Corporate Sustainability - Science topic

The Influence of Corporate Environmental Responsibility on Corporate Sustainable Development

Banks, wanting to move with the times, are modifying their offers of financial products and services, including banking, adapting them to changing social trends and customer preferences. Modifications of banking offers mainly concerning the issue of organization, the channel of access to offers are also determined by the technological progress taking place. On the other hand, in terms of changes regarding social trends, changes in customers' worldview, customers' awareness of certain topics considered current and developing, it is the banks that are now recognizing the increasing level of customers' awareness of the climate change taking place, the ongoing process of global warming, the role of humans in these processes, potential threats to the biosphere and people in the future if these processes continue, the need to urgently carry out a green transformation of the economy, to build a green closed loop economy, a sustainable and zero-carbon economy, a sharing economy, the implementation of sustainable development goals. Accordingly, banks, on the one hand, for part of their loan offerings, give names to green loans, which they provide as investment business loans for borrowers planning to implement a green business venture involving, for example, setting up photovoltaic panels on the roof of a house, apartment building, store, business, etc, purchasing an electric or hydrogen-powered car, setting up a household sewage treatment plant, a rainwater catchment system for watering the lawn, building a composter next to the home garden, building a biogas plant producing biogas for energy needs from organic and post-agricultural waste, insulating the facade of a residential building to increase the scale of savings in energy consumption, setting up a system of intelligent blinds to optimize the temperature of the building and increase energy independence, building a system to optimize waste sorting and increase the scale of recycling, building a retention reservoir in an area threatened by long-term drought, carrying out a zoning change investment to reduce the area covered with concrete or asphalt and increase the area of greenery in the city, etc. On the other hand, companies, financial institutions, including commercial banks are modifying their missions and development strategies by adding green business issues, environmental social responsibility, sustainable development goals and fashionable green slogans. Some enterprises, companies and banks also in advertising spots, videos promoting the organization's logo present this logo in the form of an animation that suggests the changes already made in the organization, that the company, enterprise or bank has become green in terms of mission and strategy, that it pursues certain selected or all sustainability goals. But this is not always consistent with the facts. Increasingly, it is greenwashing. The scale of greenwashing is growing rapidly because there is no system for verifying and certifying business entities on the question of whether they are indeed green, whether they are pursuing sustainability goals, at what scale they are doing so in the context of their overall business operations. However, some of the banks that offer, for example, green loans actually finance with their help the green business ventures that the borrowers implement. But, after all, in a significant part of the banks that modify their offerings of banking products in this way, including loans they are still only realizing what they have been doing for many years. The only difference is that previously, before the modification of the bank's offer, the financing of the borrower's project of setting up a photovoltaic panel on the roof of the house or buying an electric car was done by the bank through the granting of an investment loan and not, as now, the granting of a green investment loan. In addition, the difference is also only that green technologies are rapidly developing and becoming cheaper. Until a dozen years ago, the purchase of an electric car or the installation of a photovoltaic panel on the roof of a residential building involved a much higher expense or was practically unaffordable for citizens with an average income level. However, much has been changing in this regard in recent years, and as a result, banks are also modifying their banking product offerings and adding the issues of ecology, green transformation and implementation of sustainable development goals to their missions and development strategies. With increasing competition among banks on the issue of green banking product offerings, it is becoming more and more common for individual banks, as part of advertising campaigns, in advertising spots and promotional videos introducing their green banking products, to also give examples of a specific type of green business venture that can be financed with, for example, a specific type of green loan or green lease. In view of the above, I give one example: One bank in Poland advertises green financing in the form of photovoltaic leasing for companies and SMEs, as well as leasing an electric car. What other similar examples of advertising green banking products and/or financing certain types of green business ventures with them are used by commercial banks?

