永續經營企業之研究 / The purpose for this case study was to educate the writer and readers about sustainability in business with an analysis of sustainability as it relates to some business topics like marketing, economics, accounting and entrepreneurship. The aim for the paper is to provide examples of SME’s and major corporations use of sustainability to increase value for stakeholders and society. The process involves looking at companies in Taiwan and around the world through lenses of sustainability reports, company websites and interviews. The paper also includes a local perspective of sustainability by looking at Taiwan’s AUO Optronics and the BCSD in Taiwan. (Business Council for Sustainable Development). The outcome: improved understanding of basic actions companies take to address sustainability to improve business success.

Despite heightened interest in creating local food systems that enhance health of ecologies, economies, and all members of communities, the public space of farmers' markets is far less than inherently equitable. This is particularly concerning given America's unprecedented crisis of food hardship and related disease, which disproportionately affects lower income populations. This research addresses the social justice implications of SNAP (food stamp) operations for locally oriented food systems. Pioneering practices of three of Florida's SNAP-authorized farmers' markets, and the attitudes and behaviors of one-hundred-seventy-six market patrons, were explored through customer surveys, market manager interviews, and environmental assessments. Qualitative and quantitative results uncovered associations between SNAP at the farmers' market and heightened embeddedness. This work advances the embeddedness concept by applying it to the understudied population of lesser advantaged consumers for which the interplay of marketness and embeddedness is particularly relevant to food purchasing decisions. Qualitative results showed success in SNAP operations centered on extending the reach of healthy foods to greater share of community, enhancing local farm income, and repositioning farmers' markets from their reputation as exclusive and expensive. Despite being heterogeneous place-making spaces with unique socio-cultural qualities, the markets shared commonality in their EBT operations and strong mission to serve the local SNAP population. Nonetheless, capacity for implementing and sustaining SNAP operations appears contingent upon innovative strategies and long-range synergistic efforts. Quantitative results uncovered several benefits in attaching SNAP to farmers' markets: expanded diversity of patron demographics, strengthened market-shopping behavior, diminished tension between economic and non-economic in food valuation, and fortification of the market as a social space for effecting change. Much remains to be understood regarding consumer values tied to local food systems, and the impact of SNAP operations on embedded market exchange. Hence, it is premature to predict whether SNAP operations will indeed enable farmers' markets to serve as a transformative mechanism for addressing the social justice arm of sustainability in the developing, alternative food system. Nonetheless, the discoveries made herein hint at the viability for SNAP to better position farmers' markets aiming to strengthen food system justice; and in so doing, bolster the role of farmers' markets in helping communities move towards their sustainability objectives.

Education is often viewed as a catalyst of change. Arguably, the future of our Planet is dependent on education that nurtures sustainable ways of thinking and living in our environment. This thesis seeks to argue that in order for abstract principles of sustainability to be understood, individuals need to have opportunities to explore and be a part of designing and experiencing their own places. Specifically, my thesis suggests that high school students in public schools should take an active part of this educational process. To test this theory, I investigated three high school sustainability programs in Austin, Texas that utilize place-based pedagogy. What was realized is that each program envisions sustainability programming that is integrative and experiential, but due to the current mechanistic education system the daily programming can be difficult. This result has led me to theorize that the entire educational system needs to be transformed in order for sustainability education to exist. However, I finally propose a more practical approach, and thus offer twelve generalized heuristic questions for sustainable design educators to consider and assist them in building social capital between themselves and the public school system. / text

Over the past two decades, the number of universities that pursue zero-waste strategies has steadily increased. However, more study is required on several interrelated factors, policy barriers, and infrastructural fundamentals, which each influence the efficiency of waste management structures (WM) at universities. In this work, the role of the aforementioned factors in implementing an efficient sustainable WM program at higher education institutions was investigated, using Western Kentucky University (WKU) as a case study. The objectives of this study were to identify and assess what type of WM strategies should be priorities for a university that may lack stringent WM infrastructure. Firstly, through this research, waste minimization-oriented policy instruments implemented at American top-level and WKU benchmark universities were compared. In parallel, the recycling behavior of the WKU community was assessed. According to this research, planning well-defined temporal periods with clear goals and allocated tasks for stakeholders is essential. The time periods should include providing readiness programs and performing a waste characterization study from generation points. As the program matures, writing sustainable WM policies with clarified responsibilities for stakeholders is required. The ability of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), as a data integration tool and Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS), to enhance the operational roadmap of WM at universities was also investigated. Specifically, GIS was applied to spatially visualize and assess waste generation streams and resource allocation solutions at WKU. The weights of accumulated garbage in dumpsters, which are exclusively assigned to each building, were analyzed with the Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) method. Buildings that were high-volume waste generators included buildings with food facilities, suggesting close review of policies related to food practices is essential for developing WM schemes. Furthermore, location-allocation and service area analyses were used to investigate the number of outdoor waste bins and make data-driven recommendations to enhance WM efficiency on the WKU campus. Overall, by utilizing GIS techniques, zerowaste planners can identify how campus waste stream trends change, predict how the recycling rate can be raised by infrastructural changes, and make decisions about where sustainability-concentrated efforts, such as departmental policies, should be concentrated.

