Approaches for the Integration of the Social and Environmental Dimensions of Sustainability in Manufacturing Companies

Abstract

Social, environmental and economic challenges such as poverty, substandard working conditions, climate change, resource scarcity or environmental depletion lead to a rising importance of a multi-dimensional consideration of sustainability in manufacturing companies. The strong impact of manufacturing on humans and the environment necessitates the integration of social and environmental aspects in addition to the currently predominant focus on economic results. This paper exploits the potential of approaches with a cost, result and lifetime perspective in order to obtain a well-balanced and measurable view on sustainability of manufacturing companies in industrial practice.

Identification of stakeholder related barriers in sustainable manufacturing using Social Network Analysis

“…Referring to Figure 2, for Category 1 of the stakeholder-related barrier network of SM, a large area of blue nodes is position at the center of the network, it interprets that the barriers relating to the economic dimension in the TBL contribute relatively large to the stakeholder relater barriers in executing SM in a practical situation, which it is consistent with the findings of what the literature reports in SM. According to literature, the attentions of the TBL currently are devoted imbalanced focuses on the economic dimension, with revealing from the practical sustainable activities up to now (Hollos et al, 2012); a considerable emphasis of the TBL is put on the economic dimension which the weight of the triple bottom line is a shift from the social dimension to the economic dimension (Schönsleben et al, 2016). Consequently, the nodes corresponding to the social and environmental dimensions in Category 1 locate at the edge dissipatedly in the network.…”