In view of the above, I address the following question to the esteemed community of scientists and researchers:

Please answer,

I invite everyone to join the discussion,

Thank you very much,

Best wishes,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

The increase in pro-environmental, pro-climate and pro-environmental awareness of citizens is also resulting in a change in business strategy towards increasing the achievement of sustainability goals, producing product and/or service offerings described as green, adding green economy and sustainability issues to the mission of the business entity, etc. of many companies, businesses, financial and public institutions. An increasing number of banks and other financial institutions, with the aim of improving their image in advertising campaigns, on their websites, at events and in public relations activities, are presenting themselves as pursuing sustainable development goals, caring for the future of future generations of citizens and, therefore, their customers, and joining the increasingly widespread trend of pro-climate and pro-environmental actions consisting of business development taking into account the implementation of technological solutions contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. As part of this effort to portray themselves as green financial institutions, some banks and other financial institutions annually organise competitions with financial prizes for startups creating, developing and implementing green technologies and energy eco-innovations facilitating the development of renewable and emission-free energy sources, green technologies enhancing the potential for saving drinking water, eco-innovations facilitating the development of sustainable organic agriculture, green technologies improving the efficiency of waste sorting and recycling processes, the development of electro-mobility, enhancing opportunities for low-carbon construction and other green technologies and eco-innovations that will make it possible to build a zero-carbon, sustainable, green circular economy in the shorter term. The best pro-climate and pro-environmental projects developed and implemented by startups receive funding from banks to increase the capacity and scale of development and business implementation of green technologies and eco-innovations. By organising such competitions, banks and other business entities are building a new image for their business, in which sustainability and green business development are to play an increasingly important role. At the same time, they are explaining on their websites why they are joining the increasingly widespread trend in business to scale up specific sustainability goals and carry out business transformation towards achieving zero carbon. The online promotion of such competitions for the best business implementation of new green technologies and eco-innovations also acts as an advertisement for the institution holding the competition as an entity that has added sustainability to its mission. Despite the lack of a system for full verification of the reliability of such promotional activities and assessment of the level of the implementation of sustainable development goals, the reality of doing green business, and the scale of greenwashing, which is occurring more and more frequently, the prevalence of this trend in business in correlation with the growth of general social pro-climate and pro-environmental awareness of citizens performs many positive functions. Among these many positive functions of the processes outlined above, the lobbying of business in the political sphere plays a particularly positive role, which can also cause pro-environmental and pro-climate changes in the content of laws and other legal norms shaping the functioning of economic entities in the economy, taking into account the growing role of sustainability. Such promotional activities of organising and advertising competitions for green start-ups are an important element of building a green image in a commercial bank and support synergistic activities of developing the green credit offer. Simultaneously carried out various types of activities aimed at supporting the development of green businesses of bank clients, implementation of green technologies by clients, carrying out green business ventures by borrowers, pro-climate investments, etc., can create a kind of added value and increase the effectiveness of the processes of building a new image of an increasingly sustainable bank, implementation of a new green mission, development of a green offer of bank products, etc. In this way, banks and other financial institutions can contribute to accelerating the processes of carrying out a pro-environmental and pro-climate transformation of the classic growth, brown, linear economy of excess to a sustainable, green, zero-carbon growth and closed loop economy. On the other hand, if there is more greenwashing in this kind of activity than reliable implementation of sustainability and green business development, then unfortunately, apart from a kind of repainting of a company's or bank's image in green, there is little real implementation of the green transformation of the economy. There is no institutional system of verification of the level of greenwashing, including the assessment of the reliability of the formulated provisions, the implementation of pro-environmental and pro-climate strategic objectives made by banks and other business entities, the declarations made regarding support, financing the development of green business ventures, financing pro-environmental investments with green loans, etc. The basis for the creation of an institutional system of verification of the level of greenwashing, including the assessment of the reliability of the formulated provisions, declarations of green business development, the level of implementation of the objectives of sustainable development is the issue of a large level of diversity in the scale of activities undertaken by banks and other economic entities to support the development of green businesses developed by customers, as well as the high level of variation in the activities of promoting themselves as green, sustainable business entities and the high level of variation in the declarations introduced by commercial banks regarding programmes for the implementation of sustainable development goals, the bank's participation in the process of reducing emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, the target of achieving a zero-carbon economy and building zero-carbon, sustainable business enterprises.

