Centre for Sustainable Business Practices (CSBP)
The Centre for Sustainable Business Practices (CSBP) established in 2016 is home to active researchers within the Faculty of Business and Law (FBL). The impact of sustainability is being felt across all business activities and is a consideration with any stakeholder relationship whether it is adopting a social responsibility approach with customers, defining environmental regulations with suppliers or exploring ways to protect shareholders and optimising decisions. The Centre creates an interdisciplinary platform for research activity across the FBL facilitating co-operation with colleagues across the University and with external partners with the goal of producing beneficial research with demonstrable impact.
About Centre for Sustainable Business Practices (CSBP)
A fast-growing area of interest for business and for the CSBP is the evolution of corporate social responsibility (CSR), i.e. what businesses do for society and the environment, to Environment, Social and Governance (ESG), which refers to how businesses measure, monitor and report on their social and environmental impacts. There are growing consumer, press and government pressures on businesses in this regard.
Implicit in this is the need for the public-private-third-academic sectors to work more closely together for a greater ‘collective impact’ in generating ‘social value’ and addressing some of the society’s most pressing challenges. These are encapsulated in the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There is significant need at a local level, where perhaps the greatest impact can be made. This means developing cross-sector social partnerships, for working together for a better, fairer and more inclusive community.
CSBP and its members are at the heart of this movement within Northamptonshire and the SE Midlands and beyond, nationally and internationally, helping charities, civic institutions and businesses work together to improve the social and business environment within which businesses operate. We help businesses ‘do well by doing good’.
The Centre for Sustainable Business Practices has a wide range of research expertise:
- Sustainable and Innovative Business Models, Markets and Strategies: Instances of this include development, assessment, and changes in business models, marketplaces, and strategies that incorporate ethical and environmental variables. Product and process innovations often play a crucial role in creation of such business models, markets, or strategies.
- Ethics, and Social Responsibility: e.g., ethical assessment of organisational activities, and evaluation of the positive (and or negative) impacts of organisations on communities.
- Social, Psychological, Cultural and Ecological Dimensions of Organisational Sustainability: This theme includes the human factors contributing to the sustainability of an organisation. As an instance, research works that assess and identify the need for culture change in organisations to achieve sustainability fall under this theme.
- Standards, Sustainability Assessment, and Reporting: This theme embraces the contextualisation and application of a number of sustainability frameworks, and standards (including but not limited to GRI, and SASB), and for sustainability measurement, reporting, and assessment.
- Cyber Security, Risk, and Resilience: This area of research attempts to examine organisational cyber resilience, and focuses on factors, systems, and processes that provide businesses, and not for profit organisations, irrespective of their size, to prevent and combat cyber and cyber-enabled crimes.
- Legal Frameworks and Implications: A key focus of this area of research is on legal vs voluntary social contributions of businesses. The legal frameworks of sustainability for the protection of planet, flora and fauna are also under this theme.
- Technology Enhanced Greening: The theme is around the adoption of innovative technologies to reduce carbon footprint emissions, and other pollutants. Investment appraisals for the adoption of such technologies are assessed under this theme.
- Data Analytics for Sustainability: Mainly quantitative, this research area embraces the state-of-the-art data analytics techniques including cloud-based systems, big data analytics, and machine learning to analyse raw data that can lead to valuable insights for making decisions related to the sustainability of an organisation or an industry.
- Applied Systems Analysis: The application of System Dynamics (SD), Agent-Based Modelling (ABM), and other hard and soft systems thinking approaches in the wide context of sustainability.
- Disaster and Crisis Management: Research in this area focuses on conducting appropriate risk assessment approaches for devising pertinent response development at the point of disaster and/or crisis occurrence. Preventative measures, and frameworks are also studied in this team.
- Business Operations, Supply Management, and Circular Economy: research under this theme mainly focuses on sustainable supply chains (in different sectors), through-life systems, product and service lifecycles, and circularity assessment of products.
Centre for Sustainable Business Practices (CSBP) Leadership
- Dr Chijioke Uba: Centre Lead, Senior Lecturer in International Business
- Dr Oluwaseyi Omoloso: Deputy Centre Lead, Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Business
- Adrian Pryce DL: Outreach Lead, Associate Professor in Strategy & International Business
View the centre’s researchers on PURE.
Find out information about the CSBP external associates.
Higher education (HE) has the potential to break intergenerational poverty by bringing about social mobility, thus transforming the lives of many, the wider society and particularly the minority ethnic groups in the UK. In recent years the success rates of different groups of students in HE, has come under considerable scrutiny with gender and ethnicity identified as key attributes for predicting differential achievement of ‘good degrees’. There is a 26% black attainment and this figure has increased year on year, faster than the overall sector. This project will examine the barriers impacting Black student attainment at University of Northampton.
Understanding the social impact of the Blue Skies Model – Research Project Funding Proposal
Blue Skies as the supplier of fresh-cut prepared fruit to Albert Heijn and Waitrose & Partners follows a unique business model that aims to provide positive social impacts on the local communities where the product (fruit) grows, is harvested and prepared, and subsequently transported to the European markets. This “adding value at source” model is designed not only to deliver better quality products, but also to provide positive social impacts (such as, opportunities for employment, skills development, and technology transfer) within the local communities. This business model is in addition to the three-tiered Foundation model by which Blue Skies, Albert Heijn, and Waitrose invest some of the economic benefits of the entire business model within the source Countries. The present document aims to provide a detailed and contextualised research proposal to assess the social impact of the Blue Skies business model , and to provide a set of recommendations to the Company.
The Food Industry Challenge Hub
Blue Skies and partners have recently acquired funding from a sustainable manufacturing and environmental pollution initiative (SMEP) for the development of a research and development hub. The University of Northampton’s Centre for Sustainable Business Practice has been included as a potential research and project management partner, subject to due diligence and other checks to be conducted by Blue Skies and partners. If successful the University of Northampton will be a sub-contractor on this project.
- Hull-WEMA: a novel zero-lag approach in the moving average family, with an application to COVID-19
- Hansun, S., Charles, V., Gherman, T. & Varadarajan, V., 1 Jan 2022, In: International Journal of Management and Decision Making. 21, 1, p. 92-112 21 p.
- The Application of Machine Learning Algorithms in Classification of Malicious Websites
- Sedighi, T., Montasari, R. & Hosseinian Far, A., 1 Jan 2022, Privacy, Security And Forensics in The Internet of Things (IoT). Montasari, R., Carroll, F., Mitchell, I., Hara, S. & Bolton-King, R. (eds.). Cham: Springer, p. 131-147 17 p.
- The knock-on effects of green buildings: High-rise construction design implications
- Blackburne, L., Charehbaghi, K. & Hosseinian Far, A., 12 Jan 2022, In: International Journal of Structural Integrity. 13, 1, p. 57-77 21 p.
- Updating UK CSR Legislation and Potentials for Voluntary Application
- Hyslop, W., Sarwar, D. & Hosseinian-Far, A., 14 Feb 2022, (Accepted/In press) In: International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics.
- A Critical Overview of Food Supply Chain Risk Management
- Azizsafaei,M., Sarwar, D., Fassam, L., Khandan, R. & Hosseinian Far, A., 21 May 2021, Cybersecurity, Privacy and Freedom Protection in the Connected World: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Global Security, Safety and Sustainability, London, January 2021. Springer, p. 413-429 17 p. (Cybersecurity, Privacy and Freedom Protection in the Connected World).