One of the major environmental issues currently facing New Zealand is that of the sustainability of pastoral farming on North Island hill country. To be sustainable, a system must be resource conserving, environmentally compatible, socially supportive and commer-cially competitive. The Resource Management Act defines sustainable management as managing the use, development and protection of natu...

The Biosphere Reserve (BR) model of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme reflects a shift towards more accountable conservation. Biosphere Reserves attempt to reconcile environmental protection with sustainable development; they explicitly acknowledge humans, and human interests in the conservation landscape while still maintaining the ecological values of existing protected areas. Conceptu...

This paper shows that management has dominant influences on sustainable construction practices in Hong Kong. Improving construction business performance along with sustainable development is widely appreciated. Major factors affecting sustainable performance are social, economic and environmental considerations. This has led to the development of various management approaches to advise construc...

The study of the interactions between plants and their microbial communities in the rhizosphere is important for developing sustainable management practices and agricultural products such as biofertilizers and biopesticides. Plant roots release a broad variety of chemical compounds to attract and select microorganisms in the rhizosphere. In turn, these plantassociated microorganisms, via differ...

Increasingly, with rapid wealth growth of emerging global economies, the basis of competitive advantage is changing from internal capacities to network capabilities. What matters is not a company ownership of hard assets but rather its ability to fully utilize them to capture the worldwide business opportunities. In this highly competitive global environment, outsourcing is approached not as a ...

Cities are the most dramatic manifestations of human activities on the surface of the earth. These human-dominated organisms—i.e., cities—degrade natural habitats, simplify species composition, disrupt hydrological systems, and modify energy flow and nutrient cycling. Today, these consequential impacts of human activities, originated from population increase, rapid urbanization, high private mo...

Ethnic communities living in formidable agro-climatic situations are well acquainted with natural resources and their sustainable management from time immemorial. The uneven topographic situation compels them to conduct a number of trial and error practices with nature and thereby the communities developed numerous locally suited the best practices and technologies. Owing to the significance of...

While there is increased emphasis on sustainability in the construction industry, it is uncertain whether the SME sector sees it as a driver of innovation. This lack of concern could occur for several reasons, such as material cost, uncertainty regarding the potential risks associated with sustainable practices, perceived lack of business benefit, and lack of informed client demand. To explore ...

This paper focuses on the role of information management models and information and communication technology (ICT) applications in facilitating implementation of social responsibility and sustainable practices in contemporary organizations. On the one hand, the fields of corporate social responsibility and sustainability have grown exponentially in the last decade. Both include three dimensions...