Responsible Innovation: A Pilot Study with the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Significant time lags between the development of novel innovations (e.g., nanotechnologies), understanding of their wider impacts, and subsequent governance (e.g., regulation) have led to repeated calls for more anticipatory and adaptive approaches that promote the responsible emergence of new technologies in democratic societies. A key challenge is implementation in a pragmatic way. Results are presented of a study with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the largest public funder of basic innovation research in the United Kingdom who, for the first time, asked applicants to submit a risk register identifying the wider potential impacts and associated risks (environment, health, societal, and ethical) of their proposed research. This focused on nanoscience for carbon capture and utilization. Risk registers were completed conservatively, with most identified impacts concerning researchers' health associated with nanoparticle synthesis, handling, and prototype device fabrication, i.e., risks that could be identified and managed with a reasonable level of certainty. Few wider environmental impacts and no future impacts on society were identified, reflecting the often uncertain and unpredictable nature of innovation. However, some applicants addressed this by including investigators with expertise beyond engineering and nanosciences supporting integrated activities that included life cycle and real‐time technology assessment, which in some cases were also framed by stakeholder and/or public engagement. Proposals underpinned by a strong commitment to responsible science and innovation promoted continuous reflexivity, embedding a suite of multidisciplinary approaches around the innovation research core to support decisions modulating the trajectory of their innovation research in real‐time.     

Aggregate, Disaggregate, and Hybrid Analyses of Ecological Risk Perceptions

Laypeople's perceptions of health and safety risks have been widely studied, but only a few studies have addressed perceptions of ecological hazards. We assembled a list of 39 attributes of ecological hazards from the literatures on comparative risk assessment, ecological health, environmental conservation and management, environmental psychology, and risk perception. In Study 1, 125 laypeople evaluated 83 hazards on subsets of this attribute set. Factor analysis of attribute ratings (averaged over participants) revealed six oblique factors: ecological impacts, human impacts, human benefits, aesthetic impacts, scientific understanding, and controllability. These factors predicted mean judgments of overall riskiness, ecological riskiness, acceptability, and regulatory strictness. In Study 2, 30 laypeople each evaluated 34 hazards on 17 attributes and 3 dependent variables. Aggregate-level factor analysis of these data replicated the appropriate portion of the factor solution and yielded similar regression results. Parallel analyses at the individual-participant level yielded factors that explained less variance in judgments of overall riskiness, ecological riskiness, and acceptability. However, the decrease in explanatory power was much less than is often reported for disaggregate-level analyses of psychometric data. This discrepancy illustrates the importance of distinguishing between the level of analysis (aggregate versus disaggregate) and the focus of analysis (distinctions among hazards versus distinctions among participants). In a hybrid analysis, aggregate-level factor scores predicted individual participants' riskiness judgments reasonably well. Psychometric studies such as these provide a sound empirical basis for selecting attributes of ecological hazards for use in comparative risk assessment.     

Production planning and control as a tool for eco-efficency improvement and environmental impact reduction

The environmental impacts of industrial activity are an increasing concern amongst firms and their stakeholders. As a result, companies around the world have been exploring new tools to diminish the adverse impact of their activities on the environment. Eco-efficiency has played an essential role in this scenario, as companies are continuously seeking to produce more while utilizsing fewer resources and minimising adverse effects on the environment. The literature includes several initiatives to improve eco-efficiency and to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing operations, but the use of production planning and control (PPC) activities to accomplish these goals has rarely been considered. Therefore, to contribute to the assessment of this issue, this paper proposes to integrate environmental concepts and actions as part of the PPC execution; therefore, they could also be applied to minimise environmental impacts, resulting in an increase in the eco-efficiency level of a company. The practical utilisation of the suggested procedure was confirmed using a case study where the procedure was successfully applied to a make-to-order firm, where a simplified version of a workload control (WLC) form of PPC was in use. As a result, incorporating environmental considerations into the WLC practices enabled the eco-efficiency level of the designated production area to increase by 42%, while the environmental impact of production was reduced by 13%.     

