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Innovations Management and Technology for Sustainability

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2021) | Viewed by 15765

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Faculty of Management, University of Warsaw, 00-927 Warsaw, Poland
Interests: innovations; sustainability; consumer behavior
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland
Interests: management; innovations; sustainable innovation; consumer behaviour
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Management, University of Warsaw, Warsaw 00-927, Poland
Interests: corporate social responsibility; environmental management; sustainability in business

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Globalization and technological advances drive competition in the marketplace, which explains why a variety of innovations are implemented in order to lower costs, improve quality, productivity or attract customer interest and ultimately gain competitive advantage (Klincewicz, 2011). Simultaneously, a trend of sustainable thinking is gaining increasingly more attention and recognition (Seiffert and Loch, 2005; Baumgartner and Korhonen, 2010; Geissdoerfer, Bocken and Hultink, 2016; Zemigala, 2019).

The purpose of this Special Issue is to create an image of how the idea of sustainable thinking or sustainable business thinking (defined as “a way of thinking in which business is viewed as a positive force, which contributes to society and the environment, while still generating a profit" (Bocken, Rana and Short, 2015) accompany the efforts of gaining competitive advantage through the development and implementation of innovative solutions in social, environmental or economic dimensions.

In this Special Issue we invite papers of various characters: conceptual frameworks, literature reviews, as well as empirical works that are particularly focused on (although not limited to) the following issues:

  • drivers of sustainable innovation and technology
  • sustainable thinking in the innovation process and technology development
  • sustainability-oriented design thinking
  • sustainable thinking for product, process, marketing or organizational innovation
  • effects for business and management of implementing sustainable-oriented innovations and technology
  • cost and benefits of implementing new sustainable solutions in business and management

Dr. Agnieszka Wiśniewska
Dr. Katarzyna Liczmańska-Kopcewicz
Dr. hab. Marcin Żemigała
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainable innovation
  • sustainable technology development
  • design thinking
  • sustainable thinking
  • sustainable solutions in business and management

