Patricia Lagun Mesquita | Blekinge Institute of Technology (original) (raw)
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Papers by Patricia Lagun Mesquita
Sustainability
Since the economic crisis in 2008, the world has seen a partly negative shift in social progress,... more Since the economic crisis in 2008, the world has seen a partly negative shift in social progress, highlighting that current economic models and practices do not guarantee long-lasting societal and human wellbeing. Economic models and business practices are deeply intertwined; thus, businesses play a major role in the advancement of social sustainability, and academic research can offer support in navigating the complexity of this issue. However, social sustainability tends to be under-researched. This article summarizes the discussion in general business management, product development, and supply-chain management, and from this suggest a research agenda to help in guiding systematic change in business organizations towards social sustainability. The article identifies ten main challenges and offers five recommendations to move the field forward, namely, a more explicit engagement with and discussion of social systems-science based ideas, and a more explicit determination as a field...
Technologies and Eco-innovation towards Sustainability I
The aim of this research was to integrate sustainable development and design-thinking-based produ... more The aim of this research was to integrate sustainable development and design-thinking-based product design in order that the product design then contributes to society's transition to a sustainable future. This is an important pursuit since product lifecycles are a major cause of society's current sustainability challenges. To address this, many authors argue for integrating sustainable development into existing design processes rather than developing stand-alone tools and methods. Through action research with a design consultancy who wanted to start working with sustainable product design, we iterated between three stages: understanding needs, designing action, and trying out the action. The first stage comprised document analysis, focus-group style workshops, a survey and interviews. When designing the actions (enhancements to their design-thinking-based process), we drew on literature on sustainable product design, decision-making for sustainability, and organisational learning and change for sustainability. We also drew on our research partners' practical experience. The enhanced process was tried out and further developed through feedback, student testing and co-development meetings. The result is an enhanced process where project teams (i) use the outcomes from the inspiration phase of the existing process to choose sustainable design strategies that are relevant for their particular project. Once the teams have chosen which strategies to work with, for example, design for remanufacture, we suggest that they (ii) use the strategies to develop ideation foci/questions that help them explore the design space. The third enhancement is for teams to (iii) compare concepts with respect to sustainability as part of their concept comparison and evaluation.
The aim of the research was to integrate sustainability into design thinking based product design... more The aim of the research was to integrate sustainability into design thinking based product design in order that the resulting products are more sustainable. Products that are more sustainable is a critical goal since product lifecycles are a major cause of society’s current sustainability challenges. Based on arguments in the literature, we investigated how to integrate sustainability into existing design processes rather than developing stand-alone tools and methods. We focused on a design thinking based process since this type is becoming more popular. Through action research with a design consultancy who want to start working with sustainable product design, we iterated between three stages: seeking to understand, designing action, and trying out the action. The first stage comprised document analysis, focus-group style workshops, a survey and interviews. When designing the actions (enhancements to their design thinking based process), we drew on literature from sustainable produ...
Sustainable design strategies provide tangible ways for integrating sustainability into early pha... more Sustainable design strategies provide tangible ways for integrating sustainability into early phase product design work. Examples include design for remanufacturing and design for the base of the pyramid. There are many such strategies and it is difficult to choose between them. Sustainable product design activities also need to be tailored to business priorities. We therefore designed a decision-support prototype to aid project teams to choose strategies based on relevance to the project in terms of both business and sustainability value. To design the prototype, we first identified potential strategies from sustainable product development literature. We then used literature on each of six selected strategies to identify potential business and sustainability benefits. We developed a way to compare sustainability value based on a scientifically established definition of sustainability and a lifecycle perspective. The prototype is designed to be usable by practitioners who are not ne...
Companies are increasingly pressed to consider sustainability aspects when making decisions durin... more Companies are increasingly pressed to consider sustainability aspects when making decisions during product development. However, the methodological support for doing so is immature. The immaturity ...