An Integrated Framework for Environmental Multi‐Impact Spatial Risk Analysis

Quantitative risk analysis is being extensively employed to support policymakers and provides a strong conceptual framework for evaluating decision alternatives under uncertainty. Many problems involving environmental risks are, however, of a spatial nature, i.e., containing spatial impacts, spatial vulnerabilities, and spatial risk‐mitigation alternatives. Recent developments in multicriteria spatial analysis have enabled the assessment and aggregation of multiple impacts, supporting policymakers in spatial evaluation problems. However, recent attempts to conduct spatial multicriteria risk analysis have generally been weakly conceptualized, without adequate roots in quantitative risk analysis. Moreover, assessments of spatial risk often neglect the multidimensional nature of spatial impacts (e.g., social, economic, human) that are typically occurring in such decision problems. The aim of this article is therefore to suggest a conceptual quantitative framework for environmental multicriteria spatial risk analysis based on expected multi‐attribute utility theory. The framework proposes: (i) the formal assessment of multiple spatial impacts; (ii) the aggregation of these multiple spatial impacts; (iii) the assessment of spatial vulnerabilities and probabilities of occurrence of adverse events; (iv) the computation of spatial risks; (v) the assessment of spatial risk mitigation alternatives; and (vi) the design and comparison of spatial risk mitigation alternatives (e.g., reductions of vulnerabilities and/or impacts). We illustrate the use of the framework in practice with a case study based on a flood‐prone area in northern Italy.     

Engaging with Comparative Risk Appraisals: Public Views on Policy Priorities for Environmental Risk Governance

Communicating the rationale for allocating resources to manage policy priorities and their risks is challenging. Here, we demonstrate that environmental risks have diverse attributes and locales in their effects that may drive disproportionate responses among citizens. When 2,065 survey participants deployed summary information and their own understanding to assess 12 policy‐level environmental risks singularly, their assessment differed from a prior expert assessment. However, participants provided rankings similar to those of experts when these same 12 risks were considered as a group, allowing comparison between the different risks. Following this, when individuals were shown the prior expert assessment of this portfolio, they expressed a moderate level of confidence with the combined expert analysis. These are important findings for the comprehension of policy risks that may be subject to augmentation by climate change, their representation alongside other threats within national risk assessments, and interpretations of agency for public risk management by citizens and others.     

Risk Assessment and Risk Governance of Liquefied Natural Gas Development in Gladstone,Australia

This article is a retrospective analysis of liquefied natural gas development (LNG) in Gladstone, Australia by using the structure of the risk governance framework developed by the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC). Since 2010 the port of Gladstone has undergone extensive expansion to facilitate the increasing coal export as well as the new development of three recently completed LNG facilities. Significant environmental and socio‐economic impacts and concerns have occurred as a result of these developments. The overall aim of the article, therefore, is to identify the risk governance deficits that arose and to formulate processes capable of improving similar decision‐making problems in the future. The structure of the IRGC framework is followed because it represents a broad analytical approach for considering risk assessment and risk governance in Gladstone in ways that include, but also go beyond, the risk approach of the ISO 31000:2009 standard that was employed at the time. The IRGC risk framework is argued to be a consistent and comprehensive risk governance framework that integrates scientific, economic, social, and cultural aspects and advocates the notion of inclusive risk governance through stakeholder communication and involvement. Key aspects related to risk preassessment, risk appraisal, risk tolerability and acceptability, risk management, and stakeholder communication and involvement are considered. The results indicate that the risk governance deficits include aspects related to (i) the risk matrix methodology, (ii) reflecting uncertainties, (iii) cumulative risks, (iv) the regulatory process, and (v) stakeholder communication and involvement.     

Implementation of Lean Six Sigma framework with environmental considerations in an Indian automotive component manufacturing firm: a case study

Lean Six Sigma is a systematic data driven methodology that integrates two powerful business improvement strategies Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma with the goal of removing wastes and reducing process variation. Lean Six Sigma has a positive effect on environmental performance as defect reduction and reducing process variation leads to reduction in raw material consumption, energy consumption and reduced scrap which in turn reduces the overall environmental impacts. In this context, this study uses a Lean Six Sigma framework with environmental considerations to reduce overall defects and environmental impacts concurrently to improve the firm’s operational and environmental performance. The framework is based on Define Measure Analyze Improve Control methodology where traditional Lean Six Sigma and environmental impact assessment tools are integrated to systematically deploy LSS strategies with environmental considerations. The framework is validated with an industrial case study conducted in an Indian automotive component manufacturing organisation and the inferences are derived. On successful deployment of the framework, the internal defects was brought down to 6000 ppm from 16,000 ppm and environmental impacts was reduced to 33 Pt from 42 Pt. Deployment of the developed framework helped in improving the firm’s sigma level and also reduced the overall environmental impacts.     

