Tom G. Geurts

Impact of environmental management system implementation on financial performance

Environmental management systems (EMS) seek to make companies simultaneously more competitive and environmentally responsible. Improved environmental performance can be sought from the adaptation of techniques that emphasize reduction of waste and process/product redesign in the quest of reducing environmental impact. However, EMS lacks a framework to quantify improvements and much of the evidence of EMSs impact on financial performance is anecdotal. This lack of theoretical development has served to diminish corporate support, thus reducing the likelihood of EMS implementation due to a perceived cost disadvantage. This paper proposes, and tests, a framework to quantify EMS improvements to determine the impact of EMS strategies on financial performance. Our findings suggest that implementation of an EMS strategy does not negatively impact a firms financial performance.

Leveraging Real Estate Education with Students’ Real-World Observations: A Diary Approach

This paper discusses how real estate education can benefit from letting students keep a scientific diary. This scientific diary approach entails that, as a complementary course activity, students keep a diary in which they reflect on any real estate related news, projects, daily observations or policies that fascinate them or attract their attention or curiosity. Personal curiosity, while a fundamental driver of science, often lacks a formal role in real estate courses. As such, diaries may help, in a modest way, to enrich the classroom as well as the teacher’s perspective on the thoughts and personal development of students. In this paper we frame specific pros and cons of the diary approach within the educational literature, whilst paying special attention to the traditional lecture approach and the recently popular flipped classroom approach. To empirically illustrate what real estate diaries may bring about, the current study offers a content analysis of the entries in diaries kept by two cohorts of students of the University of Groningen Master’s program of Real Estate Studies and a cohort of students of the George Washington University School of Business MBA program. We show results of a systematic categorization of the 200+ diary posts as to their content and form. We conclude with a discussion of the possible merits of this approach. One of these merits is a broadening of the topics that students study within the (pre-fixed) study program. Another is that recent events, impossible to be captured in textbooks and academic literature, are actively connected to. The openness of the diary approach may help to make students’ own-level thinking about real-world observations more serious, in small steps, through a process of exploration and writing. In addition, diaries can be discussed in-class in a group setting, under the teacher’s supervision, in order to share observations and discuss knowledge- claims. This practices the framing of real-world observations within existing theory as well as the assessment of whether alterations to theoretical models are needed to understand the observation at hand. We hypothesize that practice of this type of reflection on fresh issues in the ‘daily real estate life’ of students may lead to a stronger connection between their academic training and the professional field of real estate.

The Property Rights Game: Discovering the Meaning of Private Property

In this paper we discuss the results of an educational game we have developed. This game deals with the acquisition, use, and transfer of private property rights in land and shows participants the importance of property rights in market economies. While our findings are not scientific, they do show that production in a society with solely communal property collapses while production in a society with private property flourishes. We hope that these results encourage others to use this exercise as an educational experience for students.