“Low carbon economy”

Network economy. Knowledge economy. Information economy. Global economy. Creative economy. Information age. Network society. (I must be forgetting something).

And now: Low carbon economy.

Environmental issues have been discussed eagerly by politicians in the UK press this week; low carbon economy is the “buzz-phrase” according to this piece from BBC. Not without a reason according to these pictures, which project dramatic changes in surface temperature over the next century. Human activity is quoted as a “very likely” cause for this change.

In the literature on supply chain management we find the word green as one of the labels for environmental concerns. This recent paper by S. K. Srivastava “Green supply-chain management: A state-of-the-art literature review” (The latest issue of International Journal of Management Reviews) presents a comprehensive review of the literature within the realm of “green supply chain management”. (A useful overview for those who are working on reverse logistics, waste management, recyling and remanufacturing).

One of the conclusions in this paper is that:

“One of the biggest challenges facing the field of GrSCM is extending the historical ‘common wisdom’ about managing operations. Much research, management education and many practical applications have focused on buffering the operations function from external influences, including the natural environment, in order to improve efficiencies, reduce cost and increase quality. When the natural environment is considered, it is typically recognized or modelled as an external constraint, requiring operations to work within prescribed limits. Once this basic assumption is relaxed, a fundamental question arises about how to pursue research on green issues in operations: should this be considered a separate research stream with its own strategic framework or should green issues be integrated into existing operations management research frameworks and areas? While the complexity of green issues might favour the former approach, the greatest contributions can be achieved by pursuing opportunities within a more integrative framework.” (our emphasis in bold).

Environmental responsibility is considered as one of the operations challenges in a textbook I am using as a core text in a Operations Management course. It is presented on five pages at the last chapter of the book as a part of The operations challenge. I decided to include this chapter (and topic) at the beginning of the course to emphasise the environmental issue that relates to Operations Management. Still, I have found it difficult (or rather complex, cf. the notion made by Srivastava) to integrate this aspect into the current models and approaches in such textbook.

Can we expect a textbook that provides an integrative framework on environmental issues?

Árni