基于系统动力学的生态文明建设政策模拟与仿真研究

生态文明建设涉及生态环境保护、资源集约节约、环境治理改善等诸多问题,是一个复杂的动态过程。为探究不同政策对该过程的影响,本文从经济、人口、教育、科技、环境治理等要素出发,构建生态文明建设系统的动力学模型,设计3类共11种仿真情景,模拟不同政策及组合政策作用下中国生态文明的建设情况。结果表明:(1)延续当前发展模式中国生态文明建设水平将进一步提高,资源节约领域的进步最为显著;(2)单一政策情景下科技政策对于生态文明建设的整体推动作用最大,生育政策对于生态文明建设的促进作用优于基准情景,但弱于教育政策与环境治理政策的作用效果;(3)组合政策情景下,科技与环境治理政策组合对于生态保护领域的推动作用最大,教育与科技政策组合能够实现最高的资源利用效率,提高生态文明建设水平的政策组合选择还应结合环境治理领域长短期目标的实现进行,前一组合能够较快实现目标,而后一组合能够实现更稳定的进步;(4)科技政策在单一政策情景与组合政策情景中均成为重要的政策因子,印证了科技创新在生态文明建设中的重要作用。     

Performance measurement system contingency factors: a cross analysis of Italian and Indian SMEs

Recent studies have highlighted the presence of a strong relationship between performance measurement systems (PMSs) and corporate governance structures in European firms. Taking into account the growing economic relevance of developing countries, we investigated the role of corporate governance structure as a PMS contingency factor in Italian and Indian SMEs using a multiple case-study approach. The results show that the first development of a PMS was determined by two different factors; in Italian SMEs, the changes in the corporate governance structure promoted the implementation of an advanced PMS, while in Indian SMEs, environmental changes pushed the development of the PMS without affecting any modification in the corporate governance structure. Moreover, after the adoption of an advanced (or almost advanced) performance management system, relevant environmental changes or the positive impacts of the PMS use, were enough to promote further development of the system in both Italian and Indian SMEs, without any change in the corporate governance structure.     

Sound Governance: Engaging Citizens through Collaborative Organizations

This paper addresses governance-citizen relationship and argues for ??sound governance?? and engaging citizens in public administration through collaborative organizations. After reviewing and analyzing the contemporary literature on the importance and various forms of governance, it: (1) argues for a new concept of ??sound governance?? with key dimensions and characteristics, (2) provides an imperative with rationales for engaging citizens in governance and governing in the twenty first century, and (3) offers alternative forms of collaboration and partnership building to engage citizens, enhance governance, and maximize citizen participation in public administration.     

融资融券对上市公司治理影响的研究

以融资融券机制推出为背景, 运用我国内地A股市场上市公司为样本, 研究了融资融券对上市公司治理水平的影响.回归结果显示, 成为融资融券标的后, 上市公司高管离职与高管薪酬对于公司绩效的黏性均有提高, 表明融资融券可以作为外部公司治理机制.机制检验显示融资融券是通过促进公司信息释放而提升公司治理水平的.进一步分析显示, 当公司面临行业竞争压力较小或面临财务约束时, 融资融券对于公司治理的促进作用更加明显.最后, 将融资和融券分开分析, 发现融资机制和融券机制均对公司治理有提升作用.证明了融资融券机制可以提高资本市场对企业的监督, 促进企业信息释放, 从而提高上市公司治理水平.     

Other Aspects of BSE Issues in East Asian Countries

Scientific risk estimates of BSE can be the same internationally; however, socioeconomic backgrounds, such as food supply (e.g., beef import status) and dietary life, are different between East Asian countries (i.e., in this article, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan) and Western countries, which may account for differences in risk perception of people. Since political and social backgrounds also differ among these East Asian countries, they will also influence people's attitudes toward food safety. Psychological factors such as “dread” and the “unknown” are considered to be important in risk perception, but socioeconomic, and in some cases political, situations (e.g., attitudes of politicians and political pressures in trade) may strongly influence the perception and acceptance of various risks by citizens. With regard to the BSE issues, latter aspects may contribute a lot to risk perception, but have not been examined in depth until now. Although protection of health is the key element to food safety, sometimes business factors can overwhelm safety issues in international trade. Appropriate risk governance in food safety issues, such as BSE, can be attained not only through application of outputs of scientific assessment, but also through deliberation of various aspects, that may have strong influence on people's risk perception, and improved communication among stakeholders and also among countries.     

