Taking into account these concerns, this book looks to cover issues related to the management for sustainable development in a context where organizations are continually facing high challenges for what concerns the items related to, amongst others, the re-use, recycling, waste reduction, add value, low costs and time of production, sustainable behaviour, not only in an environmental perspective but also in an organizational perspective. Today’s organizations can no longer develop their practices based in the existent paradigms. On the contrary, it is necessary to completely break from these paradigms, creating a total change of mentality in the way we manage the organizational activities. Taking into account this reality, managing for a sustainable development appears as a management philosophy focused in productivity improvement considering different kinds of goals, such as biological, economic and social systems goals.
Conscious of this reality, this book contributes to the exchange of experiences and perspectives about the state of research related to the management for a sustainable development, as well as the future direction of this research field. It looks to provide a support to academics and researchers, as well as those operating in the management field and who need to deal with policies and strategies related to sustainable development issues.
Carolina Machado received her PhD degree in Management Sciences (Orga- nizational and Politics Management area/Human Resources Management) from the University of Minho in 1999, and Master degree in Management (Strategic Human Resource Management) from Technical University of Lisbon in 1994. Teaching Human Resources Management subjects since 1989 at University of Minho, she is Associated Professor since 2004, with experience and research interest areas in the field of Human Resource Manage- ment, International Human Resource Management, Human Resource Man- agement in Small and Medium Enterprises, Training and Development, Management Change and Knowledge Management. She is the Head of Human Resources Management Work Group at University of Minho, as well as Chief Editor of the International Journal of Applied Management Sciences and Engineering (IJAMSE). Institutional page: http://www.eeg.uminho.pt; http://www.globalhrm.org
J. Paulo Davim received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Porto in 1997, the Aggregate title from the University of Coimbra in 2005 and a DSc from London Metropolitan University in 2013. Currently, he is Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Aveiro. He has more than 29 years of teaching and research experience in manufacturing, materials and mechanical engineering with special emphasis in Machining and Tribology. Recently, he has also interest in Management/Industrial Engineering and Higher Education for Sustainability. He is the Editor in Chief of eight international journals, Guest Editor of journals, books Editor, book Series Editor and Scientific Advisory for many international journals and conferences. Presently, he is an Editorial Board member of 25 international journals and acts as reviewer for more than 80 prestigious ISI Web of Science journals. In addition, he has also published as author and co-author more than 6 books, 50 book chapters and 350 articles in journals and conferences (more 200 articles in journals indexed in Web of Science, h-index 33+). Personal Web page: http://machining.web.ua.pt/ pers-davim.htm