In view of the above, I address the following question to the esteemed community of scientists and researchers:

What do you think about this topic?

What is your opinion on this subject?

Please respond,

I invite you all to join the discussion,

Thank you very much,

Best wishes,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

I am exploring the literature regarding halal industry, halal economy, and

what are the outcomes of organization in the halal industry commiting towards ESG principles in daily business

Taking into account the negative aspects of the unsustainable development of the economy, including the over-consumption of natural resources, the increasing scale of environmental pollution, the still high greenhouse gas emissions, the progressing process of global warming, the intensifying negative effects of the climate change taking place, etc., it is necessary to accelerate the processes of carrying out the pro-environmental and pro-climate transformation of the classic growth, brown, linear economy of excess into a sustainable, green, zero-carbon growth and closed loop economy. One of the key determinants for achieving the aforementioned green transformation of the economy is also the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, i.e. according to the UN standard 17 Sustainable Development Goals. In recent years, many companies and enterprises, noticing the growing importance of this issue, including the increasing scale of pro-environmental and pro-climate awareness of citizens, i.e. customers of their offers of companies and enterprises, add to their missions and development strategies the issues of implementation of sustainable development goals and present themselves and their offers of products and services within advertising campaigns and other forms of marketing communication as green, implementing specific sustainable development goals, environmentally and climate friendly, etc. Unfortunately, this is always in accordance with the fact that the implementation of the sustainable development goals is not a fact. Unfortunately, this is not always consistent with the facts. Research shows that in the European Union, the majority of existing companies and enterprises already carry out this type of marketing communication to a greater or lesser extent. However, a significant proportion of businesses that present themselves as green, pursuing specific sustainability goals, environmentally and climate-friendly, and that present their product and service offerings as green, made exclusively from natural raw materials, and produced fully in line with sustainability goals, are doing so unreliably and misleading potential customers. Many companies and businesses are greenwashing. It is therefore necessary to improve systems for verifying what economic operators present about themselves and their offerings in their marketing communications against the facts. By significantly reducing the scale of greenwashing used by many companies, it will be possible to increase the effectiveness of carrying out the process of green transformation of the economy and really increase the scale of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Significant instruments to motivate business operators to conduct marketing communications in a reliable way also include extending the scope of business operators' reporting to include sustainability issues. The addition of sustainability reporting obligations for companies and businesses in line with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) should motivate economic actors to scale up their implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. In November 2022, the Council of the European Union finally approved the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The Directive requires companies to report on sustainability in accordance with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). This means that under the Directive, more than 3,500 companies in Poland will have to disclose sustainability data. The ESRS standards developed by EFRAG (European Financial Reporting Advisory Group) have been submitted to the European Commission and we are currently waiting for their final form in the form of delegated acts. However, this does not mean that companies should not already be looking at the new obligations. Especially if they have not reported on sustainability issues so far, or have done so to a limited extent. Companies will have to disclose sustainability issues in accordance with ESRS standards. It is therefore essential to build systemic reporting standards for business entities enriched with sustainability issues. In a situation where the addition of sustainability reporting obligations in accordance with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) to company and corporate reporting is effectively carried out, there should be an increased incentive for business entities to scale up their sustainability goals. In this regard, the introduction of enhanced disclosure of sustainability issues should help to increase the scale of implementation of the sustainable development goals and accelerate the processes of transformation of the economy towards a sustainable green circular economy.

In view of the above, I would like to address the following question to the esteemed community of scientists and researchers:

What do you think about it?

What is your opinion on this subject?

Please respond,

I invite you all to discuss,

Thank you very much,

Counting on your opinions, on getting to know your personal opinion, on an honest approach to discussing scientific issues and not the ready-made answers generated in ChatGPT, I deliberately used the phrase "in your opinion" in the question.

