Papers by Weslynne Ashton
Local Environment, Oct 13, 2022
Emerald Publishing Limited eBooks, Apr 19, 2022
Circular economy (CE) has gained the attention of the business community with the promise of seve... more Circular economy (CE) has gained the attention of the business community with the promise of several trillions of dollars to be gained from finding productive uses for waste materials, and developing new business models focused on extending and reimagining the useful life of products. Industrial symbiosis (IS) involves the shared management of resources among multiple firms, most often within some geographic proximity. IS is particularly focused on the reuse of secondary materials, such as industrial by-products, for which conventional recycling does not exist. IS and CE represent a radical reconceptualization of business models from individual to collective competitive advantage with private and public benefits. IS has been recognized as a novel strategy for businesses and regions interested in implementing the CE. In this chapter, we explore the conditions and circumstances in which IS could play a pivotal role in increasing circularity and sustainability in diverse supply networks.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
We study the dynamics in an educational partnership between a university and a developing region.... more We study the dynamics in an educational partnership between a university and a developing region. We examine how the university achieves its goals to improve and advertise its offerings while recruiting a cohort of students from the developing region and maintaining a sustainable relationship with the region and its students. We show that mutually beneficial partnerships can arise, particularly when both the university and the region exhibit strong preferences toward cohort students returning to work at home. We further show that such partnerships can induce developing regions to invest in domestic opportunities for returning students.
Journal of Industrial Ecology
Industrial Engineering and Operations Management, 2021
Industrial symbiosis (IS), a sub-field of industrial ecology, is principally concerned with the c... more Industrial symbiosis (IS), a sub-field of industrial ecology, is principally concerned with the cooperative management of resource flows through networks of businesses as a means of approaching ecologically sustainable industrial activity. Isolated researchers in a broad range of disciplines have investigated industrial symbiosis from a variety of starting points without a common agenda. The Industrial Symbiosis Research Symposium was held in January 2004 at Yale University, bringing together more than 30 experts from 15 countries to discuss critical questions and issues in this emerging area. The purpose of the Symposium was to give researchers an opportunity to share their knowledge and experience on the state of research, to determine areas of possible crossfertilization among disciplines, and to establish research priorities. The Industrial Symbiosis Research Symposium at Yale: Advancing the Study of Industry and Environment is a report on the first global research conference in...
While a growing number of businesses aspire toward sustainability, doing so requires new business... more While a growing number of businesses aspire toward sustainability, doing so requires new business models that aim to achieve triple bottom line benefits (economic, environmental, and social), while utilizing appropriate technologies and new knowledge platforms for doing business. “Third Places,” defined as places of public gathering outside of work or home, have emerged as powerful platforms for business model innovation, in the form of incubators, co-working spaces, and innovation hubs. Third Places enable a diverse group of actors, including entrepreneurs, employees, and investors to informally interact and develop innovative ways of doing business. Third Places tend to be structurally more complex than traditional production facilities as they have multiple firms interacting in formal and informal ways. In this commentary, we discuss the challenges of measuring the sustainability performance of Third Places using conventional sustainability audit tools.
The current enthusiasm for circular economy (CE) offers a unique opportunity to advance the impac... more The current enthusiasm for circular economy (CE) offers a unique opportunity to advance the impact of research on sustainability transitions. Diverse interpretations of CE by scholars, however, produce partly opposing assessments of its potential benefits, which can hinder progress. Here, we synthesize policy-relevant lessons and research directions for a sustainable CE and identify three narratives – optimist, reformist and skeptical – that underpin the ambiguity in CE assessments. Based on 54 key CE scholars’ insights, we identify three research needs: the articulation and discussion of ontologically distinct CE narratives; bridging of technical, managerial, socio-economic, environmental and political CE perspectives; and critical assessment of opportunities and limits of CE science-policy interactions. Our findings offer practical guidance for scholars to engage reflexively with the rapid expansion of CE knowledge, identify and pursue high-impact research directions, and communic...
