Adopting the Materiality Principle in Sustainable Operations Management
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Literature Review: Sustainable Operations Management
1.2. Theoretical Framework
2. Methodology: Framework Instrumentalization
2.1. Benchmark Definition
2.2. Benchmark
- Our sustainability measure automatically adjusts with the population. If the population grows, the thresholds decrease. For example, a population of 9 billion takes the materiality threshold to 0.020 g/s.
- Any individual can typically be engaged in only one operation at a time, i.e., they are either commuting, at work, or at home, etc. When individuals are at work, they contribute to operations emissions, but they stop commuting emissions. This ignores “background emissions”, e.g., electricity consumption at home that could happen at the same time as commuting. It is not challenging to expand the example to include background emissions, but we omit these as our focus is on industry-scale operations systems in the case studies.
- Only direct emissions are considered, i.e., the lifecycle emissions of the car are not considered. This is because the mining emissions will be attached to miners at work, the fuel refining emissions to refinery workers, etc. Attaching flow emissions to what a person does at a specific point in time removes the risk of accounting for an impact twice, and it captures emissions intensity “as it happens”.
- In this example, we only use one dimension of the framework (dependence on natural resources). To use the second dimension, an estimate of the percentage of emissions compared to all planetary emissions is needed. At an individual level of analysis, doing so generates very small numbers, so it is more useful to look up at a higher level of analysis. For example, in the UK, only 20% of commuters use a car, which would confirm landing in the central band of Figure 2. The US figure of 50% raises more environmental concerns. The case studies in the following sections will further demonstrate the use of the second dimension.
2.3. Case Studies
3. Case Studies
3.1. Case Study A—UK Domestic Freight Provider
3.2. Case Study B—UK University
3.3. Case Study C—Green Surfboard Design
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Perception of Natural Systems | Valid Environmental Strategy [24] | Impact of Harm Reduction | Impact of Harm Elimination |
---|---|---|---|
Nature constant | Exploit nature | None, wasted effort | None, wasted effort |
Nature balanced | Engineer nature | None, wasted effort | Effective to avoid large shocks |
Nature ephemeral | Preserve nature | Preserve nature | Preserve nature |
Nature resilient | Adapt to nature | None, wasted effort | Stops ability of ecosystem to improve integrity and vigour |
Concern | How It Is Addressed by the Framework |
---|---|
Poor allocation of priorities | An actor can assess directly how urgent sustainable initiatives are from their position in the common creditor frame. |
Wasted effort | Actors should not invest in sustainability initiatives in the no material impact zone, unless these initiatives result in efficiency or economic improvements in their own right. |
Uncertain impact assessment | The positions of the threshold lines are uncertain, but actors can use their relative positions to others to gain a sense of the extent to which they could participate in the emergence of an ecological crisis. Work on ecological modelling could define the thresholds more explicitly. Alternatively, mutually agreed-upon thresholds could be used. |
Impact pathways | Once actors are aware of their position, they can “look up” at the next hierarchical level to see if they are part of an unsustainable system, and at what level. They can also “drill down” to a lower level to assess which sub-system or unit is generating a concerning or unstainable position. |
Materiality Threshold | Crisis Threshold | |
---|---|---|
Planetary (in tons per second) | 187 | 756 |
Per person (in grams per second). Global population = 8,115,094,060. | 0.023 | 0.093 |
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Leseure, M.; Bennett, D. Adopting the Materiality Principle in Sustainable Operations Management. Sustainability 2024, 16, 6572. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156572
Leseure M, Bennett D. Adopting the Materiality Principle in Sustainable Operations Management. Sustainability. 2024; 16(15):6572. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156572
Chicago/Turabian StyleLeseure, Michel, and David Bennett. 2024. "Adopting the Materiality Principle in Sustainable Operations Management" Sustainability 16, no. 15: 6572. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16156572