In recent years, sustainability issues are gaining greater prominence among organizations and their stakeholders around the world. This paper aims to verify the sustainability performance of Brazil...

Measurement of sustainability performance in Brazilian organizations

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. In the last decades, sustainable concerns have increasingly gained importance to organizational survival, and Lean/Six Sigma approaches are becoming more and more outstanding in order to improve sustainability performance. This article aims to evaluate the degree of importance of sustainable performance measures of Brazilian organizations and to propose guidelines to achieve sustainability by aligning these measures with operational improvement programmes. Multiple data collection methods were applied as theoretical literature review, questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews with industry professionals and academic researchers. The findings show that it is the corporate responsibility to focus their efforts on both operational improvement programmes and sustainable initiatives in order to achieve better environmental protection, corporate reputation, quality management, cost performance and suppliers relations, as they are considered to be more important on organizational sustainability.

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Towards sustainability by aligning operational programmes and sustainable performance measures

In the past few decades, business performance has been approached from a multidimensional perspective, because a pro-active corporate sustainability reporting system for assessing the financial performance of an organization should at least address impacts at the organization and community levels, as well as the resulting associated social impacts. The purpose of this research was to identify the accessibility of corporate sustainability reporting instruments for Romanian managers and their role in increasing the financial performance of organizations. This study concludes that corporate social reporting indicators can be integrated into the reporting of the financial performance of a company and can transform sustainability into tangible value for all interested parties. In addition, the empirical results contribute to the understanding of corporate social responsibility practices; although being non-financial, these seem to be financially meaningful at a certain level after other financial factors are controlled for.

Corporate Sustainability Reporting and Financial Performance

In the context of the current economy, the concept of corporate social responsibility has gained momentum, and its significance derives from the attitude of companies that have understood the importance of the impact of their activity on the environment in which they conduct their operations. The present study emphasizes the fact that CSR has an equal importance for those companies of varying sizes that operate in developing countries, such as Romania. There are still a lot of challenges regarding their implementation. The study focuses on establishing the level of CSR report by the Romanian companies within the European Union framework by taking into account the extent to which they are familiar with the CSR reporting guidelines in order to identify the degree of applying the Global Reporting Guidelines (GRI) when designing the sustainability reports. The data regarding the acceptance of the voluntary report and its correlation to the sustainable development as a strategic focus of the management of entities, the usefulness, the necessity and the obstacles of voluntary reporting were gathered based on a questionnaire. Between 2015–2017, 61 Romanian companies of various sizes had to answer specific questions. The research is based on the descriptive statistics as well as the correlation analysis method. The findings of the research proved that the acceptance of the management in terms of the sustainable development is in a close relationship with implementing voluntary reporting and the willingness to develop a favorable image of the company within a competitive market. The study also identified the differences that exist between a company’s success on the market that is linked to their development and the economic factors that characterize each and every field of activity. The present study focuses on defining the term ‘social responsibility’ from the point of view of its concepts. It also aims at presenting the social responsibility reporting methods used by the companies from the European Union countries. These can be a starting point for those companies that have not had the chance of applying them yet.

Analysis of Social Responsibility and Reporting Methods of Romanian Companies in the Countries of the European Union

To understand the role of green credit in maintaining economic sustainability, we develop theoretical hypotheses including expectation, supervision and capital allocation channels to explain the impacts of green credit. Then, we use hybrid econometric models by using Chinese-listed enterprises in the energy-saving and environmental sectors from 2007 to 2015 as the research sample to verify the above hypotheses. The empirical results show that: (1) the average value of financial performance and operational efficiency is relatively low, and the endogenous abilities of those enterprises have not yet been established; (2) the issuance of green loans does not improve public expectations of enterprises in the green industry, thus the expectation channel is not supported; (3) the issuance of green loans does not necessarily improve the enterprise’s operational efficiency and financial performance, thus the supervision channel hypotheses are not supported; and (4) green loans lead to an increase in financing costs, management costs, operation costs, and expenditure on R&D, thus, the capital allocation hypothesis is partly supported. Based on the empirical analysis, we also provide some countermeasures to strengthen the roles of green credit to support the development of energy-saving and environmental enterprises.

Investigating the Influence of Green Credit on Operational Efficiency and Financial Performance Based on Hybrid Econometric Models

The aim of the paper is to propose a model for measuring sustainable value which would complexly assess environmental, social, and corporate governance contribution to value creation. In the paper the concept of the Sustainable Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance Value Added is presented. The Sustainable Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance Value Added is based on the Sustainable Value Added model and combines weighted environmental, social, and corporate governance indicators with their benchmarks determined by Data Envelopment Analysis. Benchmark values of indicators were set for each company separately and determine the optimal combination of environmental, social, and corporate governance inputs to economic outcomes. The Sustainable Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance Value Added methodology is applied on real-life corporate data and presented through a case study. The value added of most of the selected companies was negative, even though economic indicators of all of them are positive. The Sustainable Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance Value Added is intended to help owners, investors, and other stakeholders in their decision-making and sustainability assessment. The use of environmental, social, and corporate governance factors helps identify the company’s strengths and weaknesses, and provides a more sophisticated insight into it than the one-dimensional methods based on economic performance alone.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/9/945/pdf

