Management Assignment, homework help

  

 2500words, maximum 2750 wordsNOTE- Word count starts from INTRODUCTION to CONCLUSIONSNOTE- 2750 is your maximum word count Times New Roman 12 point font, double line spacing Harvard referencing- 25 references expected Use academic references-required 75% of academic and 25% of non-academic references Conduct a management analysis of Ecostore http://www.ecostore.com.au/Marking criteria: Background, introduction and importance of company to the Australian and international business landscape: (10%)Focus on worldwide Ecostore and funnel it down to Australian base Research, analysis and discussion of sustainability related strategies and issues: (40%) *relate to sustainability practices of Ecostore when you analyse eachWhat are/is the relevant theory+ practice+ sustainability Role of organisational behaviour at the company (10%) Human resource management practices at the company (10%)  Role of international business at the company (10%) Role of technology management at the company (10%) Analysis of entrepreneurship and innovation at the company (15%)Look at history of Ecostore- Look at who is the founder- motivation to start up the business Role of innovation Future strategies management should engage in (identify 3 major strategies based on the previous analysis of the company) (25%) Your recommendations and conclusions based on your analysis Professional writing and English expression, referencing (10%use attached files
20160823135810executive_summary_____summary_of_full_report.docx

20160823135818towards_a_framework_for_understanding_green_ent.pdf

20160823135821ecoman_chapter_one_the_dream_begins.pdf

20160823135826does_sustainability_sell_market_responses_to_sustainability_certification.pdf