In recent years several approaches to Social LCA have been proposed. Despite recognized shortcomi... more In recent years several approaches to Social LCA have been proposed. Despite recognized shortcomings of those, recent development has focused more on testing existing approaches and less on finding ...
Despite the growing awareness of sustainability issues and importance of considering sustainabili... more Despite the growing awareness of sustainability issues and importance of considering sustainability aspects in the product innovation process, the methodological support for doing so is still immature compared to the methodological support for considering other aspects in the decision-making, such as product performance and manufacturability. The immaturity is particularly pronounced regarding the social dimension of sustainability. In this paper we use a novel process for identifying sustainability criteria and estimating a sustainability compliance index, with the purpose of supporting inclusion of social sustainability aspects in the decision-making in product development. By including social sustainability aspects into a compliance metric, the foundations for strategic and operative decisions can be integrated. The process has been developed and tested collaboratively with industry representatives in a selected case company. Preliminary results show that social sustainability cr...
Journal of Cleaner Production
Analysing product concepts with respect to social sustainability is a contemporary challenge for ... more Analysing product concepts with respect to social sustainability is a contemporary challenge for which there is little support available for product developers. Our aim was to build on previous work to support product developers in a case company with this challenge. Previously a definition of social sustainability was developed from science on how the social system functions. We designed a first prototype of support for product developers to use this previously developed definition when analysing the extraction lifecycle activities associated with their product concepts. The prototype instructs users to model the location of the extraction activities and then use existing databases and indicators to analyse the social sustainability performance of each location. The databases and indicators were selected according to their relevance to scientific principles for social sustainability. We then performed initial evaluation of the support, through which we learnt that the approach may make it possible for product developers to analyse extraction activities, but the level of accuracy of analysis that is possible is not good enough for comparing the concepts in the case study decision. We discuss the implications of these challenges and suggest that it may be better to redesign our approach in order to provide learningful support for product developers or support for other decisionmaking in the company.
Sustainability
Companies responsible for product development (PD) and manufacturing play an important role in su... more Companies responsible for product development (PD) and manufacturing play an important role in supporting society in achieving sustainability, and yet they do not always include full sustainability considerations in PD decisions. The social dimension of sustainability has been largely neglected in the PD field and there is very little empirical evidence of social sustainability implementation in general. The aim of this paper is to investigate how social sustainability is currently included in PD organizations and what their motivations are to do so. Results from a comparative case study approach with three organizations include rich descriptions across four dimensions: The scope of the work and their view of interdependencies with other social systems, their definition of social sustainability and the issues they work with, what guides strategic decisions, and how this internal work is structured. The results reveal that the three product development organizations are heterogenous ...
Companies responsible for product development (PD) and manufacturing play an important role in su... more Companies responsible for product development (PD) and manufacturing play an important role in supporting society in achieving sustainability, and yet they do not always include full sustainability considerations in PD decisions. The social dimension of sustainability has been largely neglected in the PD field and there is very little empirical evidence of social sustainability implementation in general. The aim of this paper is to investigate how social sustainability is currently included in PD organizations and what their motivations are to do so. Results from a comparative case study approach with three organizations include rich descriptions across four dimensions: The scope of the work and their view of interdependencies with other social systems, their definition of social sustainability and the issues they work with, what guides strategic decisions, and how this internal work is structured. The results reveal that the three product development organizations are heterogenous in their approaches to social sustainability and that the more advanced approach shows a better understanding of the complexity of social sustainability and a broader perspective of its interdependencies, which goes hand-in-hand with a way of organizing that overcomes traditional hierarchies and allows for more collaborative and strategic work in this area. This systems perspective also drives what issues are included in an organization's work; scope and definition of social sustainability become more encompassing and aligned. Finally, our study shows that social sustainability impacts connected to products' lifecycles, when addressed, are done so by functions outside design activities, as opposed to product developers. A greater understanding of how companies currently approach social sustainability and what challenges they might face in integrating it in organizational and design related practices has been called for; our paper contributes to this but acknowledges that more work is needed.
