Sustainable Business Operations

Corporate social responsibility is the concept of busineses operating in a socially responsible way to make a positive impact on society and the environment and traditionally covers environmental, philanthropic, ethical and social responsibility. Our research explores the motivations and impacts of socially responsible businesses as well as greenwashing and social washing practices where corporations present a facade of a socially and environmentally responsible entity but in reality lack tangible action and have unsubstantiated claims of positive impact.

• Professor of Accounting Liandong Zhang and Associate Professor of Accounting Rencheng Wang examine how labour market competition affects the quality of workplace information on social media through the project "How Labor Market Competition Shapes Workplace Information on Social Media: Evidence from Glassdoor Reviews".

Green innovation and entrepreneurship play a pivotal role in supporting sustainable development by reducing environmental impacts, enhancing resource efficiency, and creating social value and improving wellbeing through the development of new or improved products, services, processes or business models that have positive environmental and social impacts.

Open trade remains one of the most important drivers for economic growth and poverty reduction, as it reduces the cost of what the poor buy and raises the price of what they sell when their products can reach other markets. Trade also promotes the sharing of sustainable practices and standards, contributing to a more sustainable global economy.

Explore the Sustainable Development and Commerce Initiative, a core research initiative by the Centre for Commercial Law in Asia (CCLA), focusing on the sustainability of commercial growth and development in the Asia-Pacific region. The Initiative includes an industry collaboration with Baker McKenzie.Wong & Leow and the Asia-Pacific Research Alliance on Law and Sustainability.

Employee wellbeing encompasses the physical, mental, and emotional health of employees and their overall satisfaction with their work environment, and contributes to a motivated, productive, and loyal workforce that is vital for long-term business success. This is impacted by labour practices both within the business and its supply chain, and involve worker rights and the respectful treatment of workers and communities.

• Associate Professor of Accounting Holly Yang is leading a study to explore the relationship between managers’ incentives to meet or beat earnings expectations and employee mental wellbeing through data collected from a mental health mobile app.

E-commerce has been growing for more than a decade but the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the rise in online shopping, causing an evolution in last-mile deliveries. A critical part of supply chain management that ensures goods are delivered from the warehouse to the final delivery destination, the growing density of last-mile operations is causing a significant increase in carbon emissions, air pollution and road congestion. Our research explores technologies and business models that can fuel a sustainable last-mile ecosystem revolution.

• Explore the Collaborative Urban Delivery Optimisation, a national resource planning and scheduling platform for logistics service providers developed by Professor of Computer Science Hoong Chuin Lau and his team at the Fujitsu-SMU Urban Computing and Engineering Corp. Lab (UNiCEN), in collaboration with the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore.

Sustainable supply chains are critical in the creation of a circular economy, and refer to the integration of environmentally and socially responsible practices, and corporate governance considerations into the sourcing, production, delivery, use and end-of-life of products and services. The digital transformation of supply chains have also provided companies with a heightened ability and greater obligation to green their supply chains and logistics.

• Professor of Computer Science Hoong Chuin Lau is leading the project "Optimizing Supply Chain Resilience with Quantum Sampling" to develop libraries, prebuild models and templates for supply chain use cases to enable easier and faster programming and development of software applications by early adopters from government, industry and academia. Professor Lau is also leading the IBM-SMU Risk-constrained materials requirements allocation optimiser research project to strenghten supply chain resiliency.