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Cradle-to-Cradle Quality: The Role of Management Systems
Abstract
The product certification standard Cradle to Cradle (C2C) claims to offer a new, holistic understanding of quality by integrating material health, environmental, and social criteria into product design (Braungart, McDonough, & Bollinger, 2007). Our paper aims at gaining in-depth knowledge on the linkages between C2C and management systems – as base and facilitator for innovation. Through three replication case studies on C2C pioneers we identified three different management system configuration patterns: implicit/add-on, hierarchical, and integrated. Our paper shows how integrating environmental, health, and social aspects into the perception and management of quality could boost innovativeness and lead to high value C2C products.
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In a circular economy (CE), the economic and environmental value of materials is preserved for as long as possible by keeping them in the economic system, either by lengthening the life of the products formed from them or by looping them back in the system to be reused. The notion of waste no longer exists in a CE, because products and materials are, in principle, reused and cycled indefinitely. Taking this description as a starting point, the article asks which guiding principles, design strategies, and methods are required for circular product design and to what extent these differ from the principles, strategies, and methods of eco-design. The article argues that there is a fundamental distinction to be made between eco-design and circular product design and proceeds to develop, based on an extensive literature review, a set of new concepts and definitions, starting from a redefinition of product lifetime and introducing new terms such as presource and recovery horizon. The article then takes Walter Stahel's Inertia Principle as the guiding principle in circular product design and develops a typology of approaches for Design for Product Integrity, with a focus on tangible durable consumer products. The newly developed typology contributes to a deeper understanding of the CE as a concept and informs the discussion on the role of product design in a CE.
In this article, we use Hirsch and Levin’s notion of umbrella concepts as an analytical lens, in order to articulate the valuable catalytic function the circular economy (CE) concept could perform in the waste and resource management debate. We realize this goal by anchoring the CE concept in this broader debate through a narrative approach. This leads to the insight that whereas the various resource strategies grouped under the CE’s banner are not new individually, the concept offers a new framing of these strategies by drawing attention to their capacity of prolonging resource use as well as to the relationship between these strategies. As such, the CE offers a new perspective on waste and resource management and provides a new cognitive unit and discursive space for debate. We conclude by discussing research opportunities for the industrial ecology (IE) community relating to the concept’s theoretical development and its implementation. Specifically, we pose that reinvigorating and growing the social science aspects of IE is required for both. After all, it is in understanding and facilitating the collective implementation of any idea, also the CE concept, that the potential lies for shaping our material future.
Scholars increasingly recognise that business contributions to sustainable development are founded in new business models. However, most research in this field remains conceptual and offers a rather static view of a complex and dynamic reality. This article contributes to understanding how new business models for sustainability are fashioned through the interactions between individuals and groups inside and outside companies. Based on two case studies, our findings show that three elements contributed to the path of transformation toward business models for sustainability: building networks and collaborative practices for learning and action around a new vision, the deployment of new concepts drawn from outside the company, and elaborating an implementation structure within a reconfigured network. Our findings reveal the complexity of the process, which went through four subprocesses: identifying, translating, embedding, and sharing. Our results also highlight the importance of considering value destruction as well as new ways to create and capture value.
This paper addresses the question of whether multiple management system standards (MSSs) such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 hinder innovation processes. Following a review of the relevant literature, an empirical study of 249 Spanish organisations registered to both ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 is presented. The principal finding of a previous study [Castillo, S.M., Casadesus, M., Karapetrovic, S., Heras, I., & Martin, I. (2008). Do standardized management systems hinder innovation processes, in Proceedings of the 2nd International Quality Conference – Quality Festival 2008, Kragujevac, Serbia (also appeared in the International Journal of Quality Research, 2(2), 121–127] is a decrease in the importance attached to the statement that MSSs hinder innovation as more of these standards are considered for implementation in the future. The model presented in this paper includes data from organisations that have not just implemented, but have also integrated their standardised management systems (MSs). This model investigates the effects of specific motivators and difficulties of implementing multiple MSSs on the responses of organisations to the statement that MSSs are seen as a barrier to innovation. The model also examines the effect of MSSs as a barrier to innovation on the intention of these organisations to implement MSSs in the future. Results show significant influence for the variables studied.