The above text is entirely my own work written by me on the basis of my research.

I have not used other sources or automatic text generation systems such as ChatGPT in writing this text.

Copyright by Dariusz Prokopowicz

Best wishes,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

I am looking towards starting a discussion here covering the use of Blockchain to provide proof to enterprises and regulatory authorities that their supply chains are compliant with sustainability goals and laws. I'm also looking to understand the level of visibility high-tech companies have up and down their supply chain (n-tier visibility).

What are the major stumbling blocks that you are seeing toward getting a fully transparent supply chain regardless of where you play a role?

To what extent does green lending by banks contribute to the development of pro-environmental, pro-climate, sustainable business ventures?

Are commercial banks that advertise themselves as green banks conducting sustainable banking with a portfolio of banking products really green banks?

Do commercial banks that have added sustainability, climate protection and planetary biosphere protection issues to their new development strategy and/or bank mission promoted in the media really provide many green loans that finance real pro-climate, pro-environmental, sustainable economic ventures conducted by borrowers?

Have the credit risk management procedures resulting from green lending been adequately adapted to the ongoing process of global warming, climate and biosphere change and other impacts of this process?

When assessing the creditworthiness of entrepreneurs planning to realise viable pro-climate, pro-environmental, sustainable business ventures, do banks take into account the issue of the risk of climate change and the specific impacts of this process that may affect the green investment planned for implementation?

How do commercial banks advertising themselves as green, sustainable banks improve their lending procedures and green credit risk management process?

What do you think?

What do you think about this topic?

Please reply,

I invite you all to discuss,

Thank you very much,

Regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Dear scientific community,

I would be very interested to hear your input regarding the scaling-up of LCA studies to a portfolio level. I know there is a plethora of product LCAs and plenty of them consider several individual products or product variants in parallel. However, I have not found an awful lot of studies that extend to several hundred, let alone thousands of individual products within the scope of one study (as opposed to equally as many individual case studies).

Surely, more people have approached this apparent research gap. So for anyone that has been active in this area: I would greatly appreciate you sharing what experience you have made or you pointing me at any related publications in the field.

Many thanks and best regards

Tobias

P.S: If you are interested what my colleagues and I have done in this field, feel free to check this framework article and the case study we presented at LCM 2021 conference:

Different authors are in different view regarding the difference between evolution of Corporate Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility. Certain scholars (Bansal & Song, 2017) explained that although CS and CSR are historically diverse, they were seen in the 2000s as a single idea and in the future as distinct methods. Certain scholars beleve CS is evolved after CSR.

Please help me to clarify the evolution of corporate sustainability. Thank you my dear research colleagues

Ethnic, gender, or generational diversity?

As awareness of corporate sustainability grows and organizations around the world adopt ESG, what is harder to achieve in top management? Ethnic, gender, or generational diversity?

While many businesses are aiming for net-zero goals, do we have sound evidence that net-zero farming is possible or has already been achieved?

Examples, sources.

Thanks

I need to know which formula would be used to measure CSP if content anaylsis technique would be used.

If content analysis technique would be used and if we code the data then afterwards how we will calculate the final score of corporate sustainability performance. And kindly don't try to mix the term corporate sustainability reporting and corporate sustainability performance. BecauseI already know how to measure corporate sustainability reporting

I am currently working on my thesis project which presents as a central topic the B Corp. certifications and their impact on financial-economic performance. The B corp. is obtained following an assessment performed on 5 different areas: impact area customers, area environment, area governance, workers, community area.

The aim is therefore to examine the relationship between the scores obtained in the five assessment areas of the B Impact Assessment and the economic and financial performance.

My sample is made up of 75 companies, each with one or more certifications obtained in different years. The total number of certifications, and therefore of the years of assessment, is 93. The companies that have obtained 2 certifications are 14 and those that have obtained more than two are 2.