Corporate Governance Reform in Australia: A New Institutional Approach

From an international perspective, Australia has been one of the leading jurisdictions for corporate governance reform. Its first corporate governance code predates the Cadbury Report, and Australia is also one of the few countries internationally to have been only marginally affected by the recession that ensued after the Global Financial Crisis. Considerable governance reform has occurred since 2007–8 in Australia, however; much of it occasioned by pressure brought to bear by institutional investors as a reaction to both traditional governance failings and also social and environmental concerns such as a growing awareness of climate change. Institutional influence is primarily associated with the compulsory retirement income system that emerged in the 1980s in light of an economy‐wide union campaign. While governance structures are becoming more homogenous, institutional logics reflecting trustees’ concerns are driving and shaping this ongoing process. A new approach to corporate engagement has emerged under the influence of investor representative bodies such as the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors that is driving corporate governance change.     

Economic and Environmental Assessment of Remanufacturing Strategies for Product + Service Firms

This article provides a data‐driven assessment of economic and environmental aspects of remanufacturing for product + service firms. A critical component of such an assessment is the issue of demand cannibalization. We therefore present an analytical model and a behavioral study which together incorporate demand cannibalization from multiple customer segments across the firm's product line. We then perform a series of numerical simulations with realistic problem parameters obtained from both the literature and discussions with industry executives. Our findings show that remanufacturing frequently aligns firms' economic and environmental goals by increasing profits and decreasing the total environmental impact. We show that in some cases, an introduction of a remanufactured product leads to no changes in the new products' prices (positioning within the product line), implying a positive demand cannibalization and a decrease in the environmental impact; this provides support for a heuristic approach commonly used in practice. Yet in other cases, the firm can increase profits by decreasing the new product's prices and increasing sales—a negative effective cannibalization. With negative cannibalization the firm's total environmental impact often increases due to the growth in new production. However, we illustrate that this growth is nearly always sustainable, as the relative environmental impacts per unit and per dollar rarely increase.     

Spatial Risk Assessment Across Large Landscapes with Varied Land Use: Lessons from a Conservation Assessment of Military Lands

Spatial decision-support tools are necessary for assessment and management of threats to biodiversity, which in turn is necessary for biodiversity conservation. In conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey-Biological Resources Division's Species at Risk program, we developed a GIS-based spatial decision-support tool for relative risk assessments of threats to biodiversity on the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range and Fort Bliss (New Mexico and Texas) due to land uses associated with military missions of the two bases. The project tested use of spatial habitat models, land-use scenarios, and species-specific impacts to produce an assessment of relative risks for use in conservation planning on the 1.2 million-hectare study region. Our procedure allows spatially explicit analyses of risks to multiple species from multiple sources by identifying a set of hazards faced by all species of interest, identifying a set of feasible management alternatives, assigning scores to each species for each hazard, and mapping the distribution of these hazard scores across the region of interest for each combination of species/management alternatives. We illustrate the procedure with examples. We demonstrate that our risk-based approach to conservation planning can provide resource managers with a useful tool for spatial assessment of threats to species of concern.     

Managing Multiple Facets of Risk in New Product Alliances*

The trend of forming alliances to develop new products continues; however, many of these new product alliances fail. As such we explore how key risk types intrinsic in new product alliances, performance, relational, and knowledge appropriation risks, influence alliance success. Further, we theorize that different alliance governance mechanisms can reduce the negative impact of risks on alliance success. To disentangle possible heterogeneous factors across firms that may affect the interplay of risk assessments and the use of governance mechanisms, we employ latent class regression analysis on survey data collected from 128 new product alliance firms and find support for a two‐regime solution. Longer alliance relationships and lower technological turbulence are factors for some firms (regime one), while the opposite are factors for other firms (regime two). These two regimes show different patterns in the interplay of risk assessments and governance for alliance success. Our theory and results support viewing risk as a multiple‐factor concept and by understanding the different impacts of the risk types in new product alliances and how governance mechanisms mitigate such effects, we aid managers' decision making regarding the balance of contractual versus normative governance in new product alliances. Understanding the heterogeneous factors inherent in these complex relationships enables managers to understand the conditions in which various governance mechanisms promote new product alliance success.     