We investigated how people manage boundaries to negotiate the demands between work and home life. We discovered and classified four types of boundary work tactics (behavioral, temporal, physical, and communicative) that individuals utilized to help create their ideal level and style of work-home segmentation or integration. We also found important differences between the generalized state of work-home conflict and "boundary violations," which we define as behaviors, events, or episodes that either breach or neglect the desired work-home boundary. We present a model based on two qualitative studies that demonstrates how boundary work tactics reduce the negative effects of work-home challenges. "Balance" between work and home lives is a much sought after but rarely claimed state of being. Work-family researchers have successfully encour- aged organizations, families, and individuals to recognize the importance of tending to their needs for balance. Over 30 years ago, Kanter (1977) spoke of the "myth of separate worlds" and called atten- tion to the reality that work and home are inexora- bly linked. Yet, she argued, organizations are often structured in such a way that their leadership for- gets or ignores employees' outside lives. Although organizational leaders and managers generally tend more to employees' nonwork needs than they did when Kanter wrote her landmark work, struggles to balance work and home demands are still common-
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between total quality management (TQM) practices and innovation performance in the Vietnamese industry context.
Design/methodology/approach
The method of confirmatory factor analysis was applied to refine TQM and innovation scales for empirical analysis in Vietnam. The structural equation modelling method was applied to test the theoretical models.
Findings
This study confirms the results of previous studies that considered TQM as a set of practices. It confirms that TQM – considered as a set of practices – has a positive impact on the firm's innovativeness. It discovers that not all TQM practices enhance firm innovativeness. Only leadership and people management, process and strategic management, and open organization showed a positive impact on the firm's innovation performance.
Research limitations/implications
The sample was not random. Future research should select different random samples to allow for more generalization of the results. The study assessed the concept of “newness” with the company boundaries. Future research should measure “newness” within the boundaries of the specific industry. The unclear evidence found in this study on the impact of the firm's education and training policy on innovation needs to be further investigated.
Practical implications
The findings are useful for business managers in developing countries such as Vietnam, who want to enhance business performance through implementing TQM practices that support their firm's product and services innovation efforts.
Originality/ value
The study has contributed to develop a measurement system of TQM practices and innovation performance that facilitates more quality management research in developing countries. It has contributed to clarifying the disputed relationship between TQM practices and the firm's innovativeness, and shows empirical evidence in Vietnam to confirm that the TQM practice set deployed by a firm has a positive impact on its innovation performance.
Methodological fit is an implicitly valued attribute of high-quality field research in organizations that receives little explicit attention in the management literature. Fit refers to internal consistency among elements of a research project – research question, prior work, research design, and theoretical contribution. We introduce a contingency framework that relates prior work – the state of theory and research – to the design of a research project, paying particular attention to the question of when to mix qualitative and quantitative data in a single research paper. We discuss implications of the framework for educating new field researchers
Given the complexity of circular economy implementation, the literature is missing a strategic standpoint. This paper investigates the taxonomy of circular economy implementation strategies at the managerial level by linking it to strategy literature. The taxonomy was developed by using standard k-mean clustering method that incorporates 391 Cradle-to-Cradle product scorecards of 187 companies from 10 different industries. The analysis was based on the relative importance assigned to each competitive capability that defines the circular economy; namely, material health, material reutilization, renewable energy, water stewardship, and social fairness. Three distinct clusters of circular economy implementation strategy groups were observed: (i) founding (recyclers), (ii) development (all-decent circulars), and (iii) maturity (toxicity fighters). All clusters have been present in various industries, although there is an industry effect. The results indicate that each cluster has a different strategy. The results obtained contradict the general assumption and expectation of simultaneous improvement at all circular economy dimensions. Our research contributes to the theoretical understanding of circular economy implementation by providing a taxonomy of strategies. It contributes to the strategy literature by suggesting that the maturity degree of a competitive capability may determine the implementation strategy. For practice, the study presents a road-map for managers to reach higher degrees of circularity.