To each company and single year of certification I will match the economic and financial data obtained in the year in which they obtained the certification. I will include only one year of assessment in the analysis (this also applies to companies that have obtained more than one certification). The structure of the data set that I will use will be approximately the structure I will use will be approximately the one indicated in table 1.

With the sample and the data available, I thought of implementing a linear multiple regression model which presents the financial variable as a dependent variable and the scores obtained in the different dimensions, plus some control variables as independent variables. I will estimate the coefficients and possible correlation using the OLS method.

However, starting from these available data, could I think of structuring the data set differently using different estimation approaches? How could I capture the effect of certification over time by not having a large number of companies with more than one certification?

Is it reasonable to build a panel data with a structure similar to the one in tabel 2? I thought of aligning the different years in which the certifications were obtained (all the companies obtained a certification over different years and consequently they are not common among them) in certification cycles.

In this case, since this is highly unbalanced and conducted over a few years, wouldn't I risk carrying out a not very consistent analysis? If there is the possibility of achieving a consistent analysis, what approach do you recommend me to adopt?

Thank you for your consideration.

In English:

I am part of a research group focused on the study of teaching methods aimed at fostering sustainable societies. For the future we aim to focus on some core issues that we believe are fundamental for the advancement of these forms of education in Brazil and worldwide, namely: Discuss the relationships between environmental education, sustainability education and citizenship education and try to identify the similarities and differences of their proposals. Our initial hypothesis is that citizenship education perhaps satisfactorily embraces the postulates and principles of the other two pedagogies and can thus be understood as one of the most holistic and comprehensive forms of human education. What do you think?

Em português:

Faço parte de um grupo de pesquisa focado no estudo de formas de ensino voltadas ao fomento de sociedades sustentáveis. Para o futuro almejamos enfocar algumas questões centrais que acreditamos ser fundamentais para o avanço dessas formas de ensino no Brasil e no mundo, quais sejam: Discutir as relações entre a educação ambiental, a educação para a sustentabilidade e a educação para a cidadania e tentar identificar as similaridades e diferenças de suas propostas. A nossa hipótese inicial é de que a educação para a cidadania talvez abarque satisfatoriamente os postulados e princípios das outras duas pedagogias e assim pudesse ser compreendida como uma das formas de educação humana mais holística e abrangente. O que você acha?

above topic current research

Corporate Readiness of Sri Lankan Companies towards the implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility concept.

- Circular economy

- Reverse supply chain management

- Corporate social responsibility

- Corporate sustainability

- Green value chain

- Social contract theory

Where can I get SME Corporate sustainability (The triple bottom line) survey questionnaire sample?

Need information about any country-wise sustainability indices, that also ranks countries based on following corporate sustainability practices.

Best Regards.

Special Issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050): "Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Performance"

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2021.

Dr. Montserrat Boronat Navarro Website SciProfiles Guest Editor Department of Business Administration and Marketing, Jaume I University, Spain Interests: corporate social responsibility; sustainability; organizational ambidexterity; dynamic capabilities; innovation; districts; family firms Dr. José A. Pérez-Aranda Website Guest Editor University School of Hospitality and Tourism CETT-University of Barcelona, Spain Interests: corporate social responsibility; quality management; tourism sector; hotel firms

Dear Colleagues,

Businesses can play a crucial role in increasing sustainability and preventing the escalation of environmental and social problems. Through the analysis of how sustainable firm processes and activities positively affect society as a whole, and specifically firm performance, and by developing theory to inform practice through well-grounded guidelines for firms, scholars can help to raise awareness of the need to incorporate these sustainable practices.