Multicriteria Decision Analysis: A Comprehensive Decision Approach for Management of Contaminated Sediments

Contaminated sediments and other sites present a difficult challenge for environmental decisionmakers. They are typically slow to recover or attenuate naturally, may involve multiple regulatory agencies and stakeholder groups, and engender multiple toxicological and ecotoxicological risks. While environmental decision-making strategies over the last several decades have evolved into increasingly more sophisticated, information-intensive, and complex approaches, there remains considerable dissatisfaction among business, industry, and the public with existing management strategies. Consequently, contaminated sediments and materials are the subject of intense technology development, such as beneficial reuse or in situ treatment. However, current decision analysis approaches, such as comparative risk assessment, benefit-cost analysis, and life cycle assessment, do not offer a comprehensive approach for incorporating the varied types of information and multiple stakeholder and public views that must typically be brought to bear when new technologies are under consideration. Alternatively, multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) offers a scientifically sound decision framework for management of contaminated materials or sites where stakeholder participation is of crucial concern and criteria such as economics, environmental impacts, safety, and risk cannot be easily condensed into simple monetary expressions. This article brings together a multidisciplinary review of existing decision-making approaches at regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe and synthesizes state-of-the-art research in MCDA methods applicable to the assessment of contaminated sediment management technologies. Additionally, it tests an MCDA approach for coupling expert judgment and stakeholder values in a hypothetical contaminated sediments management case study wherein MCDA is used as a tool for testing stakeholder responses to and improving expert assessment of innovative contaminated sediments technologies.     

Life-Cycle Assessment in Relation to Risk Assessment: An Evolving Perspective

A life-cycle approach takes a cradle-to-grave perspective of a product's numerous activities from the raw material extraction to final disposal. There have been recent efforts to develop life-cycle assessment (LCA) to assess both environmental and human health issues. The question then arises: what are the capabilities of LCA, especially in relation to risk assessment? To address this question, this paper first describes the LCA mass-based accounting system and then analyzes the use of this approach for environmental and human health assessment. The key LCA limitations in this respect are loss of spatial, temporal, dose-response, and threshold information. These limitations affect LCA's capability to assess several environmental issues, and human health in particular. This leads to the conclusion that LCA impact assessment does not predict or measure actual effects, quantitate risks, or address safety. Instead, LCA uses mass loadings with simplifying assumptions and subjective judgments to add independent effects and exposures into an overall score. As a result, LCA identifies possible human health issues on a systemwide basis from a worst case, hypothetical hazard perspective. Ideally, the identified issues would then be addressed by more detailed assessment methods, such as risk assessment.     

基于多种污染物损害视角的地方政府间环境规制合作策略研究

考虑多种(非累积性和累积性)污染物对环境造成不同损害的前提下,首先基于Stackelberg博弈分析占主导的地方政府和跟随的工业企业各自的动态决策过程,确定工业企业的最优污染物排放量;随后运用最优控制理论构建两个相邻地区在非合作和合作博弈下关于跨界污染最优控制的博弈模型,分析地方政府的环境治理策略,包括最优的环境保护税、污染治理投资,探讨污染物存量的动态变化情况,并对此两种博弈结构进行了比较分析。理论及仿真分析表明：无论地区间是非合作还是合作博弈,工业企业的最优污染物排放量与其污染物减排比例的相关性不确定;每个地区的最优环境保护税与污染物减排比例呈正相关。但合作博弈下,每个地区均会考虑其非累积性污染物排放对其相邻地区造成的损害;每个地区均会增加污染治理投资;所有地区的总收益高于非合作博弈下,且高出部分(合作剩余)受累积性污染物的损害以及非累积性污染物对相邻地区损害的影响,但是与非累积性污染物对本地区的损害无关。     

Risk assessment for handling hazardous substances within the European industry: Available methodologies and research streams

After the Seveso disaster occurred more than 40 years ago, there has been an increasing awareness of the potential impacts that similar accident events can occur in a wide range of process establishments, where the handling and production of hazardous substances pose a real threat to society and the environment. In these industrial sites denominated “Seveso sites,” the urgent need for an effective strategy emerged markedly to handle hazardous activities and to ensure safe conditions. Since then, the main challenging research issues have focused on how to prevent such accident events and how to mitigate their consequences leading to the development of many risk assessment methodologies. In recent years, researchers and practitioners have tried to provide useful overviews of the existing risk assessment methodologies proposing several reviews. However, these reviews are not exhaustive because they are either dated or focus only on one specific topic (e.g., liquefied natural gas, domino effect, etc.). This work aims to overcome the limitations of the current reviews by providing an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the risk assessment methodologies for handling hazardous substances within the European industry. In particular, we have focused on the current techniques for hazards and accident scenarios identification, as well as probability and consequence analyses for both onshore and offshore installations. Thus, we have identified the research streams that have characterized the activities of researchers and practitioners over the years, and we have then presented and discussed the different risk assessment methodologies available concerning the research stream that they belong to.