The limitedness of natural and environmental resources as an opportunity for sustainable yet competitive solutions

Giancarlo Barbiroli

International Journal of Business Environment, 2009, vol. 2, issue 3, 307-335

Abstract: Resource limitedness, often even scarcity, has become an increasingly conditioning factor in economic development and, consequently, in international relationships. In this paper it is indicated that, in order to greatly modify resource utilisation, new criteria in designing and managing production processes should be introduced, which consider the question of all natural resources as a priority. Such an innovative activity should be an opportunity to get economic benefits both for enterprises and the whole society. Indeed, while pursuing materials, energy and environmental effectiveness and efficiency, improvements in global efficiency (notably productivity, quality, and flexibility) also have to be pursued to achieve the required return on investments. Some basic criteria are proposed and discussed here, together with several applications performed by large industries, in order to outline what directions businesses have to follow if they want to counter natural resources depletion, by pursuing a great increase of resource productivity as a fundamental aim.

Keywords: resources limits; business opportunity; production processes; competitiveness; sustainable innovation; business environment; natural resources; environmental resources; resource productivity; sustainability; sustainable development. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=23794 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijbenv:v:2:y:2009:i:3:p:307-335

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Business Environment from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().