Search Results (4,654)

Certification schemes are increasingly positioned as institutional mechanisms that may support sustainable food markets, yet the joint longitudinal relationship between certified production penetration, certified supply-chain infrastructure and organic market uptake remains insufficiently integrated in European-scale empirical analyses. This study examined how certified organic production, supply-chain infrastructure, and market uptake co-evolved across Europe. A country–year panel of 995 observations from 41 European countries (2000–2024) was assembled from FiBL statistics and analysed using descriptive trend analysis, Spearman correlations, linear mixed-effects models with country random intercepts, and k-means clustering. Certified organic systems expanded substantially: mean organic farmland share rose from 2.80% to 9.73%, retail sales share from 1.42% to 4.49%, and per capita consumption from €25.82 to €87.60. Organic area share remained positively associated with organic retail sales share after adjustment for PPP-adjusted GDP per capita (β = 1.247, p < 0.001), with a similar pattern for the secondary per capita consumption outcome (β = 36.426, p < 0.001). Certified supply-chain actors were strongly intercorrelated (producers–processors ρ = 0.824). Organic farmland share was the most consistent correlate of market uptake, including after adjustment for GDP per capita, whereas absolute operator counts and supply-chain infrastructure indicators were more difficult to interpret independently because of collinearity. A four-cluster typology showed that countries with the largest certified production bases were not those with the most mature markets. These findings are consistent with the interpretation that certification penetration may support market development by providing credible institutional signals, but trust creation, information asymmetry reduction, and legitimacy were not directly measured. The results, therefore, indicate an association between certification-system development and market uptake, while also showing that production expansion and market maturity are distinct dimensions of the sustainability transition. Full article

Sodium-ion batteries are emerging as credible complements to lithium-ion technology for sustainable, safe, and cost-effective energy storage. This critical review links molecular-scale electrolyte solvation and interphase chemistry to electrode compatibility, full-cell engineering, manufacturing constraints, and commercial viability. Organic liquid, aqueous, ionic-liquid, concentrated, inorganic solid, polymer, and composite electrolytes are compared using transport, stability, processing, and interface criteria. The principal cathode and anode families are then evaluated in terms of practical voltage, reversible capacity, cycling stability, raw-material exposure, manufacturability, and end-of-life implications. A distinctive contribution of this work is the explicit separation of thermodynamic predictions, laboratory measurements, prototype demonstrations, and company-reported targets, together with design rules that connect electrolyte chemistry to cell-level performance. Sodium-ion batteries are unlikely to replace lithium-ion batteries universally, but they can occupy a strategic role where cost, safety, abundance, supply-chain resilience, and circularity outweigh maximum energy density. Full article

Systematic risk plays a central role in company valuation, enterprise risk management, and sustainable investment. However, conventional approaches primarily rely on historical beta estimates and provide limited insight into the factors associated with future changes in systematic risk. This study develops an AI-supported framework for identifying the determinants of one-year-ahead industry beta coefficients for the US economy by combining macroeconomic variables with risk indicators derived from global news analytics. Annual industry betas published by Damodaran are transformed into monthly observations to align with lagged explanatory variables. The analysis combines macroeconomic indicators with twenty-two artificial intelligence-supported risk categories extracted from the GDELT database, collectively representing Dynamic Sustainability Risk. The empirical results show that historical beta persistence alone does not fully explain future industry beta coefficients. Sustainability-related factors—including ESG, supply-chain, technological, strategic, and labor-market risks—consistently appear among the significant determinants across industries, complementing traditional macroeconomic variables. Furthermore, forward-looking systematic risk is associated with interactions between macroeconomic conditions and dynamic sustainability-related risks rather than with historical financial information alone. Rather than developing a forecasting model, the proposed framework provides an interpretable approach for identifying the macroeconomic and sustainability-related determinants associated with future industry beta coefficients, thereby supporting company valuation, enterprise risk management, and sustainable financial decision-making. Full article