Interest in and research into Corporate Social Responsibility have grown exponentially in the last two decades, and some meta-analytical studies (e.g., Orlitzky et al., 2003) have corroborated the positive effect of CSR on firms’ financial performance. Nevertheless, this topic still requires a deeper analysis and theoretical foundation. CSR practices contribute positively to society by supporting sustainable economic, social, and environmental development (Du et al., 2010). They also help to strengthen firms’ competitive advantage and performance (Carroll and Shabana, 2010; Lee and Park, 2009). Whether firms adopt CSR practices for instrumental or moral reasons is also a topic of debate, since they are based on contradictory foundations (Aguilera et al., 2007; Hahn et al., 2016), although both contribute to increasing corporate social performance (Hahn et al., 2016). Hahn et al. (2016) found that firms’ practices grounded in instrumental and in moral initiatives complement each other and increase the scale of corporate social performance. Deeper analysis of how CSR practices grounded in both rationales help firms to improve their corporate performance can be a way to raise firms’ awareness about sustainability.

Furthermore, firms must often rely on contradictory processes that underpin, for example, environmental requirements, as in the case of efficiency and flexibility (Lin and Ho, 2016; Boronat-Navarro and García-Joerger, 2019). The analysis of how firms develop holistic solutions for sustainability requires deeper study of firm resources and capabilities. Dynamic capabilities (Teece et al., 1997) can facilitate strategic change towards integration of sustainability and its effect on corporate performance (Wu et al., 2012), but this analysis requires further development. Exploration of different contexts such as family firms, or sectors like tourism or manufacturing companies could help toward a further understanding of this strategic change.

Additionally, customers’ perceptions of and intentions towards firms change according to the information they have about sustainable firms or their experiences with them (e.g., Boronat-Navarro and Pérez-Aranda, 2019, 2020). Studies demonstrating the positive effects on the perception of multiple stakeholders due to the authentic adoption of CSR practices (Wang et al., 2020) could also raise firms’ awareness of the importance of truly integrating these practices into their mission, culture and values, strategy, and operations. This analysis could shed light on the relationship between CSR and corporate performance.

Against this background, for this Special Issue, we invite submissions of academic papers analyzing how firms integrate and develop CSR practices that can contribute to corporate performance and to the sustainable progress of society. Both original research articles and review articles are welcome. The Special Issue focuses on but is not limited to the following topics:

Aguilera, R. V., Rupp, D. E., Williams, C. A., & Ganapathi, J. (2007). Putting the S back in corporate social responsibility: A multilevel theory of social change in organizations. Academy of management review, 32(3), 836-863.

Boronat-Navarro, M., & García-Joerger, A. (2019). Ambidexterity, Alliances and Environmental Management System Adoption in Spanish Hotels. Sustainability, 11(20), 5815.

Boronat-Navarro, M., & Pérez-Aranda, J. A. (2019). Consumers’ perceived corporate social responsibility evaluation and support: The moderating role of consumer information. Tourism Economics, 25(4), 613-638.

Boronat-Navarro, M., & Pérez-Aranda, J.A. (2020) Analyzing Willingness to Pay More to Stay in a Sustainable Hotel. Sustainability,12, 3730.

Carroll, A. B., & Shabana, K. M. (2010). The business case for corporate social responsibility: A review of concepts, research and practice. International journal of management reviews, 12(1), 85-105.

Du, S., Bhattacharya, C. B., & Sen, S. (2010). Maximizing business returns to corporate social responsibility (CSR): The role of CSR communication. International journal of management reviews, 12(1), 8-19.

Hahn, T., Pinkse, J., Preuss, L., & Figge, F. (2016). Ambidexterity for corporate social performance. Organization Studies, 37(2), 213-235.

Lee, S., & Park, S. Y. (2009). Do socially responsible activities help hotels and casinos achieve their financial goals?. International journal of hospitality management, 28(1), 105-112.

Lin, L. H., & Ho, Y. L. (2016). Institutional pressures and environmental performance in the global automotive industry: the mediating role of organizational ambidexterity. Long Range Planning, 49(6), 764-775.

Orlitzky, M., Schmidt, F. L., & Rynes, S. L. (2003). Corporate social and financial performance: A meta-analysis. Organization studies, 24(3), 403-441.

Teece, D. J., Pisano, G., & Shuen, A. (1997). Dynamic capabilities and strategic management. Strategic management journal, 18(7), 509-533.

