Researcher Links Workshop: "Environmental technology innovation for green supply chains"

Start date: 1 September 2018
End date: 9 September 2018
Partners and collaborators: Nottingham University Business School, Ningbo, China.
Principal investigator: Professor Chee Yew Wong; Professor William Young (Leeds); Professor Peter Ball (York); Professor Jian Chen (Tsinghua, China); Professor Qinghua Zhu (Shanghai Jiaotong, China); Dr Jing Dai (Nottingham, China).

Description

The Chinese government has recently started to implement new policies for transitioning to a low-carbon economy. However, many manufacturing and logistics industries in China still lack innovative technology to green their supply chains. Consequently, thousands of lives in China will continue to be adversely affected by pollution, depletion of resources and man-made disasters. Even though the UK is a major consumer of products from China, the UK and China are faced with two very different regulatory and economic environments. Thus, researchers from both countries need to understand each other’s environment.

This workshop brings together early career researchers and experts from different disciplines from the UK and China, so that they can deepen their understanding of the differences in social, economic and regulatory factors between the two countries; attend advanced research training; develop methods for integrating research capacity from different countries and disciplines; and eventually build up new collaborative relationships. It serves as a stepping stone for developing a new form of collaborative research capability for developing new research projects and groups that address sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the longer-term.

The applicants are both established scholars in green supply chain and eco-innovation, supported by a wealth of research capacity from the University of Leeds’s Sustainable Research Institute (SRI) and Nottingham University’s Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies (CSET), Centre for Sustainable Manufacturing (CSM) and International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICSCR). The mentors for the workshop are top leading scholars from major research conferences and networks, who would help train and develop new research capacity in three areas: environmental policy; green supply chain management, and environmental technological innovation.

Aims

This workshop aims to develop a new form of collaborative research capability for developing new research projects and a UK-China research group that addresses sustainable development goals from an environmental technology and supply chain innovation perspective in the longer -erm.

The objectives are:

1. Bring together early career researchers and experts from different disciplines from the UK and China

2. Deepen the understanding of the differences in social, economic and regulatory factors between the China and UK (Europe);

3. Provide advanced research training to early career researchers that intertwine methodologies and theories from multiple disciplines

4. Develop methods for integrating research capacity from different countries and disciplines

5. Build up new collaborative relationships as a foundation for the UK-China research group for supply chain innovation and environmental sustainability.

The workshop is designed to gather, train and connect early career researchers from different disciplines such that they better understand the complexity and contexts related to environmental technology and supply chain innovation and work together to develop meaningful and impactful research projects, facilitated through learning from mentors and the new joint research group to be formed during the workshop.