Category: Chemicals

Modeling the Carbon Footprint of the Supply Chain

By Maria Lucchi, supervised by Robert A. Novack📧 (Thesis Supervisor) and John C. Spychalski📧 (Honors Advisor) (2019)

As the topic of climate change creeps into the forefront of consumer thoughts, government agendas, and business strategies, organizations on a global scale are taking steps to adapt internally in an effort to fight a changing environment. Furthermore, this research along with many others shifts the focus to the role that business plays in climate change. Because business worldwide has the most harmful impact on the environment and potentially has the greatest ability in terms of wealth and scale to reverse and minimize that harm, corporations are beginning to take action. Much of this action is directed towards reducing the size of an organization’s carbon footprint. This paper uses a Fortune 500 chemical company to build a modeling tool to calculate a portion of the company’s carbon footprint regarding emissions caused by their operations in transportation. The subsequent modeling tool required a specific methodology to estimate the carbon emissions of their in-scope operations. This paper will outline relevant background information, methodology, assumptions, limitations, and validity of the completed tool. Additionally, the next steps for the company regarding the use and future scaling of the modeling tool as well as data collection and formatting for model input will be carefully described.

Access the paper at Electronic Theses for Schreyer Honors College (ETDA) website here.

An Empirical Investigation in Sustaining High Quality Performance

By Su, H. and Linderman, K.📧

In Decision Sciences, 2016, 47 (5): 787–819. https://doi.org/10.1111/deci.12210

Many organizations that were once quality leaders have had challenges sustaining high‐quality performance. Although research has examined frameworks and concepts that lead to high‐quality performance, few studies examine how to sustain high‐quality performance. Sustaining performance may require additional capabilities from what it takes to achieve it. Drawing on quality management literature, organizational resilience literature, and the theory of dynamic capabilities in the strategy literature, this study empirically investigates the effects of four capabilities that help sustain high‐quality performance. The analysis shows that capabilities in improvement, innovation, sensing weak signals, and responsiveness all help sustain high‐quality performance. This suggests that what it takes to achieve high‐quality performance is different, in part, from what it takes to sustain it. The data comes from a survey of 147 manufacturing business units. The analysis shows that the relative benefits of these capabilities may depend on the level of competitive intensity and environmental uncertainty. The findings provide empirical support for a theoretical model and practical guidance for sustaining quality performance.

Keywords: Quality management; Sustaining performance; Resilience; High reliability; Dynamic capability

See What We Want to See? The Effects of Managerial Experience on Corporate Green Investments

By Schaltenbrand, B., Foerstl, K., Azadegan, A., and Linderman, K.📧

In Journal of Business Ethics, 2016, 150:1129–1150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3191-x

How impartial are managerial decisions? This question is particularly concerning when it comes to making green investment decisions in the face of stakeholder pressures. When managers respond to stakeholder pressures, their personal cognition, judgment, and past experiences play a role in determining their responses. The salience of particular stakeholder claims may be determined by deeply rooted individual preferences. This research investigates how a manager’s past experiences can influence green investments. Data are gathered from 247 managers about their past experience and their employer’s performance data. These data are combined with managerial responses to a vignette-based experiment, which required managers to make green investments based on a decision scenario where they are exposed to different types and strength of stakeholder pressure (from consumers and the community). Results suggest that managers’ years of experience, their employers’ financial performance, and their employers’ market performance influence investment decisions even when making decisions under new and different set of circumstances. While the employers’ financial performance influences managers to invest more, the employers’ market performance only influences managers’ investment in the presence of either high consumer or high community pressure. Compared to less-experienced managers, experienced managers invest more in response to consumer pressure but less in response to community pressure. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings in green management are explored.

Keywords: Corporate sustainability; Green investments; Managerial cognition and reasoning; Survey research; Vignette-based experiments

A Competitive Advantage from the Implementation Timing of ISO Management Standards

By H.-C. Su, S. Dhanorkar📧, and K. W. Linderman📧

In Journal of Operations Management, 2015, 37:31–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2015.03.004

With the rise of globalization, firms increasingly implement management standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to assure they can meet their customers’ expectations. ISO management standards reduce performance variability among suppliers and promote global trade. However, ISO standards also promote a certain degree of commonality or isomorphism between firms. If the very notion of ‘standards’ encourages a certain level of commonality between firms, then how can firms achieve a competitive advantage from implementing ISO standards? This research argues that the timing of when a firm implements an ISO standard relative to their rivals has strategic benefits. Drawing on the competitive dynamics literature we argue that firms can achieve an early mover advantage when implementing ISO 14001. However, an early mover advantage depends on the level of a firm’s absorptive capacity (prior experience with ISO 9001) and the competitive intensity of their industry. This study uses longitudinal data from firms that implemented ISO 14001 at varying points in time to examine the benefits of an early mover advantage. More broadly, this research sheds light on when firms benefit the most from implementing new management standards. The results provide insights into implementing other emerging management standards.

Keywords: ISO 9001; ISO 14001; Management standards; Competitive strategy; Absorptive capacity; Early mover advantage

Performance Effects of Early and Late Six Sigma Adoptions

By Jacobs, B., Swink., M., and Linderman, K.📧

In Journal of Operations Management, 2015, 36:244–257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2015.01.002

Operations managers confront the challenge of deciding when to implement various administrative innovations such as Six Sigma, ISO 9000, and Lean. This research examines the operating performance effects of early versus late adoption of Six Sigma process improvement. Using theories of organizational learning and knowledge transfer, we develop hypotheses describing the advantages of late adoption, and factors that affect a firm’s ability to benefit from Six Sigma either as an early or late adopter. We test our hypotheses using an event study methodology. The empirical results show that, on average, late adopters in our sample enjoy significantly greater performance gains than early adopters. However, the analysis also shows that the advantages of late adopters tend to be moderated by certain environmental and structural characteristics of a firm. Specifically, late adoption has been favorable when firms operate in low-velocity industries, when they primarily sell in business-to-business markets, when they have good financial performance prior to adoption, and when they are large. Conversely, when adopters operate in conditions that have the opposite characteristics, then early adoption appears to have produced better results. Understanding the effects of these factors can enhance managers’ abilities to determine appropriate adoption timing to increase performance.

Keywords: Six Sigma; Quality management; Administrative innovation; Adoption timing; Organizational learning; Empirical research