This document provides an outline for a keynote presentation on embedding sustainability into strategy and assessing the operations research society's contribution. The presentation discusses defining sustainability, assessing impacts along the value chain, the role of business in society, and catalysts for change. It analyzes the responses that have been made in OR society publications on sustainability challenges. The presentation calls for more research activity and implies that OR has advantages for addressing strategic issues like sustainability across environmental, social, economic, and governance dimensions through its methodologies, methods and tools.

1. Dr. Miles Weaver,
Andrea Bonfiglioli
School of Management,
Edinburgh Napier University,
E: m.weaver@napier.ac.uk
T: @DrMilesWeaver
YOR18 KEYNOTE
Embedding Sustainability into Strategy:
Assessing the OR Society Contribution

2. Presentation Outline
… Getting here Later today …
• Invitation to participate in
a round-table discussion
on ‘Embedding
Sustainability: An OR
Society Perspective’
• Led by Dr. Joao
Quariguasi Frota Net,
Manchester University
• Establishing a „Sustainability and
OR‟ project team for YOR18 and
beyond …
• What is the „sustainability‟
challenge? How might
„Sustainability‟ be defined?
• What contributions have been
made in ORS journals in response to
this challenge? During this stream?
• What implications can be drawn
„towards a „call for action‟ by the
ORS community?

3. Today we ask ….
What responses have
been made in
Operations Research
Society (ORS)
journals on the
sustainability
challenge?

4. OR for Sustainability team
• Andrea Bonfiglioli, Edinburgh Napier
University
• Dr. Joao Quariguasi Frota Net,
Manchester University
• Altea Lorenzo Aribas, Biomathematics
and Statistics Scotland
• Dr. Miles Weaver, Edinburgh Napier
University

5. … Before we do
London 2012 opening ceremony showed us ….

6. London Olympics said a lot about our past …

7. London Olympics said a lot about our past …

8. Plotted some grand challenges faced …

9. Most notably …

10. On the pursuit of growth ….

11. We began to question the role of business in
society ….

12. … further social change
…. We questioned ourselves and our social norms

13. Used the past to hint at our
future …
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give
delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling
instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and
sometime voices,
That if I then had wak'd after long
sleep,
Will make me sleep again, and then in
dreaming,
The clouds methought would open
and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I
wak'd,
I cried to dream again.

William Shakespeare, The
Tempest, III.ii.135-43

14. And more recently ….

15. But now … today?
… the greatest of a lifetime

16. Today‟s „grand‟ challenges …
“For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the
challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of
our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst
financial crisis in a century”.
– Barack Obama Victory Speech (2008)
"Increasingly, the world around us looks
as if we hated it.“
- Alan Watts

17. Sketching today‟s canvas:
• We are off on a
safari, get your
binoculars ready.
• Write down three
animals and what
they may represent
on the sustainability
debate

19. On canvas:
The sustainability debate
Business and Society
Embedding Sustainability
into Practice

20. Business and Society
Q. What is the role of business in society?
“the business of business is business”
– To increase profits as long as it stays within the rules
of the game (no deception or fraud) (Freidman, 1962)
= Ought to be little consideration beyond profit and
shareholder return
Or
2. Prospects for social responsibility and for business to play a
critical and positive role in society
= Business must consider it‟s responsibility in society

21. Embedding sustainability into practice
Q. Why, what, how can business
embed sustainability into strategy,
operations and supply?
– Source of business opportunity (Ghobidian et al.,
1995)
• Cost e.g. eliminate waste
• Quality e.g. underpins trust
– ‘The next big …’ competitive advantage? (Laszlo
and Zhexembayeva, 2011)

22. Corporate Responsibility:
the emerging agenda
The UN Global Compact makes this explicit:
• Never before has there been a greater alignment
between the objectives of the international community
and those of the business world. Common goals, such
as building markets, combating corruption, safeguarding
the environment and ensuring social inclusion, have
resulted in unprecedented partnerships and openness
between business, governments, civil society, labour and
the United Nations‟.

23. Catalysts for change

24. Recent sustainability (and governance)
failures

25. Recent sustainability (and governance)
failures

26. Not all so bad …
M&S: Response to
this challenge
Who is following
suit?
“To be the worlds most
sustainable major retailer by
2015”
“But we can only make that
happen with your continued
support”
M&S Plan A

27. Defining sustainability
“meeting present needs without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs”
•
(Sanders, 2012)
OrganisationInputs Outputs
All issues involved in
resource consumption
All issues involved with
pollutant emissions

28. Assessing impacts along the value chain
Laszlo (2008)

29. Corporate responsibility to sustainability (I)
• Research has tended to focus on „green‟ issues
– Cleaner production, pollution prevention, pollution control, minimisation of resource
usage, eco-design and others (Glavic and Lukman, 2007)
• Different cultural and economic influences on the definition
(Dahlsrud, 2006 – reviewed 37 definitions)
• Common in the definition is philanthropic responsibilities: ethical,
legal and economical (Caroll, 1991) with an emphasis on an
organisation obligation to constituent organisations other than
shareholders – „stakeholder theory‟ as well as the natural
environment
• Understand environmental „harms‟/ „impacts‟ and „contributions‟
made by stakeholders to successful business operations

