Aspects of green business development.

Draghici, Anca ; Izvercianu, Monica ; Barglazan, Diana 等

1. INTRODUCTION--THE CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTALISM EVOLUTION

As corporations move into the first decade of the new millennium, many expect them to work toward a full integration of economic and environmental goals by incorporating those goals in new products and resources as they are designed and built. The evolution of corporate environmentalism can be summarized as in the following:

1960--Industrial environmentalism--internal problem solving;

1970--Regulatory compliance--compliance with government regulations;

1980--Social responsibility--impact reduction and protection of reputation;

1990--Strategic environmentalism--recycling and waste reduction;

2000--Sustainable environmentalism--integration of business goals and environmental goals.

Environmentalism is becoming a strategic issue and is being incorporated at the insurance liability, process and product design, and competitive strategy levels. Corporations seek managers and engineers who knows the environmental implications of the job, not an environmental specialist who knows the implications of environmental management marketing and human resources. These managers and engineers will be called on to integrate environmental issues with physical design and process factors (Lyon & Maxwell, 2004).

2. THE RELATION BETWEEN GREEN FIRMS AND COMPETITIVENESS

Companies operate in the world of dynamic competition. They are constantly creating innovative solutions to concerns raised by customers and regulators while responding creatively to competitive pressures and actions (Porter, 2001). Based on a reference research, we propose five attributes that reflect a company's commitment to invest in pollution prevention and green products: green consumers--a green firm invests in understanding the green demands of its customers and the market niches for green products; technology investment--a green firm invests in technology to prevent and clean up the pollution that its facilities generate; materials choice--a green firm is willing to increase product costs a small amount--approximately 5 %--to prevent toxic discharges; redesign--a green firm is willing to invest a portion of its product revenues--again, 5 % seems reasonable--toward a redesign that lowers pollution; sustainability--a green firm attempts to lower its use of resources to leave more for future generations.

In an increasingly competitive marketplace, firms must be able to benefit from their green actions. Often, companies can attain productivity increases from an innovation that simultaneously uses fewer resources and emits less waste. When environmental factors are internalized within a firm's business strategy, the firm can strive to generate positive organizational and technological benefits that accrue privately to the firm, thus, increasing its competitive advantage (Cunha & Putnik, 2005).

Companies are addressing the concept of pollution (waste) prevention and resource input reduction or materials substitution. Companies view as attractive the idea of moving toward high quality by means of reducing defects. In the same way defects can be reduced by quality product and process design. Many companies are using innovations to command price premiums for "green" products. Few companies have fully analyzed the true cost of wastes, toxicity, and resource use. As they trace the full cost up and down the supply chain they will find opportunities to reduce costs and environmental effects.

The first step is pollution prevention (Christmann, 2000). Pollution prevention focuses on reducing or eliminating waste before it is created. Pollution prevention pays off with reduced costs and better processes. Product stewardship focuses on all environmental impacts associated with a products life cycle. Step 3 is concerned with the design for environment, which is a method for making products easier to recover, reuse or recycle. Step 4 is concerned with clean technology, which focuses on creating technologies that are less impacting and more sustainable.

In addition, ten principles of sustainable business practices are essential for modern companies' green business: protect the biosphere and biodiversity through reducing pollution; promote sustainable use of natural resources; reduce waste; conserve energy; reduce environmental, health, and safety risks; design safe products and services; restore environmental damage; inform the public of environmental conditions; ensure management commitment; self-audit annually. This is a summary of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economics (CERES) principles endorsed in 1992 by several leading global corporations (www.ceres.com).

3. THE GREEN BUSINESSES CONSULTANCY IN ROMANIA

According with statistics data, Europeans attach an overwhelming importance to protect the environment. During a research conducted at the end of 2007 by the European Commission in all EU member states (a special Eurobarometer on the environment), almost all the respondents (citizens of the EU) said that environment protection is very important to them (64%) or fairly important (32%). In total, 96% of European citizens believe environmental issues are important to them (European Commission, Special Eurobarometer, March 2008, p.11). Respondents who say that environmental protection is very important outnumber those who say it is fairly important in every country except Finland. There are very few people who belive that environmental protection is not important: the highest number of respondens were recorded in Austria and Romania (8% both), while in most European countries this percentage was less than 3%. Europeans tend to see environmental protection as a joint responsibility: 90% of them agree that the primary responsibility should lie with the biggest polluters, while 86% believe that they, as individuals, can play a role in protecting the environment in their countries. The most realistic interpretation that can be offer is that Europeans think that everybody can do something to protect the environment but they are still more inclined to support the "polluter pays principle", based on the idea that different actors should be held responsible in proportion to the environmental damage they cause.