Background: The downstream oil and gas processing industry faces substantial environmental, regulatory, safety, and operational risks. Advanced technologies can reduce these risks and improve productivity, compliance, sustainability, and worker safety. However, despite adopting AI, analytics, machine learning, and IoT, Indian firms continue to lag behind their global counterparts, and Industry 5.0 adoption in this sector remains underexplored. Methods: This study examines Industry 5.0 adoption barriers using data from an Indian public-sector oil and gas organisation. Guided by the Resource-Based View and supply chain integration perspective, it applies a mixed-methods design combining a literature review, focus group discussion, Delphi analysis, and Fuzzy ISM–MICMAC. Forty-two barriers were identified and reduced to eight critical barriers. Results: Low technological maturity and lack of value-chain integration emerged as the principal driving barriers, influencing implementation failure, organisational technological readiness, and management commitment, which subsequently affect data quality. Geopolitics emerged as an autonomous barrier with both positive and adverse effects. Conclusions: This study develops a sector-specific framework explaining the hierarchical relationships among technological, organisational, sociotechnical, and value-chain barriers. It extends Industry 5.0 research in hazardous, human–technology-dependent operations and offers practical guidance for a human-centric, sustainable, and resilient transformation. Full article

China’s pork sector is a major component of the national food system. Establishing plant-based pork supply chains requires coordination across production, quality control, infrastructure, logistics, information exchange, and market formation. However, previous studies generally examine these barriers separately, limiting understanding of how they interact within the wider food-supply system. This study identifies and analyzes the systemic barriers to establishing plant-based pork supply chains in China. An integrated Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach is applied. FDM is used to refine and validate 14 contextually relevant barriers based on expert consensus, while DEMATEL examines their direct and indirect relationships, systemic prominence, and net causal influence. Insufficient research and development funding and deficiencies in quality control emerge as the strongest net causal barriers. High infrastructure investment also belongs to the cause group, while technological, operational, and market-related barriers occupy different causal and dependent positions within the wider system. The results support a sequenced intervention strategy that begins with innovation capacity, quality assurance, and infrastructure, followed by operational coordination and market formation. This study contributes by moving beyond barrier identification and ranking to explain how multiple barrier domains interact and how interventions can be prioritized. The analysis concerns supply chain establishment and does not directly assess the environmental, economic, or social sustainability performance of plant-based pork. Full article

Hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) is extensively utilized as a binder and in controlled-release matrices, yet its production predominantly relies on high-purity α-cellulose derived from wood or cotton, which subjects supply chains to sustainability issues and fluctuations in feedstock prices. Annually, sugarcane bagasse, estimated at approximately 490–600 million tons annualy, presents a scalable, residue-based cellulose source for HPC production within circular bioeconomy frameworks. This review compiles findings from 106 peer-reviewed studies on cellulose and HPC derived from bagasse, addressing synthesis methods, structure–property relationships, and pharmaceutical applications. Published studies indicate that HPC derived from bagasse can achieve a degree of substitution (DS 1.87) compared to commonly reported commercial wood-pulp HPC grades (DS 1.8–2.5). Crystallinity reduction relative to commercial HPC has been proposed based on the lower crystallinity of the underlying bagasse cellulose feedstock, but this has not yet been directly measured for the hydroxypropylated product. Beyond performance, bagasse is an agricurtural residue available at negligible feedstock cost, in contrast to the established market prices of purified wood pulp and cotton linter (US$18–25 per kg) used in commercial HPC manufacturing. Life-cycle assessments of bagasse valorization pathways have similarly reported favorable environmental profiles relative to conventional biomass feedstocks. However, no dedicated techno-economic or life-cycle assessment specific to pharmaceutical-grade HPC production from bagasse has been published, and these potential sustainability and cost advantages therefore remain to be formally validated at industrial scale. Key challenges remain in regulatory acceptance, impurity control, batch-to-batch standardization, and scaling up etherification under pharmaceutical good manufacturing practice (GMP) constraints. Overall, the reviewed literature positions sugarcane bagasse (SCB)-derived HPC as a promising candidate for combining excipient performance with potential sustainability and cost benefits, necessitating targeted process optimization and qualification studies to expedite industrial adoption. Full article