In recent years several approaches to Social LCA have been proposed. Despite recognized shortcomi... more In recent years several approaches to Social LCA have been proposed. Despite recognized shortcomings of those, recent development has focused more on testing existing approaches and less on finding a unifying framework that can support Social LCA to deliver on its promise: to aid decision making regarding social issues related to product life cycles. This paper offers an analysis and evaluation of the potential contribution of the body of work on Social LCA to sustainable development using the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development. A number of strengths and weaknesses from a strategic sustainability perspective are identified and recommendations to improve the support for how to deal with social issues in the product innovation process are provided.
Using a scientific-principled definition of global socio-ecological sustainability can be a usefu... more Using a scientific-principled definition of global socio-ecological sustainability can be a useful basis for planning precious and base metal mining projects. The mining industry faces key challenges of; viability of the minerals industry; the control, use and management of land; national and local socio-economic development; environmental management; materials stewardship; and access to information. Using a framework for strategic sustainable development to assess the current reality of mine project development has resulted in identifying areas of strength and opportunities for improvement between current best practices and a desired vision of sustainability constrained by science based principles. These gaps indicate opportunities to strengthen current strategies, tools, and actions with a deeper understanding of socio-ecologic systems and a first-order, principled definition of sustainability, enabling success in moving towards achieving a sustainable society, ie sustainability. Evaluation of mine project development and their impacts on ecological and social systems using a systems perspective which recognises the underlying principles of operation, delays, feedback loops and response to change highlight specific opportunities to create value for social, economic and ecologic systems. Envisioning this future for mining projects within a sustainable society can be done by evaluating their development and operations guided by the sustainability principles. Performance indicators play a key role in measuring progress towards achieving sustainability goals yet it is necessary to consider whether indicators capture the whole systems perspective. Connected to this broader view, indicators can contribute much value to the mining industry’s sustainability journey. This paper examines how current processes for mining projects can be developed using a whole systems perspective and measured using holistically designed performance indicators.
Business Schools Under Fire, 2011
Sustainability
Since the economic crisis in 2008, the world has seen a partly negative shift in social progress,... more Since the economic crisis in 2008, the world has seen a partly negative shift in social progress, highlighting that current economic models and practices do not guarantee long-lasting societal and human wellbeing. Economic models and business practices are deeply intertwined; thus, businesses play a major role in the advancement of social sustainability, and academic research can offer support in navigating the complexity of this issue. However, social sustainability tends to be under-researched. This article summarizes the discussion in general business management, product development, and supply-chain management, and from this suggest a research agenda to help in guiding systematic change in business organizations towards social sustainability. The article identifies ten main challenges and offers five recommendations to move the field forward, namely, a more explicit engagement with and discussion of social systems-science based ideas, and a more explicit determination as a field...
Technologies and Eco-innovation towards Sustainability I
The aim of this research was to integrate sustainable development and design-thinking-based produ... more The aim of this research was to integrate sustainable development and design-thinking-based product design in order that the product design then contributes to society's transition to a sustainable future. This is an important pursuit since product lifecycles are a major cause of society's current sustainability challenges. To address this, many authors argue for integrating sustainable development into existing design processes rather than developing stand-alone tools and methods. Through action research with a design consultancy who wanted to start working with sustainable product design, we iterated between three stages: understanding needs, designing action, and trying out the action. The first stage comprised document analysis, focus-group style workshops, a survey and interviews. When designing the actions (enhancements to their design-thinking-based process), we drew on literature on sustainable product design, decision-making for sustainability, and organisational learning and change for sustainability. We also drew on our research partners' practical experience. The enhanced process was tried out and further developed through feedback, student testing and co-development meetings. The result is an enhanced process where project teams (i) use the outcomes from the inspiration phase of the existing process to choose sustainable design strategies that are relevant for their particular project. Once the teams have chosen which strategies to work with, for example, design for remanufacture, we suggest that they (ii) use the strategies to develop ideation foci/questions that help them explore the design space. The third enhancement is for teams to (iii) compare concepts with respect to sustainability as part of their concept comparison and evaluation.
