Liability or Ethics?

The purpose of this chapter is to reconsider a traditional approach to the compliance function of firms from a modern perspective, which broadens its concept as a company's liability to only secure its adherence to applicable laws and avoid regulatory sanctions in serving company's interests. The observation of issues regulated by the compliance function in the contest of managing situations of conflict of interest (COI) in different spheres concludes that, in fact, those issues, to a greater extent, relate to sustaining ethical behavior in business rather than stem from regulatory norms. Based on the findings of this analysis as well as other different sources, a new definition for effective compliance has been developed with the focus on adherence to ethical principles in respect to third parties, which addresses compliance function in terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its sustainability role setting a vector for a further research.

Supply Chain Modernization

The global supply chain applications are evolving and changing globally. In order to increase success, some processes are now transferred to other firms. By such implementations, it is aimed to focus on the core business and to be successful. 3PL is the use of an external entity to perform some or all of the operations. The 4PL approach is a revolutionary approach to supply chain management. 3PL and 4PL activities are used for many purposes by multinational companies for increasing the productivity and efficiency and for decreasing the overall operational costs. Like all countries, Turkey also faces strategic organizational changes in terms of logistics activities. Modernization of logistic professes are widely examined in the literature. The scope of this chapter is the logistics modernization processes of Turkish companies, and it aims to inform about the modernization processes in Turkey by examining successful real-life examples.

Green Marketing and Branding

Green products and services have become an important part of consumption, as consumers' knowledge and concern towards environmental sustainability has increased and they have started to concentrate on their environmental impact. Nonetheless, green marketing still constitutes a small portion of the overall consumer spending. This chapter aims to highlight the importance of marketing activities in the adoption and social normalization of green consumption by the consumers generating public support and economic benefits for the companies as well as environmental and social gains for the society in return. Combining both micro and macro-level determinants and consequences, a conceptual framework is suggested which aims to contribute to literature both theoretically and practically.

The Effect of Health and Education Expenditures on Poverty

Poverty is a phenomenon that influences and complicates the living conditions of individuals. Along with the poverty, individuals experience health problems, and educational and income levels of individuals may also be low. Countries are generally able to fight against poverty by increasing public expenditures and making some economic progresses. For that reason, analyzing the effect of health and education expenditures with a significant place in public expenditures and economic growth on poverty is highly important. In this chapter, the effect of health and education expenditures and economic growth on poverty in 2005 and 2016 period in eight Central and Eastern European countries has been analyzed using panel data analysis. As a result of the study, it has been determined that health and education expenditures and economic growth have a negative effect on poverty. In addition, a one-way causality from health and education expenditures to poverty and a two-way causality between economic growth and poverty have been detected.

An Assessment and Policy Proposals Within the Framework of the Blue Economy and Public Policies

Blue economy refers to economic sectors that are either directly or indirectly linked with the oceans. However, the blue economy does not only have an economic dimension. Environmental health is also an area that blue economy takes into account. This chapter draws attention to both social and economic potential to be created by blue economy and to consider and evaluate how to increase this potential through public policies in today's century, when the resources are gradually depleted and population growth continues. In order for the blue economy to be a driving force for sustainable growth, public-private partnerships emerge as a recipe for opportunities. In addition, the growth of the blue economy can be stimulated by conventional financial instruments (such as taxes and subsidies). Since the blue economy is at an intersection of environmental health and economic benefits, positive externalities that environmental health can have on generations should not be overlooked.

Compliance in Sustainability Reporting

The research is aimed at assessing the benefits of compliance for corporate sustainability and sustainable development. The main achievement of the research is the outcome of the survey on companies' public reports to identify the trends and measure the progress achieved in disclosing information on compliance. There are both business and public drivers for disclosure of compliance information in non-financial reporting. Best practices in disclosing information on compliance by the company-leaders were revealed. There is a positive trend in the expansion of information on compliance in sustainability reports in recent years. Some problematic areas in reporting on compliance were identified. The outcomes of the research call for companies to disclose information on compliance in a more explicit way. The results may be valid for the improvement of corporate reporting practices.

Financial Flexibility and Corporate Investment

This chapter investigates the impact of financial flexibility (FF) on investments, which constitutes the basis for sustainable corporate development. Using a large database of 1,205 firms from three emerging countries in Europe—Poland, Russia and Turkey—for the time period between 2000 and 2016. The authors provide evidence that financial flexibility, achieved through conservative leverage policies, enhances companies' investments and positively contribute to corporate sustainability. Moreover, as the number of years of low leverage kept by firms increase so does the impact of financial flexibility on corporate investment. Besides financial flexibility, internal cash generation capacity of firms, and sales growth also improve the investment capability of firms, improving corporate sustainability. The results support the hypothesis that financial flexibility enhances companies' investment capability, which is an extremely essential tool for firms to have in their businesses.

SERVQUAL-Based Evaluation of Service Quality of Energy Companies in Turkey

The aim of this chapter is to measure the service quality of energy companies. Within this context, seven different energy companies that are listed on İstanbul Stock Exchange are considered. For this purpose, five dimensions and 14 criteria are identified by considering the details of SERVQUAL methodology. In the analysis process, fuzzy DEMATEL method is used to weight these dimensions and criteria and the performance of the energy companies are ranked by using fuzzy MOORA approach. The findings show that feedback is the most significant dimension and data security and physical security are the most important criteria. Another important conclusion is that the companies, which have high profitability, have better performance regarding service quality. Thus, it is recommended that the companies should mainly focus on the ways of getting necessary feedback from their customers, such as conducting a survey.

Economic Impacts of Closed-Loop Supply Chains

Closed-loop supply chain management has begun to gain more importance in recent years due to increased environmental concerns, reduced natural resources, and legal regulations. In addition, with the shortening of product life cycles, the rate of returning products is increasing day by day. Therefore, businesses are trying to find ways to get more value from these returning products. Here, the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC), which comes into effect at this point, refers to the design, operation, and control of the system to ensure maximum value from returning products of different breeds and quantities. Recycling these returned products by different methods will provide significant savings in terms of both the production costs by providing return of the economically valuable materials to the economy as an input and the waste disposal costs by reducing the amount of waste. This chapter investigates the concept of closed-loop supply chain and its benefits to the businesses.

Design for a Closed-Loop Supply Chain System With Sensor-Embedded Refrigerators

This chapter presents a methodology to evaluate the benefit of using sensors in closed-loop supply chains. Sensors can be embedded into products to collect helpful information during their use and end-of-life (EOL) phases. This information can subsequently be employed to estimate the remaining lives of components and products and to ensure that proper maintenance is provided to avoid premature failures. The information is also useful in determining the quality of the components and products when planning EOL operations such as disassembly, inspection, and remanufacturing. To statistically illustrate these benefits, discrete event simulation is employed to a case study consisting of regular and sensor-embedded refrigerator systems. A design of experiments study is then employed where experiments are run to compare the two systems. The results reveal that the sensor-embedded systems perform much better than the regular systems in terms of disassembly costs, inspection costs, and EOL profits generated by selling the remanufactured products and components.