With the acceleration of port electrification, the recycling of retired batteries has become an emerging challenge for green port development and sustainable maritime logistics. Digitalized recycling technologies can improve battery traceability, condition assessment, and recycling coordination, but their implementation requires substantial investment. This study investigates how government subsidy mechanisms influence digitalized retired battery recycling decisions in green ports. A digitalized reverse supply chain consisting of a battery manufacturer, a retailer, and green ports as end users is considered. Based on a two-stage Stackelberg game framework, two policy scenarios are developed and compared: a no-government-subsidy (NG) scenario and a government-subsidy (TG) scenario. The analytical results demonstrate that government subsidies can promote digital technology adoption, enhance recycling demand, and improve supply chain profitability when green ports have strong preferences for digitalized recycling services and when digital investment costs remain within a reasonable range. The numerical simulations further indicate that the effectiveness of subsidies depends on the interaction between green port preference and the manufacturer’s digital investment cost coefficient. The findings provide theoretical and managerial implications by revealing how government subsidies, green port digital preferences, and digital investment costs jointly influence recycling decisions and supply chain performance. Specifically, the results suggest that governments should design differentiated subsidy mechanisms according to digital technology maturity and market conditions, manufacturers should optimize digital investment strategies in reverse supply chains, and green ports should strengthen digital traceability and coordination capabilities to improve retired battery recycling efficiency. Full article

Modern industries cannot escape entropy. In this study, we argue that organizational transilience constitutes a fundamental pillar of long-term sustainability—an argument grounded in the automotive sector, where pressure for ecological transition is arguably at its peak. Industrial organizations facing volatile, highly entropic conditions increasingly depend on the relational skills of their leaders to sustain and reinforce resilience. However, these skills remain poorly integrated into quantitative research frameworks. We address this gap by developing a nonlinear dynamical system, built on three coupled differential equations, that formalizes how a leader’s cognitive, conative, and relational competencies shape organizational evolution across five maturity states: fragility, robustness, transformation, antifragility, and transilience. The resulting framework suggests how these combined soft skills may expand an organization’s dynamic carrying capacity through strategic reconfiguration. Stability analysis further reveals that transilience is not simply a qualitative aspiration, but a mathematically traceable outcome of human agency. Taken together, our findings offer formal evidence that soft skills are structural imperatives—not optional assets—for organizational viability in high-entropy markets. Full article

Point-of-care and near-patient diagnostics can shorten the time between testing and clinical or public-health action, but a technically effective test does not by itself create a sustainable diagnostic service. Evidence from diagnostic-access research, digitally connected point-of-care testing, human-centered design, and implementation science indicates that diagnostic technologies must be developed as components of wider service systems encompassing workflows, quality assurance, data governance, maintenance, supply chains, user trust, and linkage to care. Drawing on these bodies of literature, this Perspective introduces the I2Med digital infrastructure framework for point-of-care diagnostics in low-resource and infrastructure-constrained settings. These settings are defined functionally as clinical or public-health environments in which resource or infrastructure constraints can disrupt one or more stages between testing and appropriate action. The I2Med framework integrates six domains: (1) access and context of use; (2) the result-to-action diagnostic workflow; (3) digital interfaces and data governance; (4) quality, risk, usability, and design-control alignment; (5) sustainability, maintenance, and supply continuity; and (6) equity, trust, and community accountability. Operational tools—including a setting typology, a domain-to-artifact matrix, an evidence-to-scale maturity ladder, and a hypothetical application vignette—illustrate how the framework can guide development and implementation planning. The I2Med framework’s central contribution is to reposition the diagnostic device as one component of an interconnected service system and to provide academic, translational, and early-stage development teams with a common structure for identifying implementation dependencies, evidence gaps, and responsibilities. As a conceptual framework, it requires prospective application and evaluation across diverse settings before its utility and transferability can be established. Full article