The application of Sustainability Assessment (SA) within Canadian municipalities is a recent notion, but is quickly becoming widespread. The Government of Saskatchewan alone has already released two SA checklists. However, such tools are normally aimed at communities of all sizes, ranging from rural municipalities to big cities, without considering differences in the capacity base, needs, and conditions among those types of communities. Additionally, practical implementation of SA often does not reflect the scope of scientifically established criteria for SA tools. This paper will present the analysis of the 2009 Saskatchewan Sustainability Checklist for Municipalities (comparing it to one of the most prominent frameworks for SA and other similar checklists developed in Canada and internationally) in order to identify possible areas for improvement so that the Checklist reflects established SA principles and is sensitive to a small town context. Based on the results of interviews with 16 small town administrators in Saskatchewan, this thesis demonstrates that, from a theoretical perspective, both of the existing SA tools are deficient in a number of important ways. The tools mainly focus on evaluating the municipal and service provision, rather than evaluating the sustainability of a community as a whole, including such areas as environmental conditions; social equity; livelihood sufficiency; resource maintenance; and intragenerational and intergenerational equity. However, the research reveals even if all of the above-mentioned criteria are integrated within the existing tools, it will be challenging for municipalities to perform a full sustainability assessment, since small towns’ administrations often have limited financial and human capacity to perform such exercises. Additionally, there is a lack of understanding on how to integrate the results of an assessment into decision-making, and a perceived inability to change some of the existing economic or social conditions in a town, due to the limited scope of influence that local municipalities have. There is a need for an alternative approach to sustainability assessment in the case of small towns; one that is sensitive to their unique pressures, circumstances, and capacities to enact change.

In this thesis I will argue that the current predicament we find ourselves in of unsustainable practices can only be addressed through a fundamental shift in the way we view the world and ourselves in it. It is my contention that our most immediate path to achieving this shift is through education. In this thesis I investigate the philosophical basis and justification for education as the impetus for change that will lead to sustainable societies. This inquiry will rethink Freire’s work within our current socio-historical context. Limitations and critiques of Freire’s work will be examined in order to investigate the ability of his work to form the foundation of a paradigm shift towards education that promotes sustainability. The work of C.A. Bowers is used as the basis to interrogate Freire’s work and to re-think some areas to overcome limitations of Freire’s work in his application to Education for Sustainability.

In this thesis I will argue that the current predicament we find ourselves in of unsustainable practices can only be addressed through a fundamental shift in the way we view the world and ourselves in it. It is my contention that our most immediate path to achieving this shift is through education. In this thesis I investigate the philosophical basis and justification for education as the impetus for change that will lead to sustainable societies. This inquiry will rethink Freire’s work within our current socio-historical context. Limitations and critiques of Freire’s work will be examined in order to investigate the ability of his work to form the foundation of a paradigm shift towards education that promotes sustainability. The work of C.A. Bowers is used as the basis to interrogate Freire’s work and to re-think some areas to overcome limitations of Freire’s work in his application to Education for Sustainability.

<p>This dissertation explores decision problems faced by organizations willing to address or support the incorporation of sustainability aspects on their "business as usual" activities. We study to specific problems. First, we analyze the decision problem of a forest manager who, in addition to selling timber, has the option of selling carbon offsets for the carbon sequestered by the forest. We study both the single-rotation and the multiple-rotations harvesting problems, and develop stochastic dynamic programming models to find the optimal harvesting and offset-selling policy, the expected optimal harvesting time, and the expected optimal reward under different offset-trading schemes. Then, we study the case in which an organization (sustainability buyer) outsources sustainability efforts to another organization (sustainability seller). While buyers cannot directly exert sustainability efforts, they can provide economic or technical support to their sellers in order to incentivize these efforts. We investigate how the effort and support decisions change according to characteristics of stakeholders, buyers, and sellers. Considering that buyers can compete on the sustainability effort exerted by their sellers, we extend our analysis to the case of competing buyers, and we determine conditions under which sharing sellers is preferred by the buyers to having separate sellers for each buyer.</p> / Dissertation

Increasingly, universities are being tasked with leading the way to a sustainable future. Yet little is known about how Canadian university presidents conceptualize sustainable development and the role of the university in this endeavor. With studies demonstrating that it is important for university stakeholders to share common understandings of sustainability, and that administrators are especially instrumental in the pursuit of a sustainable university, these stakeholders’ perspectives and values around the concept of sustainability in higher education are significant. This study, which included in-depth interviews with 26 Canadian university presidents, revealed that presidents have substantially high levels of eco-literacy surrounding the concept of sustainable development and understand sustainability in higher education in measures relevant to their jurisdiction. Barriers were primarily financial, although cost-savings through energy reduction was also noted as a benefit, along with it being “the right thing to do” and worthwhile because of its perceived significance to students. The piece ends with recommendations for practitioners of sustainability, policy makers, researchers and university administrators.

This study explores how higher education can enable the management accounting curriculum to include sustainability content and learning outcomes to encourage future accountants and leaders to use such information in organizational decision-making. It examines current systems thinking theories, and studies how the leverage points available through the management accounting function may assist organizations to embed sustainability into daily practice. To support this transformation, the research reviews the knowledge-base, activities, and tools of management accounting and suggests how to incorporate sustainability principles and criteria into the curriculum within a community college in British Columbia (BC) that has established sustainability as a strategic goal. Action research interviews explore how the management accounting curriculum within the school of business could be enhanced to support organizations - and by extension society - in embedding sustainability into practice, and identifies recommendations for curriculum re-design at the department level, and key elements of change-making to enable it.