Wu, Q., He, Q., Duan, Y., & O'Regan, N. (2012). Implementing dynamic capabilities for corporate strategic change toward sustainability. Strategic Change, 21(5), 231.

Dr. Montserrat Boronat Navarro Dr. José A. Pérez-Aranda Guest Editors

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

This special issue is now open for submission.

In the last decade, boosting sustainability has been extensively studied in developing countries and developing societies. According to many works of literature, many attempts strive to achieve sustainability's main goals. Moreover, in Paris Conference Agreement in 2015, a decision to low the harmful gas emissions and low the earth's temperature by 2° C had been made.

As I found out, developing countries already have possibilities and opportunities to boost and achieve its targeting goals. At least the 17 goals that UN was determined. Although it is obvious that boosting sustainability is too hard for these contexts, I really seek to know why?

This is a well-recognized issue that necessitates a better approach toward figuring suitable solutions. Perhaps one of the first questions to arise is: How can we boost sustainability in Developing Countries?

How did tobacco and soda companies employ Corporate Social Responsibility? In these industries, has CSR become a greenwashing tool?

I am conducting a research on sustainable business. I would be interested in suggestions of literature review and case studies (best practices) in sustainability and business models. Thanks in advance.

Butt, U. M., Letchmunan, S., Hassan, F. H., Ali, M., Baqir, A., & Sherazi, H. H. R. (2020). Spatio-Temporal Crime HotSpot Detection and Prediction: A Systematic Literature Review. IEEE Access, 8, 166553-166574.

This paper was published on the 8th of September 2020. The authors state in the abstract:

“The authors were unable to find a comprehensive study on crime hotspot detection and prediction while conducting this SLR. Therefore, to the best of author’s knowledge, this study is the premier attempt to critically analyze the existing literature along with presenting potential challenges faced by current crime hotspot detection and prediction systems.”

Below I enlist relevant papers omitted by the authors, including our SLR paper of the same scope:

1. Kounadi, O., Ristea, A., Araujo, A., & Leitner, M. (2020). A systematic review on spatial crime forecasting. Crime Science, 9(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-020-00116-7

2. Hardyns, W., & Rummens, A. (2018). Predictive policing as a new tool for law enforcement? Recent developments and challenges. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 24(3), 201–218. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10610-017-9361-2.

3. Seele, P. (2017). Predictive Sustainability Control: A review assessing the potential to transfer big data-driven ‘predictive policing’ to corporate sustainability management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 153, 673-686. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.10.175

I wonder whether you can do a thorough review circle from submission to acceptance in 7 days and if incorrect information should be corrected.

Finally, what is the opinion of the authors and the Editor-in-Chief on this matter? We asked for it but received none.

I am looking for sources where I can get data related to ESG scores for Indian companies. I am new to research and interested in this area of research.

How natural or manmade disasters affect business continuity or corporate sustainability?

What role climate risk plays? What role EIA, law and other such tools may have? are urban local bodies and infrastructure (for good and services) included in business resilience ? What is the important of environment and sustainability in business management?

Any info which country has mandatory for Sustainability report?

Dear all,

What is the practical use of an ESG (environmental, social and governance) index in a stock exchanges market?

Can it be useful if ESG scores for constituents firms not known ?

Sometimes start-ups are born with the purpose of developing and selling Intellectual Property. Once the firm accomplish that, the firm ends its operations. Then, is it possible to measure Corporate Sustainability in this case?

The concept of sustainable business models contains a paradox, because sustainability involves the reduction of information asymmetries, whereas entrepreneurship involves enhanced and secured levels of information asymmetries. I have written an article on this topic (see attachment) but I would like to discuss this issue with others to learn other viewpoints, solutions and strategies. all feedback is welcome

Dear Scholars,

For the time being, my colleagues and I are working on a paper which investigates the relationship between Strategic Sustainability Orientation and firm performance by considering Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Environmental Management as mediating factors. Accordingly, I have explored the literature profoundly but unfortunately have not found any related papers. Have you ever found any articles incorporating the aforementioned factors simultaneously?

