Cecilia Toledo Hernández

Measuring and Evaluating Business Sustainability: Development and Application of Corporate Index of Sustainability Performance

In the last 20 years, from the Rio Summit, has been a growing concern for global sustainability in all sectors of society. The business organizations do not escape this trend and seek more sustainable ways to generate value. This phenomenon has been driven primarily by the associated legislation arising from the need to conserve natural resources and reduce impacts across economic, social and environmental dimensions, associated with organizations performance. This research proposes a structured approach for sustainability performance evaluation trough Corporate Index of Sustainability Performance (CISP) in Cuban organizations, combining different tools like: ISO 14031, Sustainability Reporting Guidelines of Global Reporting Initiative, Balanced Scorecard and muticriteria methods. Also is exposed the design of a web application that enable the management, storage and integration of sustainability indicators and CISP calculus for assessing the business sustainability performance. Were used, as study case; four small power plants of distributed generation in electric sector of Villa Clara, Cuba.

Modelo de Gerenciamento da Logística Reversa

Universidade Federal Fluminense – UFF, Av. dos Trabalhadores, 420, Vila Santa Cecília, CEP 27255-125, Volta Redonda, RJ, Brasil, e-mail: ctoledo@id.uff.br 2 Departamento de Produção, Faculdade de Engenharia de Guaratinguetá, Universidade Estadual de São Paulo – UNESP, Av. Ariberto Pereira da Cunha, 333, Pedregulho, CP 205, CEP 12516-410, Guaratingueta, SP, Brasil, e-mail: fmarins@feg.unesp.br 3 Universidade Central de “Las Villas” – UCLV, Carretera Camajuani Km 5 1/2, Santa Clara, Villa Clara, Cuba, e-mail: rcespon@uclv.edu.cu

Sustainability performance measurement with Analytic Network Process and balanced scorecard: Cuban practical case

The recent years has arisen a global discussion in relation with how to incorporate sustainability at a business level. Corporate sustainability is a multidimensional concept, is the translation of Sustainable Development concept at a business level. Sustainability in organizations must be managed and assessed by decision makers, for that reason a multi-criteria sustainability performance measurement is necessary. The aim of this paper is combine different important tools that helps to make operative corporate sustainability and sustainability performance measurement in Cuban organizations. The combination of Sustainability Balanced Scorecard, multi-criteria decisions models like: Analytic Network Process, and Matrix of Sustainable Strategic Alignment, can help managers in sustainability performance measurement and assessment. The result of this paper focus in a Corporate Sustainability Measurement Network design as a first approach for further sustainability performance measurement systems development emphasizing in multi-criteria analysis.

Selection of Reverse Logistics activities using an ANP-BOCR model

The Reverse Logistics (RL) activities are gaining importance in Brazilian companies. However, a relevant problem is to select RL activities using criteria of immediate and long-term effects for the organization. These situations can be treated as being Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM). In this work we adopted the Analytic Network Process (ANP) as the analytical technique of a MCDM problem that can be formulated when we have interest in to identify existing relationships between RL activities. The strategic criteria were included into the model to rate benefits (B), opportunities (O), cost (C) and risks (R). Here we present an analysis of sustainable practices identified in publishing companies, operating in Brazil. The results indicated that ANP-BOCR is an adequate method to select alternatives RL.

Procedimiento para la evaluación del desempeño ambiental: aplicación em el sector energético cubano

The present article proposes a structured approach to assessing environmental performance through a procedure that establishes a course of action to complete the evaluation of corporate environmental performance, integrating environmental indicators that respond to major policies and strategies. The proposal aims to present theoretical contributions to the assessment of corporate environmental performance in the Cuban environment, to complement the assessment of environmental performance outcome measures to ensure the effectiveness of policies, strategies and targets. The procedure facilitates the selection of environmental indicators based on strategies and major environmental issues, integrating standards and tools such as the ISO 14000, the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), and multi-criteria methods. The study also proposes an overall environmental performance based on the level of compliance with the goals of environmental indicators defined for displaying a single value in the evaluation of environmental performance. For validation, the procedure was applied in four small- and medium-sized power stations, where environmental indicators were defined, calculated, and weighted using the Analytic Network Process (ANP) multi-criteria method, which was later integrated to the global index of environmental performance to be evaluated according the numerical value. Also, the application facilitated the identification of critical points and improvement opportunities to redirect efforts to address the main weaknesses.

Observaciones Experimentales sobre la Fuerza Motriz en la Propagación de Grietas de Fatiga

The role of the effective and applied stress intensity factors (∆Kapp and ∆Keff) as driving forces in fatigue crack growth is analyzed. To make a reliable use of ∆Keff in design it is needed to show that this parameter depends only on the same parameters that are included in the expression of ∆Kapp (the nominal stress, the crack size and the geometry function). To verify this behavior experimental K-increasing and K-decreasing tests were done with the same specimen. The closure factor U=∆Keff/∆K showed an accentuated variation with crack size in all the tests, so ∆Keff should not be used for design purposes. The experimental data are also presented in three dimensions finding similar results, although it is not possible to generalize the results with the data available.