Hanken researchers awarded at NOFOMA conference
The paper Waste Management and Reverse Logistics in the Humanitarian Context, by Virva Tuomala, Anna Aminoff and Gyöngyi Kovács, received the award for the Best Conference Paper. The paper studies the reverse logistics challenges and potential solutions in the humanitarian context and finds that numerous greening endeavours exist across humanitarian organisations, yet the research and documentation of waste management and reverse logistics is limited. A literature analysis identified three main themes: the umbrella theme of environmental sustainability, and the specific subthemes of waste management and reverse logistics, with specific unique topics attributed to each.
Helleke Heikkinen’s paper Sustainability in Last Mile Delivery — Exploring the Cognitive Frames of Retailers and LSPs received the Best Doctoral Paper award. The paper explores the underlying sustainability interpretations of retail and logistics service providers (LSP) managers in the context of last mile delivery, utilizing cognitive frames as a lens. The findings show that both retailers and LSPs interpret sustainability primarily as environmental sustainability and social sustainability is not considered. Most managers have a hierarchical cognitive frame regarding sustainability, where sustainability is an important topic, but is subversive to economic interests. The frame content attributes differ between retailers and LSPs.
The 34th NOFOMA annual conference was organized by the University of Iceland and took place in Reykjavik, June 8-10, 2022.