20160823135830green_tick.pdf

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Executive summary – Summary of full report
List of Contents -with page numbers
1.0 Introduction- What is the purpose of the study and flow of your report
2.0 Background- Produce a general background to the industry. Then take discussion
down to Ecostore- Australian and International market (If applicable)
– Refer to industry data
– Not necessary of market information
3.0 Body of the report
This is allocated 40% where each section weigh 10% HRM- What theories relevant to this strategy? Use definitions and explain what these sub
theories mean- For an example you can take recruitments, hierarchy of
management, training, etc… . Focus on at least 3 strategies company implemented
under HRM – Apply with the practice- How do Ecostore do recruitment- training?
Management structure? – How do they manage people sustainably? Use other
sources to support
Organization behaviour
– What theories involved in this concept? Use references – Apply with Ecostore?
What is their OB? What type of an internal culture do they have- in their stores as
well as in the production units – Connect to sustainability.
International Business
– What theory/ies to focus? Use references to support – Research on Ecostore
international business. What type of strategy do they have? What process do they
follow – What sustainability contribution do they do in international business?
Information technology
– What is the theory behind that- what strategies available for businesses –for an
example use any relevant strategies such as emailing, conferencing, or any other
simple approaches – Or else how do they use technology in their production,
packaging or within the company – Connect to sustainability – use support
Management Assignment Guide
4.0 Entrepreneurship and innovation
– Explain theory- use references to support – What are the motivations to the
founders to start up the business – How entrepreneurship connect to innovation What is the theory on innovation – How Ecostore continuing their innovations
5.0 Recommendations
This contains 255 of marks where you required to discuss your recommendations.
Recommendations should cover from main four strategies you discussed above and
three minimum recommendations are required. Use other resources to support and
connect with sustainability- how each recommendation contribute to sustainability.
6.0 Conclusions 7.0 References
– Harvard referencing – Follow proper style from- referencing tools- LTU library web
page – Order your references alphabetical order – Ecostore only once used in your
referencing list
Extra hints
Small Enterprise Research
ISSN: 1321-5906 (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rser20
Towards a framework for understanding
transitional green entrepreneurship
Anne de Bruin
To cite this article: Anne de Bruin (2016) Towards a framework for understanding
transitional green entrepreneurship, Small Enterprise Research, 23:1, 10-21, DOI:
10.1080/13215906.2016.1188715
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13215906.2016.1188715
Published online: 05 Jun 2016.
Submit your article to this journal
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Download by: [La Trobe University]
Date: 25 July 2016, At: 17:40
Small Enterprise Research, 2016
Vol. 23, No. 1, 10–21, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13215906.2016.1188715
Towards a framework for understanding transitional green
entrepreneurship
Anne de Bruina,b*
a
School of Economics and Finance, Massey University, Auckland, 0745 New Zealand; bNew Zealand Social
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Centre, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
Downloaded by [La Trobe University] at 17:40 25 July 2016
(Received 12 July 2015; accepted 4 December 2015)
The serious and complex environmental problems confronting today’s society highlight the
urgent need to effect a transition to a greener, ecologically sustainable future. This article
presents a multilevel conceptual framework to advance understanding of this transition.
Aligning with entrepreneurship as agency for social change, it captures the nature of
transformative social change by employing different levels of social innovation
(incremental, institutional and disruptive), and change (local, institutional and systemic
change), associating each level with a type of social change agent, namely, green
entrepreneurs or ‘ecopreneurs’. The contemporary climate of social change overlays this
integrative framework. Hence the temporal context links ecopreneurial activities to their
political economy, socio-technological and cultural contexts, and the intensity of social
action provides momentum for scaling their impact. New Zealand examples and insights
drawn from the 2014 ‘Transitional green entrepreneurs: Re-thinking ecopreneurship for the
21st century,’ Symposium, in Sweden, illuminate the framework.
Keywords: green entrepreneurship; ecopreneurship; social innovation; social change; scaling
social impact; social movement; environmental solutions
Introduction
The grim and complex social and environmental challenges that confront society today highlight
the imperative to reconfigure consumption and production patterns and effect a transition to a
greener economy and an ecologically sustainable future. How will the social change that must
accompany such a transition play out? What is the trajectory of this change? Who are the
typical entrepreneurs associated with this change? These are some of the questions prompted
by the need to advance understanding of the process and drivers of transformative social
change. This article responds to this need by developing a multilevel conceptual framework
that connects entrepreneurship to effecting solutions to society’s pressing social problems and
the process of ecology-related social change.
A necessary first step towards framework development is setting definitional parameters for
each of its basic building blocks and drawing out the connections between them. The logical starting point here is entrepreneurship, and the contention that entrepreneurship is integral to social
change. In fact as Calás, Smircich, and Bourne (2009) and Steyaert and Hjorth (2006) suggest,
entrepreneurship may even be re-framed as social change. Hence, for the purpose of this
*Email: a.m.debruin@massey.ac.nz
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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Small Enterprise Research
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article, green entrepreneurs or ‘ecopreneurs’ are straight forwardly defined as the catalysts of