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 1729 KiB  
Article
COVID-19: Business Innovation Challenges
by Magdalena Gorzelany-Dziadkowiec
Sustainability 2021, 13(20), 11439; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132011439 - 16 Oct 2021
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 7290
Abstract
The goal of this paper was to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the readiness and ability to innovate in business. The paper’s objective and research questions were pursued with a traditional literature review and an original diagnostic survey using an original [...] Read more.
The goal of this paper was to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the readiness and ability to innovate in business. The paper’s objective and research questions were pursued with a traditional literature review and an original diagnostic survey using an original questionnaire with a respondent data section and close-ended questions. Responses were collected using the CAWI technique. The primary conclusion was that businesses disturbed by the COVID-19 pandemic were more able to innovate in terms of products and management than those that remained unaffected. Regarding theoretical implications, the author proposed a business model for enterprises operating in the COVID-19 environment. The implications of the model are the practical results of the research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Innovations Management and Technology for Sustainability)
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18 pages, 3122 KiB  
Article
Predictive Model for the Factors Influencing International Project Success: A Data Mining Approach
by Iulia Dumitrașcu-Băldău, Dănuț-Dumitru Dumitrașcu and Gabriela Dobrotă
Sustainability 2021, 13(7), 3819; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13073819 - 31 Mar 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3107
Abstract
Considering that international projects with teams in the virtual environment (IPTVEs) contribute to the reduction in the carbon footprint and, at the same time, become life-saving solutions in extreme global situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations familiar with this type of project [...] Read more.
Considering that international projects with teams in the virtual environment (IPTVEs) contribute to the reduction in the carbon footprint and, at the same time, become life-saving solutions in extreme global situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations familiar with this type of project will have a substantial advantage in their ability to operate efficiently and to achieve their sustainable goals. An important aspect of project management is to identify the factors that influence the success of an international project, increasing its performance. Our first research hypothesis was that the decision to create a project team in the virtual environment is a factor with a major influence on international project success. Data collection was performed through an online survey conducted within international project team members and managers. The success factors were explained through factorial analysis which revealed two main factors and the neural network algorithm on a dataset through IBM SPSS Modeler software. The predictive model revealed that the most important field is setting up a virtual team, followed by organizational culture. These results support our hypothesis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Innovations Management and Technology for Sustainability)
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11 pages, 1084 KiB  
Article
Ensuring Sustainable Evaluation: How to Improve Quality of Evaluating Grant Proposals?
by Grażyna Wieczorkowska and Katarzyna Kowalczyk
Sustainability 2021, 13(5), 2842; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13052842 - 5 Mar 2021
Viewed by 2137
Abstract
The principle of sustainable development is an obligation placed on all entities involved in the implementation and delivery of the structural funds made available not only by the European Commission but also by grant donors from all over the world. For this reason, [...] Read more.
The principle of sustainable development is an obligation placed on all entities involved in the implementation and delivery of the structural funds made available not only by the European Commission but also by grant donors from all over the world. For this reason, when applying for a grant, proposals need to demonstrate the positive or neutral impact of the project on sustainable development. To be able to select projects that will ensure sustainability, we need to ensure the effective evaluation of the proposals. The process of their evaluation should be objective, unbiased and transparent. However, current processes have several limitations. The process by which grants are awarded and proposals evaluated has come under increasing scrutiny, with a particular focus on the selection of reviewers, fallibility of their assessments, the randomness of assessments and the low level of common agreement. In our studies, we demonstrated how some of those limitations may be overcome. Our topic of interest is the work of reviewers/experts who evaluate scientific grant proposals. We analyse data coming from two prominent scientific national grant foundations, which differ in terms of expert’s selection procedure. We discuss the problems associated with both procedures (rating style of the reviewers, lack of calibration and serial position effect) and present potential solutions to prevent them. We conclude that, to increase the unbiasedness and fairness of the evaluation process, reviewers’ work should be analysed. We also suggest that, within a certain panel, all grant proposals should be evaluated by the same set of reviewers, which would help to eliminate the distorting influence of the selection of a very severe or very lenient expert. Such effective assessment and moderation of the process would help ensure the quality and sustainability of evaluations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Innovations Management and Technology for Sustainability)
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18 pages, 2908 KiB  
Article
Distributing Enterprise Value to Stakeholders in the Range of Sustainable Development on the Basis of the Energy Industry in Poland
by Sylwia Lorenc and Arkadiusz Kustra
Sustainability 2021, 13(4), 2130; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042130 - 17 Feb 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2243
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyse and compare the process of distributing value to stakeholders in energy industry enterprises in the range of sustainable transition. The analysis focuses on the four largest energy companies in Poland: ENEA Group, ENERGA Group, PGE [...] Read more.
The aim of this paper is to analyse and compare the process of distributing value to stakeholders in energy industry enterprises in the range of sustainable transition. The analysis focuses on the four largest energy companies in Poland: ENEA Group, ENERGA Group, PGE Group and TAURON Polish Energy. Directions of value distribution in these companies have been presented for the years 2009–2018. The paper identifies the main groups of stakeholders of the above companies, i.e., owners, employees, suppliers, capital providers, the state budget and the budgets of local government units. The value dedicated to these stakeholders was estimated based on the free cash flow (FCF) methodology. According to the presented analysis, in the years 2009–2018, the energy industry in Poland realised a total of 236.2 billion PLN for selected stakeholders. PGE Group generated the most financial benefits, providing nearly 120 billion PLN. The smallest value was realised by ENERGA Group in the amount of over 28 billion PLN. Identification of added value according to the proposed methodology may support the process of making decisions related to the continuation or cessation of energy-related activities in the light of continued or lost potential stakeholder benefits. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Innovations Management and Technology for Sustainability)
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