In order to help companies transform their businesses into green businesses, and, by doing so, to reach eco-efficiency, innovative forms of training and/or consultancy systems were conceived and realized in the last year in Romania, started by a national initiative in the West part of the country. A good example in the field is the eco-design platform developed in Austria (www.ecodesign.at)--a web platform that offer: general information for product ecological design; courses; references; legislation and other links to service suppliers; examples of good practices; events; e-learning in ecological design; on-line questionnaire for a convenient optimization strategy identification for products, based on a checklist. The platform was developed by a consortium in which one of the main partners is the Technical University of Wien. Other examples of good practice can be found in: Holland (www.greenfacts.org), a web portal for non-specialists general information on health and environment; Australia (www.ecobusiness.com.au), web portal with information for sustainable business change, mainly information regarding capabilities, projects, examples of good practices; Columbia (www.tecnesoft.net), a company portal that offer training and consultancy in the field of information technology; Greece (Kritikou Y, et. al., User Profile Modeling in the context of web-based learning management systems, Journal of Network and Computer Applications, vol 12/6, 2007), with an e-learning platform development modality, based on a requirement and user behavior model; Romania (www.advancedelearning.com), where Siveco Romania has developed and implemented AeL, an universal e-learning platform for schools (480 beneficiaries), business environment and administration (general and specific elements for general qualification).

Started from these minimal, but representative reasons, Politehnica University of Timisoara, in Romania launched an initiative--the WEBT&C project developed since 2008 aiming at developing multidisciplinary integrative researches that will offer an effectiveness, innovative system not only for training (based on web methods, tools and videoconferences), but also, for consultancy dedicated to the business environment with impact on competitiveness and sustainable development assurance. This objective can be achieved by building an integrated platform (web portal type) for managerial training and consultancy, adapted to the needs expressed by the companies (and identified by the project partners), for favorable strategies and policies elaboration, in the context of ecological modernization, as well as for the creation/implementation of the organizational culture focused on the environment preservation (in the terms of eco-efficiency and environment responsibility).

The ideas behind the project are: to develop frameworks to understand how organizations can strike a balance between business and environmental objectives while managing complex stakeholder relationships, and to build strategies to gain competitive advantage through environmentally sustainable practices, including product and process innovation and sustainable supply chain management.

The main objectives of the project are the following:

(1) The development of a partnership between different research entities (universities, a company and a research institute), to unroll multidisciplinary research activities and for the innovative mechanisms creation for the results implementation in the real business environment;

(2) The creation of an integrative, innovative and effectiveness system (virtual centre for formative and informative associated with a web portal, correlated with a collaborative learning system using (videoconference and an interactive tool for products/processes eco-efficiency on-line evaluation) for support processes with the business environment destination;

(3) National and international visibility growth for the project team and the research results, through publications (scientific papers published in national/ international conferences proceedings and national/ international journals) and through the implication in the European association EMIRAcle (www.vrl-kcip.org) activities for participation in the FP7 or other European projects.

4. CONCLUSION

There is a clear trend of adding an ecological dimension to any business that wants to be competitive. Especially in Europe, environment protection is seen as extremely important, and the main actors responsible for it are considered to be the companies. Eco-efficiency is a component of the companies' efficiency, whose importance is continuously growing. Soon, eco-efficiency will be just as important as the economic efficiency, for every company trying to stay competitive on a global market, in the long-run. There are several examples of successfully promoting eco-efficiency among companies, in different countries (Michelsen, 2006).

Since 2008, Politehnica University of Timisoara, together with 5 other partners, is creating a web platform meant to encourage Romanian companies to transform their business into a green one. We strongly believe such a platform is needed in Romania because while Romanians are thinking just as the other Europeans, that environment protection is extremely important, and the companies are the first actors who should assume responsibility for it, in our country the level of information in the field of environment is the lowest in all the European Union. Therefore the project is filling up (partially) a very large gap that currently exists between what Romanians know and what they want and need to know in order to act responsively in the field of environment policies (Draghici, 2008).

5. REFERRING

Christmann, P. (2000). Effects of "Best Practices" of Environmental Management on Cost Advantage: The Role of Complementary Assets, The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 43, No. 4 (August, 2000), ISSN 00014273, 663-680.

Cunha, M., M. & Putnik, G., D. (Eds.) (2005). Advanced Technology for Business Integration: Social, Managerial and Organizational Dimension, Idea Group Publishing, ISBN 1-59904-048-4.

Kritikou Y, et. al. (2007). User Profile Modeling in the Context of Web-Based Learning Management Systems, Journal of Network and Computer Applications, vol 12/6, 35-42.

Lyon, Th. & Maxwell, J. (2004). Corporate Environmentalism and Public Policy, ISBN-13 9780521603768, Cambridge University Press.

Michelsen O, et. al (2006). Eco-efficiency in Extended Supply Chains, in Journal of Environmental Management, Volume 79, Issue 3, May 2006, 290-297

Porter, M. E. (Ed.) (2001). Competitive Strategy. Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. ISBN 9780684841489, New York: Free Press.