ecology-related social change, and aligning with Walton and Kirkwood (2013), ecopreneurs
are ‘change agents for sustainability’.
Before proceeding further, however, it must be acknowledged that the meaning and implications of sustainability are by no means clear-cut. There are a variety of approaches to sustainability (e.g. Hopwood, Mellor, & O’Brien, 2005). An added complication is the elusiveness of
consensus that characterises the discourse on the relationship between the green economy and
sustainable development. Authors such as Bina (2013) and Brand (2012) highlight the tensions
between the green economy and sustainability agendas. Yet another added dimension of complexity when attempting to understand the transition to a greener economy, is that the green economy
itself is an evolving project. As Shear (2014, p. 206) insightfully observes: ‘ … the green
economy is a contingent, undetermined, economic space full of circulating desires, ideologies
and fantasies, … it’s in the process of being made, its shape and contours are contingent and
open to transformation’. Juxtaposed with the shifting contours of the green economy, an alternative notion of ‘climate justice’ is also being promoted, leading to further ambiguity on whether the
green economy is the ‘right’ path to sustainability (Bond, 2012; Kenis &Mathijs, 2014).
Having acknowledged at the outset the contested terrain of both sustainability and the green
economy, the main purpose of this article, is to propose a framework to springboard understanding of the transformation to a greener economy via consideration of a possible trajectory towards
this ecologically sustainable future. Therefore, this article neither take sides with particular perspectives in the sustainability-green debate, nor makes value judgements on the merits of socalled green activities of different stakeholders. Such considerations, whilst of merit, are
beyond the purview of this article, which simply takes as its foundational premise the association
of entrepreneurship/ecopreneurship with social change.
Building on this premise, and to continue with formulating definitional parameters, now consider that the opportunity recognition and development process, lies at the heart of entrepreneurship (e.g. Ardichvili, Cardozo, & Ray, 2003; Baron, 2006; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Short,
Ketchen, Shook, & Ireland, 2009; Venkataraman, 1997). This process in turn can be neatly linked
to problem solving (de Bruin & Ferrante, 2011; Hsieh, Nickerson, & Zenger, 2007; Shane, 2003).
As Shane (2003, p. 53) points out, the entrepreneurial process ‘ … involves identifying, defining,
and structuring novel solutions to open-ended problems’. In relation to social entrepreneurship,
Zahra, Gedajlovic, Neubaum, and Shulman (2009, p. 522) highlight that ‘entrepreneurial discovery is as much about problem finding as problem solving’. Hence, this article posits that green
entrepreneurship involves finding and implementing solutions to environmental related social
problems, to effect social change. Ecopreneurs are therefore environmental problem solvers as
well as social change agents. Moreover, given this inclusive and general definition, the entrepreneur/ecopreneur can be an individual, a group e.g., the drivers of a community owned organisation or a firm.
Social innovation, another building block of the framework, is critical to social change
(BEPA, 2011). Recent policy documents and initiatives to foster social innovation in the US,
UK, EU, Australia and Germany signal heightened awareness that social innovation plays a
key role in addressing so called ‘wicked’ global challenges including poverty and environmental
degradation, and more national and local-level challenges such as unemployment and crime in
communities (BEPA, 2014; Shaw & de Bruin, 2013; The Economist, 2010; The Federal Government, 2014).There is however, no definitional consensus on what constitutes social innovation.
Pol and Ville (2009, p. 881) aptly capture this absence of agreement with their observation,
that social innovation ‘is a term that almost everyone likes, but nobody is quite sure of what it
means’. de Bruin and Stangl (2013, 2014) draw on the extant literature to contend that a social
problem-solution underpinning lies at the core of socially innovative action and results. In
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A. de Bruin
order to address definitional ambiguity, therefore, they argue for a problem-solution definitional
stance on social innovation, emphasising also that such a stance is a sound basis to capture the
diversity of social entrepreneurial activities. As a robust foundation towards developing a framework towards understanding transitional green entrepreneurship, this article too adopts a problemsolution foundation.
As a final prop for the framework, clarification on the issue of ‘scaling’ the impact of social
innovation and entrepreneurial activity is necessary. As Bloom (2012, p. 1) pertinently observes:
‘The obsession with scaling appears everywhere, from the pages of business magazines to the
annual reports of venture capitalists to the business plans created by entrepreneurs to the missions
of government programs like the Social Innovation Fund in the United States that wants to scaleup effective solutions to social problems’. Despite this height end interest, there is no uniformity
in the terminology used. For instance most recently discussion has turned to a focus on long term
impact and ‘scaling deep’ (Koenig, n.d.). Rather than opting for a specific terminology and risk it
going out of fashion, this article simply springboards from its problem-solution foundation to
envisage scaling as the movement of solutions beyond the local level such that they can have
a significant impact on mitigating social problems.
Having set the stage in terms of the social change and social problem-solution definitional
crux of entrepreneurship, as well as social innovation, this article moves on to develop a multilevel conceptual framework as a contribution towards understanding the transition to an ecologically sustainable future. With the aid of a stylised graphical portrayal of the framework, the
process of scaling the impact of solutions that may emerge at a local level through to the
global level, and resultant systemic transformation is elaborated. At each level, the nature of
social innovation and types of ecopreneurs are also delineated. Examples are then provided to