The aim of the research was to integrate sustainability into design thinking based product design... more The aim of the research was to integrate sustainability into design thinking based product design in order that the resulting products are more sustainable. Products that are more sustainable is a critical goal since product lifecycles are a major cause of society’s current sustainability challenges. Based on arguments in the literature, we investigated how to integrate sustainability into existing design processes rather than developing stand-alone tools and methods. We focused on a design thinking based process since this type is becoming more popular. Through action research with a design consultancy who want to start working with sustainable product design, we iterated between three stages: seeking to understand, designing action, and trying out the action. The first stage comprised document analysis, focus-group style workshops, a survey and interviews. When designing the actions (enhancements to their design thinking based process), we drew on literature from sustainable produ...
Sustainable design strategies provide tangible ways for integrating sustainability into early pha... more Sustainable design strategies provide tangible ways for integrating sustainability into early phase product design work. Examples include design for remanufacturing and design for the base of the pyramid. There are many such strategies and it is difficult to choose between them. Sustainable product design activities also need to be tailored to business priorities. We therefore designed a decision-support prototype to aid project teams to choose strategies based on relevance to the project in terms of both business and sustainability value. To design the prototype, we first identified potential strategies from sustainable product development literature. We then used literature on each of six selected strategies to identify potential business and sustainability benefits. We developed a way to compare sustainability value based on a scientifically established definition of sustainability and a lifecycle perspective. The prototype is designed to be usable by practitioners who are not ne...
Companies are increasingly pressed to consider sustainability aspects when making decisions durin... more Companies are increasingly pressed to consider sustainability aspects when making decisions during product development. However, the methodological support for doing so is immature. The immaturity ...
In recent years several approaches to Social LCA have been proposed. Despite recognized shortcomi... more In recent years several approaches to Social LCA have been proposed. Despite recognized shortcomings of those, recent development has focused more on testing existing approaches and less on finding ...
Despite the growing awareness of sustainability issues and importance of considering sustainabili... more Despite the growing awareness of sustainability issues and importance of considering sustainability aspects in the product innovation process, the methodological support for doing so is still immature compared to the methodological support for considering other aspects in the decision-making, such as product performance and manufacturability. The immaturity is particularly pronounced regarding the social dimension of sustainability. In this paper we use a novel process for identifying sustainability criteria and estimating a sustainability compliance index, with the purpose of supporting inclusion of social sustainability aspects in the decision-making in product development. By including social sustainability aspects into a compliance metric, the foundations for strategic and operative decisions can be integrated. The process has been developed and tested collaboratively with industry representatives in a selected case company. Preliminary results show that social sustainability cr...
Journal of Cleaner Production
Analysing product concepts with respect to social sustainability is a contemporary challenge for ... more Analysing product concepts with respect to social sustainability is a contemporary challenge for which there is little support available for product developers. Our aim was to build on previous work to support product developers in a case company with this challenge. Previously a definition of social sustainability was developed from science on how the social system functions. We designed a first prototype of support for product developers to use this previously developed definition when analysing the extraction lifecycle activities associated with their product concepts. The prototype instructs users to model the location of the extraction activities and then use existing databases and indicators to analyse the social sustainability performance of each location. The databases and indicators were selected according to their relevance to scientific principles for social sustainability. We then performed initial evaluation of the support, through which we learnt that the approach may make it possible for product developers to analyse extraction activities, but the level of accuracy of analysis that is possible is not good enough for comparing the concepts in the case study decision. We discuss the implications of these challenges and suggest that it may be better to redesign our approach in order to provide learningful support for product developers or support for other decisionmaking in the company.