Under the backdrop of the global economic transition towards high-quality development, green innovation has emerged as a pivotal driver in the pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals. However, enterprises often face financing constraints and high-risk challenges when engaging in green technology innovation. As a novel financial model that integrates financial resources with industrial operations, supply chain finance (SCF) has emerged as a potential solution. This study aims to investigate whether SCF effectively promotes corporate green innovation and to analyze its underlying mechanisms. Drawing on data from China’s A-share listed firms, this study measures corporate green innovation using patent data, which are identified from the IncoPat database based on the WIPO Green Inventory’s IPC classifications. Concurrently, firms’ deployment and depth of engagement in supply chain finance are assessed via textual analysis. The empirical findings demonstrate that SCF exerts a significant positive impact on fostering corporate green innovation. Mechanism analysis further uncovers that SCF enhances green innovation capabilities primarily through two pathways: mitigating financial constraints and accelerating the process of digital transformation. Results from the heterogeneity tests demonstrate that such an incentivizing impact is predominantly pronounced among enterprises characterized by superior ESG performance. Furthermore, our empirical investigation reveals a distinct inverted U-shaped pattern characterizing the nexus between SCF and corporate green innovation, which implies that an excessive dependence on SCF could ultimately impede innovative activities. We provide firm-level empirical evidence that deepens the understanding of SCF’s role in fostering green innovation, revealing that SCF is a key instrument for financial resources to integrate into the green transition. Policymakers and managers should utilize and develop SCF within a reasonable scale and focus on digital upgrading to achieve sustainable economic growth. Full article

The transition towards the circular economy and improved environmental management is a major challenge for manufacturing SMEs under growing pressures for resource efficiency, waste reduction and industrial sustainability. Although circular economy, environmental management, digitalization and artificial intelligence are widely discussed, they are often treated separately and rarely integrated into maturity-assessment frameworks. This article proposes CEEMMI—Circular Economy and Environmental Management Maturity Index—a digital- and AI-oriented diagnostic framework with a multi-criteria structure for manufacturing SMEs. CEEMMI integrates eight dimensions covering circular strategy, eco-design, resource efficiency, life cycle management, circular supply chains, digitalization and AI, organizational capabilities and sustainable performance. In its current version, the model is operationalized as an equal-weighted additive index for preliminary self-assessment, pending future content-validity testing and expert-derived weighting. The framework supports five-level maturity classification, profile-based interpretation, compensability safeguards and illustrative sensitivity analysis, offering a reproducible basis for diagnosis, decision support and future empirical validation. Full article

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risks increasingly propagate across interconnected supply chains, yet conventional ESG assessment methods remain largely reliant on firm-level disclosures and static ESG ratings that often overlook indirect risk transmission among trading partners. This study develops a network-aware artificial intelligence (AI) framework for forecasting ESG risk by integrating Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), transformer-based natural language processing (NLP), explainable AI, and conventional machine-learning techniques. The proposed framework combines supply-chain network structures, shipment-level trade information, ESG controversy records, governance indicators, and transformer-derived ESG sentiment extracted using FinBERT and RoBERTa. Using a dataset of 11,386 firms across 27 industries from 2015 to 2025, the proposed GNN achieved the highest predictive performance, outperforming conventional machine-learning models with an ROC-AUC of 0.913. The results further demonstrate that supply-chain network centrality and transformer-derived ESG sentiment substantially improve the early identification of firms exposed to future ESG controversies. By integrating network relationships with textual ESG intelligence, the proposed framework advances FinTech-enabled ESG analytics and provides a scalable approach for proactive risk monitoring, sustainable investment decision-making, and supply-chain risk management. Full article