This annex contains specific examples of cleaner production (CP) strategies for smaller enterpris... more This annex contains specific examples of cleaner production (CP) strategies for smaller enterprises including regional overviews of Latin America, Asia and Europe. It contains best practices from: Multinational Umbrella Programs such as Asian Development Bank, Nordic Environmental Finance Corporation (NEFCO), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) U and Country-Specific Programs such as United States Environmental Protection AgencySmall Businesses & Cleaner Production, National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR), The CNP+L of Mexico, Individual experiences in Latin-America, Australian Cleaner Production Experiences, Indonesia?s Cleaner Production Award Model, Cleaner Production in Sri Lankan SMEs, Taiwan?s Cleaner Production Programs, Cleaner Production in Thailand.
Resources, Conservation and Recycling
This perspective calls for building greater understanding of the role that entrepreneurship plays... more This perspective calls for building greater understanding of the role that entrepreneurship plays in addressing the challenges to resource and waste management imposed by COVID-19. We contend that researchers and practitioners need to recognize that entrepreneurs are important change agents who can help in the transition to a more sustainable and circular economy. We present challenges as well as opportunities to address this gap with the goal to foster future research.
Academy of Management Proceedings
Panel presentations from Weslynne Ashton, Jennifer Howard- Grenville, Jonathan Pereira, and David... more Panel presentations from Weslynne Ashton, Jennifer Howard- Grenville, Jonathan Pereira, and David Jacobs will explore the promise and economic potential of the circular economy, business models, co...
The Social Embeddedness of Industrial Ecology, 2009
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2014
ABSTRACT Island waste management professionals are faced with limited land resources, high energy... more ABSTRACT Island waste management professionals are faced with limited land resources, high energy costs, large seasonal fluctuations in waste volumes, and complex social and political dynamics that stem from their often closely knit societies. These and other factors can discourage typical waste management practices, but they also provide opportunities for island governments and businesses to explore alternative technologies and policies that suit their particular circumstances and that might be environmentally preferable. This critical review discusses the waste management literature on islands to date, including several industrial ecology (IE) studies. Common advantages and disadvantages faced by island waste management challenges are presented from the perspectives of business and municipal management. Waste generation data are presented from more than 40 islands around the world and tested for correlation with economic and geographic parameters and using cluster analysis, with the aim of identifying trends among island types. Poor data quality and comparability are ongoing challenges that underscore the potential benefits of a consistent program of island waste management data collection. Finally, the review explores opportunities for applying IE research to generate useful insights and policies in the areas of material flow analysis, industrial symbiosis, life cycle assessment, and social ecology.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2012
Like many economic exchanges, industrial symbiosis (IS) is thought to be influenced by social rel... more Like many economic exchanges, industrial symbiosis (IS) is thought to be influenced by social relationships and shared norms among actors in a network. While many implicit references to social characteristics exist throughout the literature, there have been few explicit attempts to operationalize and measure the concepts. The "short mental distance," "trust," "openness," and "communication" recorded among managers in Kalundborg, Denmark, set a precedent for examining and encouraging social interactions among key personnel in the dozens of eco-industrial networks around the world. In this article we explore the relationships among various aspects of social embeddedness, social capital, and IS. We develop a conceptual framework and an approach using quantitative and qualitative methods to identify and measure these social characteristics, including social network structure, communication, and similarities in norms and conceptions of waste, and apply them in an industrial network in Nanjangud, South India. The findings suggest that there is a fairly high level of shared norms about dealing with waste-the "short mental distance"-in this network, but by-product transactions are only weakly correlated with the structure and content of communication among managers. Replication of this approach can increase the understanding and comparability of the role of social characteristics in eco-industrial activities around the world.