Sustainability
Companies responsible for product development (PD) and manufacturing play an important role in su... more Companies responsible for product development (PD) and manufacturing play an important role in supporting society in achieving sustainability, and yet they do not always include full sustainability considerations in PD decisions. The social dimension of sustainability has been largely neglected in the PD field and there is very little empirical evidence of social sustainability implementation in general. The aim of this paper is to investigate how social sustainability is currently included in PD organizations and what their motivations are to do so. Results from a comparative case study approach with three organizations include rich descriptions across four dimensions: The scope of the work and their view of interdependencies with other social systems, their definition of social sustainability and the issues they work with, what guides strategic decisions, and how this internal work is structured. The results reveal that the three product development organizations are heterogenous ...
Companies responsible for product development (PD) and manufacturing play an important role in su... more Companies responsible for product development (PD) and manufacturing play an important role in supporting society in achieving sustainability, and yet they do not always include full sustainability considerations in PD decisions. The social dimension of sustainability has been largely neglected in the PD field and there is very little empirical evidence of social sustainability implementation in general. The aim of this paper is to investigate how social sustainability is currently included in PD organizations and what their motivations are to do so. Results from a comparative case study approach with three organizations include rich descriptions across four dimensions: The scope of the work and their view of interdependencies with other social systems, their definition of social sustainability and the issues they work with, what guides strategic decisions, and how this internal work is structured. The results reveal that the three product development organizations are heterogenous in their approaches to social sustainability and that the more advanced approach shows a better understanding of the complexity of social sustainability and a broader perspective of its interdependencies, which goes hand-in-hand with a way of organizing that overcomes traditional hierarchies and allows for more collaborative and strategic work in this area. This systems perspective also drives what issues are included in an organization's work; scope and definition of social sustainability become more encompassing and aligned. Finally, our study shows that social sustainability impacts connected to products' lifecycles, when addressed, are done so by functions outside design activities, as opposed to product developers. A greater understanding of how companies currently approach social sustainability and what challenges they might face in integrating it in organizational and design related practices has been called for; our paper contributes to this but acknowledges that more work is needed.
In recent years several approaches to Social LCA have been proposed. Despite recognized shortcomi... more In recent years several approaches to Social LCA have been proposed. Despite recognized shortcomings of those, recent development has focused more on testing existing approaches and less on finding a unifying framework that can support Social LCA to deliver on its promise: to aid decision making regarding social issues related to product life cycles. This paper offers an analysis and evaluation of the potential contribution of the body of work on Social LCA to sustainable development using the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development. A number of strengths and weaknesses from a strategic sustainability perspective are identified and recommendations to improve the support for how to deal with social issues in the product innovation process are provided.
Using a scientific-principled definition of global socio-ecological sustainability can be a usefu... more Using a scientific-principled definition of global socio-ecological sustainability can be a useful basis for planning precious and base metal mining projects. The mining industry faces key challenges of; viability of the minerals industry; the control, use and management of land; national and local socio-economic development; environmental management; materials stewardship; and access to information. Using a framework for strategic sustainable development to assess the current reality of mine project development has resulted in identifying areas of strength and opportunities for improvement between current best practices and a desired vision of sustainability constrained by science based principles. These gaps indicate opportunities to strengthen current strategies, tools, and actions with a deeper understanding of socio-ecologic systems and a first-order, principled definition of sustainability, enabling success in moving towards achieving a sustainable society, ie sustainability. Evaluation of mine project development and their impacts on ecological and social systems using a systems perspective which recognises the underlying principles of operation, delays, feedback loops and response to change highlight specific opportunities to create value for social, economic and ecologic systems. Envisioning this future for mining projects within a sustainable society can be done by evaluating their development and operations guided by the sustainability principles. Performance indicators play a key role in measuring progress towards achieving sustainability goals yet it is necessary to consider whether indicators capture the whole systems perspective. Connected to this broader view, indicators can contribute much value to the mining industry’s sustainability journey. This paper examines how current processes for mining projects can be developed using a whole systems perspective and measured using holistically designed performance indicators.
Business Schools Under Fire, 2011