30. Corporate responsibility to sustainability (II)
• Triple bottom line
approach (Elkington,
1998)
• Sustainable development
– Development that meets the
needs of the present without
compromising the ability of
future generations to meet
their own needs (Brundtland
Commission for the United
Nations, 1987)

31. Sustainability and competitive advantage
• „few‟ or „many‟?
• The „next de facto standard‟ – a „threshold
capability‟?
Hart (2005) proposed:
– One of the most important drivers of new
resources and capability development for
firms will be the constraints and challenges
posed by the natural environment
– Competitive advantage, is to be rooted in
capabilities that facilitate environmentally
sustainable activity
– It appears inevitable that business (markets)
will be constrained by and dependent upon
ecosystems (nature).

32. Assessing OR society response to the
sustainability challenge
What responses have been made
in ORS publications on the
sustainability challenge to date?
• Draw on some comparisons with:
– systems/OR research in general (to
be extended)
– Research in supply chain
management journals (See Ashby et
al., 2012)
– Stream contributions

33. No. of papers per journal title using pre-
defined search terms
Journal Title ABS ranking (2010)
No. of papers
All terms
Supply chain
related
European Journal of
Information Systems
3 0 0
Health Systems (launched in 2012) 0 0
Journal of Simulation - 0 0
Journal of the Operational
Research Society
3 26 15
Knowledge Management
Research & Practice
1 1 1
OR Insight 1 2 0
Total N/A 29 16

34. No. of OR society reviewed papers per
year (all search terms)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

35. Search terms
Boundary Search terms
No of papers in
operations and
supply journals
noted in Ashby et
al., (2012)
No of
papers
in IAOR
No of papers
in OR society
specific
journals
Organisational
Sustainability
16
60 8
sustainable development* 33 4
Corporate social responsibility 8 2 0
Social sustainability 7 4 0
Life cycle analysis (LCA) 3 8 1
Supply
Green supply chains 35 15 1
Sustainable supply chain
management (SSCM)
14 1 0
Closed loop supply chains 7 23 1
Integrated supply chain 1 10 0
* The term sustainable development was searched with sustainability by Ashby et al., (2012). For
the purposes of this review the terms are split to ensure that no papers are omitted from the
search.

36. Occurrences in the ORS literature per
sustainability dimension
N° Paper 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 TOTAL
Dimensions
Environmental / green • • • • • • • • • • • 11
Social • • • • • • • • • • • 11
Economic • • • • • • • • 8
Governance • • • • • 5

37. Snapshots (all OR ABS ranked journals):
Tools discussed in 172 papers …
No. of OR ABS ranked journals reviewed
papers per year (all search terms)

38. Making connections: Sustainability and
OR
• OR have been slow to define and claim a strategic role for OR (Bell,
1998).
– May help explain lack of research on sustainability?
– Community should discuss OR as a strategic asset
– Exciting future to provide a vision
• OR/MS retains the ability to do high stake work and capable of high
level interventions (Lane, 2010)
• Both do not cite the sustainability challenge
• Just as „strategic OR‟ is not oxymoronic, same is true for
„sustainability and OR‟

39. Towards a call for action
• White et al., (2009) the „OR‟ label appears to have a low profile in the
discourse and appropriate methodologies and methods in
sustainability
• Midgley and Reynolds (2004) suggested an agenda for systems/OR
research
– OR has considerable scope to address to address sustainability issues, citing three
essential characteristics of OR:
• OR has a systems orientation | boundary setting – who „controls‟ / „governs‟ a supply
chain? How are „relationships‟ forged and managed?
• Being of an interdisciplinary nature
• Being explicitly purposeful
• Lack of concentration of research activity (i.e. conference streams,
special interest group, special issues in OR journals) except narrower
streams (e.g. greening)

40. Implications for the OR community
• Lane (2010) argues, so do we, that OR research has considerable
advantages to deal with strategic issues and grand challenges
“There is no limit, just give me somewhere to stand,
and I shall move the Earth”
Drachmann (1958, p. 281)
… in terms of sustainability?
• across the EESG dimensions
• Use of OR methodologies, methods and tools

41. Opportunity for future research activity
Systematic literature review and survey of ORS members
– How has sustainability been represented in
OR/systems research to date?
– What are the key similarities and differences in focus
and findings/outputs?
– What research methodologies, OR/systems methods
and tools have been used, which dominate and why?
– What contribution can the OR community offer in the
future?

42. I came to your door as a stranger,
I lived in your house as a guest,
I leave your door as a friend,
• My earth
Rabindranath Tagore,
- 1st non-European to be awarded a Nobel prize for literature in 1913,
- Bengali poet, novelist, musician, playwright.
• Towards a „Call for action‟ – Participate in today
round-table discussion to find out more.
Any questions?