstances, open innovation entails a radical change of policy that involves various different functions of a company such as R&D, production, and management over a period of years and gives rise to mechanisms of mutual interaction with several business partners, such as collaboration with other companies, universities and R&D institutions, and new suppliers. Then, the question arises of how to measure the impact of such complex open innovation processes on the overall performances of companies.

A holistic case study is applied to analyze the effect of open innovation projects on a corporate company’s stock price dynamics. The scope is to identify two different scenarios pre- and post-adoption of an open innovation model by a multinational company, Fujifilm. In particular, a stochastic model, namely the log-normal model, is applied along with three statistical tests: Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Cramer von Mises, and F-test for equal variances, in order to verify if the adoption of an open innovation model causes any significant change in the stock price dynamics of the corporate company.

From the findings emerges evidence that open innovation projects have a moderate effect on Fujifilm’s stock price dynamics, but a greater improvement of the perception of Fujifilm’s stock value. This enhances the management and financial literature review by offering a novel, empirical perspective on the effect of the adoption of an open innovation model on a corporate company’s stock price dynamics.

This research is limited to a single case study, but it can be extended to other stock market companies and therefore improve on the present study.

An original application of Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests to detect and measure the differences between the two regimes of pre-open innovation and post-innovation regimes.

This chapter analyses how corporate governance codes in Europe approach CSR, devoting specific guidelines or recommendations or specifying the responsibility of implementing and disclosing CSR in the company.

Content analysis have been used in a sample of 27 corporate governance codes of 27 European countries, issued in the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK), issued by governments (seven codes), national stock exchange (eight codes), industrial associations (six codes) and composites (six codes).

Only five out of 27 codes make and explicit reference to the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Two of them reflect the importance of a CSR Report (Slovenia and Spain), whereas the Spanish Code was the only code which devoted a section to the implementation of a CSR policy.

Although corporate governance codes could represent an opportunity to shift the focus from an implicit CSR approach to an explicit CSR approach in Europe, the truth is that content related to the issue and its level of specificity does not reflect that change yet.

Previous literature has not focused on the analysis of corporate governance codes from a CSR perspective, so the chapter is relevant for policy makers when it comes to updating corporate governance codes.

Undeniably, plastic usage is predominant in our daily lives, featuring in an endless list of items such as bottles, disposables, packaging and fabric. At prima facie, plastic disposal causes irreversible damage to the natural environment, especially oceans. However, it also impacts human health and wellbeing, especially since its toxins or microplastics find themselves in the food chain. Since plastic causes a myriad of negative effects on the natural environment and human health, the urgency to ban it has been addressed by international organizations and the European Union (EU). Being the smallest member state within the EU, Malta presents an insightful case study of how different levels of governance and a plethora of state and non-state actors engage in a game-like interaction. To this effect, this chapter sheds light on the implications of plastic pollution vis-á-vis sustainability and wellbeing, addressed through multi-level governance. The research core revolves around an investigation on the institutional intricacies in addressing the wicked problem of single-use plastic by mapping out the different layers of policy-making mechanisms that are involved, ranging from local to European and international governance, and from governmental to civil society centric strategies. A positivist ontology is activated to underpin the exploratory nature of this study. Through the application of content analysis of selected documentation, the extent of coordination and synergies among the different policy actors across a multi-layered governance platform is put under scrutiny. Quantitative findings are utilized to validate or contradict the original set of hypotheses and to propose a number of policy and governance recommendations that are useful to researchers and practitioners in the fields of public policy, politics, environmental science, public health and wellbeing, as well as insurance and risk management.

Historically, investments in innovation are perceived as one of the paramount decisions businesses opt to thrive and the impact of such investments on businesses' market performance is well documented in the literature. However, the environmental aspects of making such investments are yet to be addressed by the firms, which in turn, present considerable damage to the environment. Coupling with the natural resource-based view (NRBV) and the stakeholder theory of the firm, this research builds on an earlier work of Khalil and Nimmanunta (2021) in an attempt to examine the link between innovation and firms' environmental and financial value. The authors extend their analysis and document a more consistent approach to measuring environmental innovation which allows the authors to investigate the firms from three additional economies with respect to firms' investments in both traditional and environmental innovations.

The underlying models are tested using the time fixed-effects panel regression by utilizing information from publicly traded companies of ten Asian economies, including Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. The reported sample covers annual firm-level ESG data obtained from Thomson Reuters' Datastream and Refinitiv Eikon during the 2015–2019 period.

This research offers support to the conventional wisdom that innovation is advantageous to the firms' market value. The authors further decompose innovation into traditional innovation and environmental innovation. The findings of this research suggest that traditional innovation is favorable only for the firms' market valuation and traditional innovation is strongly ineffectual for the environment – traditional innovation produces sizeable environmental distress by contributing substantially to carbon emissions. In contrast, the resultant effects of investments in environmental innovation are evident to be instrumental for both firms' financial performance and the environment.

This research has primarily focused on only two components of a company's environmental performance: reduction in carbon emissions (CO2) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Given the complexity of firms' environmental strategies and the multidimensionality of the variable, which encompasses a wide range of corporate behavior in terms of relationships with communities, suppliers, consumers, and broader environmental responsibilities broadening the scope of the study by including other important aspects of environmental sustainability is, therefore, critical.

The findings of this research signify environmental innovation as one of the vital investment approaches as firms can exploit benefits related to the market from firms' sustainable practices, developing eco-friendly processes by introducing steady yet systematic chains of green products and services. Such products and services may have a feature of enhanced functionality with a better layout in terms of improved product life with better recycling options, and lower consumption and exploitation of energy and natural resources. These sustainable practices would be advantageous for the firms regarding the possibility of setting prices above the standard level through establishing green brands and gaining market share of environmentally anxious consumers. For those companies that are striving to take the leading role in the green industry and longing to seek superior returns on the companies' environmental investments, these benefits, in particular, are exceptionally critical to them.

The linkage between firms' financial and environmental performance in the context of simultaneous inclusion of both green and traditional innovations remains unclear and is yet to be investigated by researchers. Thus, this research shed light on the role of environmental innovation and traditional innovation on firms' environmental performance and financial performance. The authors utilize a novel dataset with a clear indication of measuring different elements of innovation that allows us to develop a more robust approach to corporates' environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance metrics having the slightest biases related to transparency and firm size.