A theoretical framework for the management of eco-industrial development

Abstract

An alternative for organizations to drive industrial systems toward a more sustainable path is to stimulate the process of eco-industrial development (EID). By participating in an eco-industrial network, firms achieve cost reduction, revenue enhancement, or business expansion while generating positive externalities for the surrounding communities and natural ecosystems. Although EID is a strategic initiative for the sustainability-profitability trade-off, the researchers from the field of industrial ecology (IE) have been working without a theoretical connection with the fields of organization studies and contemporary management theories. Due to such factors, IE has deficiencies concerning strategic management, which restrict the incorporation of the approach of EID into managerial practices. Whenever EID has been tangential to the corporate level strategy, eco-industrial networking has not been supported by prerequisite investments, such as management, measurement, and accountability systems, as well as skilled staff for overall synergism. As a result, the implementation of industrial symbioses is isolated, fragmented, and uncoordinated. Moreover, it is deficient in quantitative standards for the evaluation of sustainability performance. All those features create various problems during eco-industrial networking, such as technological, economic, informational, cultural, organizational, and regulatory ones. As a result, most renowned EID initiatives are far from achieving all of their sustainability goals. In view of the lack of a management approach to industrial ecology and its negative effects on industrial symbiosis, the main objective of this thesis is to introduce a theoretical framework for the management of eco-industrial development. The theoretical framework for the management of industrial ecosystems provides knowledge that managers can later appropriate and reapply as part of their discourse and management approach. Through this theoretical framework, it is supposed that the key concepts of EID, such as community, cooperation, interaction, and efficiency, would become achievable goals for managers of industrial ecosystems. Furthermore, the proposed scheme broadens industrial ecology’s techno-environmental approach based on a mechanistic viewpoint by incorporating industrial symbiosis tools into organizational issues such as strategy, structure, leadership, culture, and environmental management.