Journal of Cleaner Production, 2014
Cleaner Production (CP) strategies are fundamentally concerned with operations, environmental sus... more Cleaner Production (CP) strategies are fundamentally concerned with operations, environmental sustainability and maximization of waste reduction, recycling, and reuse at the enterprise level, and are thus microeconomic in scope. Sustainable development (SD), however, involves the design of integrated approaches that are capable of addressing environmental sustainability and waste while ensuring social and economic prosperity at the national or even global level implying a macroeconomic scope. Due to its philosophy, broad scope and long-term horizons, sustainable development necessitates capacity building via advancement of sustainable societal patterns and the creation of a new set of visions, paradigms, policies, methodological tools and applicable procedures. The first and foremost step on this path is the development of human capital required to make such a transition. This paper proposes the application of a methodology via which leaders in higher education could assess the necessity and the urgency for designing training programs that could assist with developing human capital needed to support SD. The methodology evaluates the conditions and constraints that could control the effectiveness and ease of implementation of such programs. At its core, the proposed methodology utilizes expert judgment to assess importance of including CP and SD indicators listed in the questionnaire on the proposed academic programs. During a pilot study which was conducted in the fall of 2013 at selected universities in the USA, Latin America, and China, experts evaluated a series of proposed CP-infused academic programs according to a matrix consisting of SD indicators, and under consideration of the norms, culture, political systems, regulations, resource availability, and local, regional and global economic development goals and objectives. Results of data analysis in the pilot study suggested that inclusion of the resource management (RM) topics in designing academic programs is the most preferred approach in all three different regions, followed by development of programs that could cover topics in areas of human capital development (HCD), human system designs (HSD) and sustainable economic development and prosperity (SEDP). Quantitative analysis of the data indicated existence of two clusters of preferences for CP eSD criteria: one for in the Americas (including Latin America) and one for China.
Sustainability, 2017
Self-organized industrial ecosystems (SOIEs) refer to communities of firms in diverse industries ... more Self-organized industrial ecosystems (SOIEs) refer to communities of firms in diverse industries that spontaneously engage in Industrial Symbiosis (IS); that is, firms independently develop bilateral and multilateral interactions involving material, energy, and knowledge sharing for individual and collective benefit. Like biological ecosystems, self-organized industrial ecosystems must constantly respond to external perturbations. Resilience of SOIEs, or the ability of systems to maintain structure and function in response to perturbations, has been the focus of a few recent studies. However, these studies have only examined the network characteristics for resilience of IS in a static manner. The current study contributes to this emerging literature by examining the dynamics associated with growth (life) and demise (death) of self-organized industrial ecosystems in light of changing network dynamics and external perturbations, with emphasis on material and socioeconomic aspects of connectivity between firms. This research is grounded in real world cases, but expands beyond these through hypothetical network models in order to ascertain the network characteristics that lead to more resilient structures and outcomes. A key distinction is made between SOIEs that include an anchor firm versus scavenger firms. The former typically involve a scale-free network structure where new member firms preferentially connect to actors with the most connections, while the latter involve more random, fully-connected networks where new member firms connect with multiple existing actors. The results imply that resilience of SOIEs do not arise from intrinsic properties of the system alone, but from the interplay of network topology with external social and ecological constraints.
Journal of Industrial Ecology
Energies
The circular economy (CE), and its focus on the cycling and regeneration of resources, necessitat... more The circular economy (CE), and its focus on the cycling and regeneration of resources, necessitates both a reconfiguration of existing infrastructures and the creation of new infrastructures to facilitate these flows. In urban settings, CE is being realized at multiple levels, from within individual organizations to across peri-urban landscapes. While most attention in CE research and practice focuses on organizations, the scale and impact of many such efforts are limited because they fail to account for the diversity of resources, needs, and power structures across cities, consequently missing opportunities for adopting a more effective and inclusive CE. Reconfiguring hard infrastructures is necessary for material resource cycling, but intervening in soft infrastructures is also needed to enable more inclusive decision-making processes to activate these flows. Utilizing participatory action research methods at the intersection of industrial ecology and design, we developed a new fr...
Academy of Management Proceedings
Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy
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Papers by Weslynne Ashton