Measuring Corporate Sustainability and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance Value Added

Digital technologies represent an important factor in the achievement of the sustainability goals of the European Green Deal. Whether the digitalisation trend will contribute to the sustainable development of societies in the long term depends on how we shape and understand it. The aim of this paper is to create a concept for the management of the threats and opportunities in the digital transformation of SMEs. As part of a broader research project, a complex tool was developed to assess the digital maturity of SMEs, and our paper focuses on one aspect of this tool, which is related to the identification and management of the opportunities and threats that are associated with digital transformation trends. The methodology that was used to develop this paper is based on a pilot survey that involved 154 SMEs in the Czech Republic, 74 of which were used for the follow-up survey on the opportunities and threats. Sixteen key trends were identified, which were then reduced to five latent factors, with their names forming five dimensions. In the cluster analysis, the companies were divided into three clusters, which served as the basis for determining the final cluster centres. The result is a concept for the management of the threats and opportunities in the digital transformation of SMEs. Digital transformation is the broad topic. Therefore, the theoretical overlap of this study can be seen in the narrower focus on the identification and management of the opportunities and threats in digital transformation. In addition, this study focuses on SMEs because there are more than one million small and medium-sized enterprises in the Czech Republic, and they create 54% of the innovative solutions. The practical impact of this study can be understood in the fact that the proposed concept may enable SMEs to more easily manage threats and opportunities in their digital transformation.

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Threats and Opportunities in Digital Transformation in SMEs from the Perspective of Sustainability: A Case Study in the Czech Republic

Purpose of the article: is to present results of the research realized in the framework of the project: CZ. 1.07/2.2.00/15.0433 Innovation of the selected subjects in the field of preparation, management and implementation of development, education and research projects realized by the Faculty of Business VUT in Brno.
Methodology/methods: The research was conceived as quantitative, i.e. after formulation of the expected declarations was drawn up a set of questions verifying the effects of individual factors upon the implementation of development projects in enterprises. Survey respondents were project managers most of whom are members of the Society for project management.
Scientific aim: The objective of the project is to improve and increase the education level in the field of preparation, management and implementation of development, education and research projects. This should increase the qualification of the graduates; provide them with better employability and a better position in the labour market. The project emphasizes in particular the practical aspects of the education, where the participants will prepare in the form of a training model projects under real terms and conditions from announced calls and will be informed about all the essential aspects for a successful preparation and implementation of the projects.
Findings: The aim of this research was to determine the level of technical and behavioural competences during the implementation of the development projects in companies in the Czech Republic. The purpose was disclosure of the opportunities for innovation of study programs on the Faculty of Business VUT in Brno by the elements of the project management. The article presents a part of the research oriented to the field of projects implementation, the individual stages of the project, tools, methods and the benefits of the project management. Further it points out the most common causes of projects failure.
Conclusions: The realized research supports the allegation about a move of the importance of usage of the instruments of project management from the implementation stage in the pre-project stage, which is assessed at the same time as the hardest one. The project organization is most frequently used in fields of products innovations (products and services) and in information technology. The article further presents the level of use of various instruments and methods of the project management. The research results will be used in the proposals for innovation of study subjects in the Faculty of Business VUT in Brno.

https://trends.fbm.vutbr.cz/index.php/trends/article/download/55/44

The Use of Project Management Tools in the Czech Republic

This paper focuses on a new trend in management – business agility. This term is brand new in the field of management, but agile practices are well known in project management, especially in the IT sector. Purpose – the purpose of the paper is to clear the ify the relevance of a brand new topic – business agility. This purpose will be divided into six partial purposes. Research methodology – the research methodology consists of literature reviews as the first step followed by hypothesis and questionnaire survey. Findings – the findings and results derived from the research and reported at the end of the paper. The questionnaire survey is carried out to support or disprove the hypothesis. The most significant chapters are finding results and conclusion. Practical implications – the practical implications can be found in the model of business agility transformation that can be used in business, the potential risk of business agility transformation and benefits related to business agility. Research limitations – there is one research limitation and it is basically because there are not many companies that are agile in the Czech Republic and the term of business agility is new and it can influence a number of the filled questionnaire. Originality/Value – the originality and value can be seen in the contribution of this paper: the model of implementation business agility into the company. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3846/cibmee.2019.080

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Business agility – new trend in business

Project management is a set of validated and described procedures that comprehensively solve the implementation and management of defined activities that relate to a specific project. In the Czech Republic, the issue of risk management in projects often neglected and began to be more used to the ESF projects where is the risk management required. There are used most often for risk analysis 3 methods - sensitivity analysis, RIPRAN method, scoring method. The following article focuses on risk management methods that are not used in common practice immediately concern to project risk management. The benefit of this paper is the connection between methods used in project management and the methods of risk analysis. The result is an overview of the main advantages and disadvantages of these methods and the possibility of their use in different phases of the project, taking into account the time and cost effectiveness.

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Lenka Smolíková

Papers

Measuring Corporate Sustainability and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance Value Added

Threats and Opportunities in Digital Transformation in SMEs from the Perspective of Sustainability: A Case Study in the Czech Republic

The Use of Project Management Tools in the Czech Republic

Business agility – new trend in business

The Comparison of Selected Risk Management Methods for Project Management