Role of collaboration in green supply chains in the UK: An exploratory study on suppliers, logistics and retailers perspectivesMany companies around the world have started to realise that working alone will not be sufficient in their move towards a greener supply chain (SC). More specifically, recent UK government regulations on implementing strict CO2 reduction encourage SC operators to work collaboratively, in production and logistics or other operations, to achieve their green objectives. In this research, we look at some underlying factors of SC collaboration, focussing on suppliers, logistics and retailers, for the purpose of improving the environmental sustainability of companies' SCs. To facilitate our study, we conduct case studies in two overseas supplier companies with the aim of providing a better understanding of how green issues imposed by European and UK customers influence the companies' actions to meet agreed environmental goals. Based on the initial analysis of the case studies, we develop a conceptual framework which indicates that SC collaboration plays an important role in ensuring companies achieve environmental sustainability of their SCs. Subsequently, staff in middle-management and related roles in sixteen companies operating in the UK are interviewed. This allows us to understand their business practices in terms of SC collaboration with their suppliers and buyers to achieve the goal of CO2 reduction. Finally, drawing upon the information from company reports and websites, a number of UK leading retailers' actions to reduce CO2 emissions are investigated. We develop a conceptual framework of SC collaboration for environmental sustainability to help companies improve their level of collaboration between suppliers and buyers in terms of meeting their environmental objectives. The proposed framework will serve as a base model for the companies using or considering SC collaboration to achieve their environmental agendas, in line with governmental green regulatory requirements.

Operational research models have been employed to understand development issues associated with environmental sustainability. This article describes a novel application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to help extend a specific debate in the literature on Porter's hypothesis in environmental policy. The debate deals with the impact of flexibility of regulations on the relationship between innovation capabilities on financial performance in organisations. Using the resource based view of a firm, we hypothesise that relationship between innovation capabilities and financial performance in firms depends on how flexible or inflexible environmental regulations are. We apply DEA to capture the flexibility of environmental regulations. Our results indicate that innovation capabilities significantly influence financial performance of firms if firms feel that the environmental regulations they face are flexible and offer more freedom in meeting the requirements of regulations. On the other hand, corporations that feel that they face more inflexible regulations are not so effective in improving their financial performance with their innovation capabilities. HighlightsWe use DEA in a novel way to help extend a debate in environmental policy. DEA is used to capture flexibility of environmental regulations Innovation influences financial performance if environmental regulations are flexible.Firms that face less flexible regulations are not so effective.

Climate projections are based on emission scenarios. The emission scenarios used by the IPCC and by mainstream climate scientists are largely derived from the predicted demand for fossil fuels, and in our view take insufficient consideration of the constrained emissions that are likely due to the depletion of these fuels. This paper, by contrast, takes a supply-side view of CO 2 emission, and generates two supply-driven emission scenarios based on a comprehensive investigation of likely long-term pathways of fossil fuel production drawn from peer-reviewed literature published since 2000. The potential rapid increases in the supply of the non-conventional fossil fuels are also investigated. Climate projections calculated in this paper indicate that the future atmospheric CO 2 concentration will not exceed 610 ppm in this century; and that the increase in global surface temperature will be lower than 2.6 o C compared to pre-industrial level even if there is a significant increase in the production of non-conventional fossil fuels. Our results indicate therefore that the IPCC's 2 climate projections overestimate the upper-bound of climate change. Furthermore, this paper shows that different production pathways of fossil fuels use, and different climate models, are the two main reasons for the significant differences in current literature on the topic.

This article reports on the application of Research-Informed Curriculum Design (RICD) for the development and implementation of an MSc Program in Project Management. The research focused on contemporary issues in project management and provided an analysis of project management approaches, tools, and techniques currently used in organizations. Research methods included a literature review, questionnaire survey, focus group studies, and in-depth interviews with project managers. The research findings led to better understanding of current practice from project managers' perspectives and informed the curriculum design of the program. Feedback was obtained from external examiners, project managers, alumni, and current students. Evaluation indicates that the RICD approach has produced a successful program and ensured it is relevant to industry and vocationally attractive to students.

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