This study examines the structural drivers of carbon emission changes across 30 Chinese sectors from 2002 to 2023, employing a nested input–output structural decomposition analysis model grounded in both producer and consumer principles. We further construct a carbon inequality-adjusted network decoupling index to eliminate the systematic carbon transfer bias inherent to the conventional Tapio decoupling indicator. The core empirical findings are as follows: declining carbon intensity has served as the primary driver of emission reductions over the past two decades; however, its effect has been persistently offset by economic expansion. Upstream sectors, such as electricity generation, transfer substantial emissions downstream through sectoral chains, leading to a systematic overestimation of their decoupling performance, whereas the emission reductions in downstream manufacturing sectors are underestimated owing to embodied carbon imports. Inter-industry carbon inequality underwent a structural transformation following the launch of supply-side structural reforms in 2015, which substantially narrowed the arbitrage space for cross-sector carbon shifting. Cluster analysis further reveals that most industries continue to face considerable emission growth pressure. This study offers novel analytical perspectives and empirical evidence for designing carbon allowance allocation and differentiated emission reduction pathways that reconcile economic growth with environmental sustainability. This study offers a new analytical perspective and empirical evidence. It focuses on differentiated emission pathways and allowance allocations. The goal is to balance growth and sustainability. The findings also highlight a key point. Carbon markets must correct for sectoral chain carbon transfers. This study focuses on carbon emissions from 30 broadly defined sectors covering agriculture, mining, manufacturing, energy production and supply, construction, transportation, and commercial services. The accounting scope does not include direct fuel combustion emissions from residential consumption. Full article

European energy markets have experienced significant instability as a result of consecutive global systemic shocks, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic and the geopolitical conflict in Ukraine. This paper analyses the development of crude oil and natural gas prices between 2019 and 2024 and discusses their implications for sustainable logistics, energy security and supply chain resilience in Europe. The study is based on secondary data from internationally recognized sources, including the International Energy Agency, OPEC, Eurostat, the European Council, the World Bank and the U.S. Energy Information Administration. An event-based comparative approach supported by descriptive price-change calculations was applied to distinguish between the pandemic-related demand shock and the geopolitical supply-side shock after 2022. The results show that crude oil prices declined from approximately 64 USD/barrel in 2019 to 41 USD/barrel in 2020, representing a decrease of about 3f5.9%, mainly in connection with reduced mobility, lower transport activity and industrial slowdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, crude oil prices increased to approximately 100 USD/barrel in 2022, representing an increase of about 143.9% compared to 2020, coinciding with geopolitical uncertainty and supply-side pressures. The European natural gas market appeared particularly vulnerable to the 2022 crisis because of supplier dependence, pipeline infrastructure constraints and reduced Russian gas flows. EU natural gas demand declined by 55 billion m³, or 13%, in 2022, indicating the effect of high prices, energy savings and crisis adaptation. The findings suggest that crude oil shocks are mainly related to transport costs and freight rates, while natural gas shocks may influence energy-intensive production, warehousing, cold chains and broader supply chain stability. The study highlights the need for energy diversification, renewable and low-carbon energy development, energy efficiency and more resilient logistics strategies. Full article

The aim of this article is to determine the significance of short supply chains for local and regional development in Poland. The supply chain in Poland is defined as a coordinated set of people, financial and material resources, and activities involved in the process of delivering goods and services from the producer to the end consumer. Short Supply Chains (SSCs) are the foundation of the green economy, aiming to minimize the number of intermediaries and build direct relationships based on trust. Although short supply chains have been widely discussed in the context of sustainable agriculture and rural development, there is still limited research examining how digitalization and local organizational models jointly influence the development of SSCs and their contribution to local and regional development in Poland. This study addresses this gap by analysing selected Polish case studies and examining the combined role of digitalization, institutional support, and local initiatives in strengthening short supply chains. The article presents the situation of short supply chains in Poland using the example of selected organizations and initiatives, such as Poznań Green Market, Sady Grójeckie, Warmiński Koszyk, and Wiejska e-skrzynka. These cases demonstrate the impact of advancing digitalization on the development of local food markets, particularly in terms of shortening distribution channels, increasing access to local products, and strengthening producer–consumer relationships. The economic basis of SSCs is based on farmers taking over market margins and diversifying their income through agricultural retail trade (RHD), marginal, local, and limited (MOL) activities, and agritourism. This development is stimulated by EU funds, including the Rural Development Program (RDP) and Local Action Group (LAG) initiatives, as well as ongoing digitization and growing demand for local food. Furthermore, the development of local markets and short supply chains in the food sector is in line with the European “Farm to Fork” Strategy, which aims to ensure better food quality, reduce waste, and decrease the environmental impact of food systems. The analysis presented in the article will highlight the potential of short supply chains in political processes and make a significant contribution to the debate on strategies for supporting local and regional food markets. Full article