illustrate the framework. The article closes with a mention of some caveats and concluding
comments.
Multilevel framework
The conceptual framework developed in this section, plots a route to transformative social and
environmental change and signposts the key factors involved. Figure 1 presents a stylised illustration of the framework to encapsulate the associated elements and foci at different levels. The
intensity and extent of social action is shown as the force, which motivates and moves solutions
beyond the local level and scales social impact.
Reiterating that social innovation is integral to social change, the tri-level social innovation
categorisation (incremental, institutional and disruptive), suggested by Nicholls and Murdock
(2012) is adopted as a valid means for incorporating different forms of social innovation and
linking each to their scope and potential for mitigating social problems at a systemic level.
Thus, incremental social innovation characterises innovative action that emerges to deal with
social problems that emanate at a local, community level. At this level, initiatives come about
usually because the market fails to provide a service or product and a community need is identified. Consequently, charitable trusts and foundations, social enterprises, and micro businesses are
usually involved in filling a gap left by the market and/or the state. Volunteers may also be part of
the ingredient mix of an innovative recipe to tackle a social problem in the community. In some
cases and often of greater relevance in the environmental sphere, negative externalities arising
from market activities can also necessitate a community-based solution. Social innovation at
the institutional level harnesses, adapts and reconstructs existing market structures in a search
for new ways to address social problems. To enact social change, institutions and social structures
may have to be created or transformed in the face of institutional constraints (Desa, 2012; Mair &
Martí, 2009).Often institutional social innovations emanate as a response to problems that
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Figure 1. Multilevelsocial change framework.
Source: Adapted from de Bruin and Stangl (2014, p. 161, Figure 8–2).
accompany economic and societal structural change (Hämäläinen & Heiskala, 2007). They
can also be supported by radical yet specific policy innovation e.g., national innovation policy
(Breznitz & Ornston, 2013). Disruptive social innovation aims at changing, reconfiguring or
providing a new system such that there is a dramatic impact on a social problem. Transformational, global level change is targeted, often at the outset of implementation of an innovative
programme, or at the inception of a new idea. As the name implies, this form of social innovation disrupts and reconstructs the system itself. It may run the gamut from organised social
movements with formal membership to an informal conglomeration of organisations and individuals from around the globe who are unified by a common purpose and passion (Nicholls &
Murdock, 2012).
Christensen, Baumann, Ruggles, and Sadtler (2006), prefer to distinguish innovations that are
focused on creating social change as ‘catalytic innovation’. A distinct characteristic of such innovation is that scaling and replication drives social change and impact. Whatever the terminology
favoured, however, a transition to a more sustainable future must move solutions beyond the local
level. Moving beyond the incremental solution, local needs focused level to systems-focused
level, is fundamental to transformative social change to mitigate complex systemic problems.
This movement is portrayed in Figure 1 with a downward pointing arrow from the top local solutions, to the bottom global/systemic solutions end. Correspondingly, the intensity of social
action increases to propel solutions towards transformative social change. Thus local-level community action may escalate to become, or aggregate to strengthen, a social movement. En route,
the wider economic and institutional environment may require adjustment and reconstruction or
new institutions may have to be created to fill institutional (policy, market, social) voids. It is
worth noting here too that both solutions and problems can alter in character and structure
given the dynamic and uncertain context in which they may be situated.
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A. de Bruin
de Bruin and Stangl (2014) draw on the social entrepreneur typology of Zahra et al. (2009) to
show correspondence with problem solving at the three social innovation levels. Green entrepreneurs or ecopreneurs as environmental problem solvers and social change agents can also be
shown to target solutions at different levels, aligning with the Zahra et al. (2009) categorisation.
Hence corresponding to incremental social innovation is the ‘social bricoleur’ (based on Hayek,
1945), while at the institutional innovation level is the ‘social constructionist’ (based on Kirzner,
1973) and at the systemic level is the ‘social engineer’ (based on Schumpeter, 1942). A social
bricoleur recognises a social problem or opportunity in a localised context and improvises a solution usually using local knowledge and capacity. From an ecological and sustainable society
standpoint, social bricoleurs are in essence ‘grass roots ecopreneurs’ (Pastakia, 1998). Social constructionists reconfigure existing institutional structures or create new, and are therefore involved
with institutional change, which is usually market focused. By contrast, the social engineer is
linked to systemic change targeting global-level social and environmental problems. The
actions of such eco-engineers can have a large impact on these problems.
In this article, I extend the Zahra et al. (2009) terminology to distinguish the ‘social/eco-architect’ whose social innovation can constitute an overarching plan for systemic change. Thus their
entrepreneurial activities can generate large-scale change and spark a social movement. At the
other end of the continuum, the social bricoleur catalyses local change, which may be associated
with a community movement. At the meso level, the social constructionist equivalent ecopreneur,
institutes institutional change and may engage in environment related market reconfiguration.
Although distinct levels associated with ecopreneur types are distinguished, the typology does
not exclude an entrepreneur straddling more than one level at the same time or moving from
one level to another.
The overlay to the framework is …
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