Introducing environmental and sustainability management does not come easy for small and medium-sized enterprises. In particular, they must gain knowledge and expertise to properly implement and manage environmental and sustainability programs, which they often lack the time and resources. Hence, this paper investigates the ability of sustainability-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises to acquire and develop explicit knowledge required for an environmental management system and related tools. By means of qualitative interviews and content analyses, this paper provides greater understanding on the relationship between practices for knowledge development and support factors, including internal capabilities and external cooperation. The results of these qualitative analyses show that certain internal capabilities, including top management support, shared vision, and the room for learning, provide necessary infrastructure for developing knowledge on environmental and sustainability-related issues in small and medium-sized enterprises. Structured and shared knowledge practices was mostly observed in advanced enterprises, in which less experienced enterprises can learn and build from.
Quality Management is considered to be suitable as support for the integration of sustainability considerations in areas such as product development. The purpose of this paper is to review research in which Quality Management methods, tools or practices have been used in conjunction with sustainable development initiatives. We have identified four themes that synthesize the research on Quality Management and its support to approaches for sustainable development: (I) supporting sustainability through integration of management systems, (II) Quality Management as support to the implementation of Environmental Management Systems and to the management of sustainability, (III) supporting integration of sustainability considerations in daily work, and (IV) supporting stakeholder management and customer focus. By far the most research has been conducted within the first two themes. This paper also contributes with proposals for future research, such as the need to move beyond existing standards and management systems to enable more radical improvements, and the need for empirical evidence of the effect of integrated management systems on environmental performance. We also highlight the point that Quality Management practices and tools must be developed and adapted in order to support sustainability considerations.
The purpose of this study is to examine the associations among different quality management (QM) practices and investigate which QM practices directly or indirectly relate to five types of innovation: radical product, radical process, incremental product, incremental process, and administrative innovation. We test the proposed framework and hypotheses using empirical data from ISO 9001 certified manufacturing and service firms. The results show that a set of QM practices through process management has a positive relationship with all of these five types of innovation. It was found that process management directly and positively relates to incremental, radical, and administrative innovation. Organizational capability to manage processes may play a vital role in identifying routines, establishing a learning base, and supporting innovative activities. The findings also reveal that the value of an individual QM practice is tied to other QM practices. Therefore, highlighting just one or a few QM practices or techniques may not result in creative problem solving and innovation.
The growing diffusion and acceptance in the business world of Total Quality Management (TQM) has attracted greater interest on the part of academia. Although fundamental questions focus on how the different dimensions of TQM can bring about better business performance, a more recent recurring issue pertains to the relationship between TQM and technological innovation and whether technological innovation might provide a source of competitive advantage. Unfortunately, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, the relationship between TQM and technological innovation appears contradictory and complex. This paper argues that the relationship might be better understood from the contingent perspective of strategic management and thus proposes a multidimensional intervening variable in the relationship, called Business Innovation Capability (BIC). An empirical study of 105 Spanish industrial firms reveals that the effect of some business practices suggested by TQM on technological innovation can be better understood when BIC dimensions are taken into account.
It is generally acknowledged that organisations need to be innovative in order to survive and prosper. Some advocates of total quality management (TQM) have suggested that it provides the necessary platform for inculcating innovation in organisations. Intuitively, TQM components involving sound and effective practices on leadership, customer focus, relations with suppliers, employee inter-relationships, information/communication systems and management of processes and products do appear to enable organisations develop culture of innovation. A robust TQM-innovation relationship appears to be conceptually plausible, but little empirical evidence has so far been offered to support this proposition. In this paper, this relationship is explored. Empirical data were taken from a survey of 418 Australian manufacturing organisations. Structural equation modelling technique was used for statistical analysis. Results show that there is insufficient statistical evidence to suggest that TQM is related to innovation. There could well be a more complex relationship between these concepts.
This paper examines the multidimensionality of TQM in association with organizational performance. The primary proposition examined in this study is that TQM embodies two different models of practices, mechanistic and organic, with each showing a different role in the association with two different types of performance, quality and innovation. Using empirical data gathered from 194 middle/senior managers in Australian firms, the findings support the proposition in pairing the mechanistic elements of TQM with quality performance and the organic elements with innovation performance. Further results, however, fail to support the proposition that organizations need to configure TQM practices in different ways for achieving different type of performance.
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