Looking for your valuable suggestions.

Regards

Need some empirical research paper on the topic mentioned above...

The new role of waste as a second raw material for an evolution of the concept of circular economy and as a source of income for innovative companies?

In today's world, it is essential to achieve sustainability, and different industries can play a key role in achieving this. Now, here are some questions to clarify their status quo:

Can we say that different industries are successful in achieving this goal? Or are their sustainability plans just decorative?

And the most important questions are:

Theories have been put forward about corporate sustainability activities so far, but little has been said about disclosing information about these activities. Please tell me if you have a comment or know a resource. Thank you

Each company may choose to build their own sustainability report, with their own indicators. However, what are existing models/guidelines/tools/templates available to be adopted by a company to disclose their results?

Examples of said "instruments" are GRI, the Dashboard of Sustainability, the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World), and Ethos Sustainability Report.

I am currently gathering ideas for an interesting research topic in the field of Corporate Sustainability / CSR / CSR-Communication. Can any of the experts recommend some inspiring and relevant topics, that would be worth exploring in a PhD-study?

I am working with an applied research data science team and we are planning two projects (clean water and lower greenhouse gas emissions). We only have capacity to execute one project at a time. Each research project should take about 5 months. Which project global project should we select first and why?

#smartcity #sustainablesmartcities

Hi all,

I am currently researching sustainability issues within my masters thesis.

I have two contacts that would provide me with around 6 interview partners in the automobile industry and plastics industry each. So in total around 12. Each interview partner would be from a different company.

My question now is, if those 6 interview cases would make a case-study of the specific industry or do I need more interview partners in a single company. What should I aim for?

Best regards,

Phil

I am about setting up a research design for my PhD thesis. The main topic will be sustainability innovation in companies. For the empirical research part I will use a data set consisting of corporate sustainabiliy publications such as annual reports, csr reports etc. and do a content analysis.

I am still a bit uncertain wether this qualifies as qualitative content/data analysis or quantitative content/data analysis. I would appreciate your feedback on the following questions:

- Would you classify the corporate sustainability publications as qualitative or quantitative data sources?

- Does software such as Maxqda, Atlas.ti or NVivo support a quantitative concent analysis as well?

Thanks for your input.

There are many studies which revealed that the IFRS adoption may increased the accounting quality. However, for the best of my knowledge there are no studies which have examined the impact of IFRS adoption on non-financial information disclosure such as CSR disclosures.

I'm working on firm-local community relationships in industrial pollution sites, with special emphasis on industrial agglomerations (or industrial clusters). I'm interested in researching how companies articulate collective strategies when managing their relationships with the local community.

With globalization, supply chain has extended its each beyond any boundaries. However, it is important to point out and analyse the trade-off between economic gain vs environmental ans social compromises.

In order to design and develop a eco-friendly product or service, which tools business enterprise should use to capture the acceptance of it at a variable premium.

Nowadays, one of the main discussions is the transition from Traditional Linear to the Circular Economy. However, the boundaries and even the meaning of these terms aren’t set yet (García-Barragán et al., 2019). In a sustainable new product development (NPD), the application of Circular Economy practices are already under further investigation.

Regarding this, would it be still Linear Economy Practices the use of Ecodesign, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Product Life Cycle Management (PLM), for example?

I would be grateful for any comments, suggestions and answers to these questions, including literature recommendations.

I am writing my thesis on sustainability performance of the automotive manufacturing companies and this is one of the empirical questions of my research.

Hello

I'm seeking collaborators for research on corporate sustainability. My topics of interest include:

- in-flight plastic and food waste

- Southeast Asia corporate responsibility and sustainability

- Thai sustainability movement

- Singapore sustainability movement

Please feel free to suggest anything.

I am based in Singapore with mobility. I currently work for the largest environmental NGO in the world, focusing on greening businesses.

Launched in 1999, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index represents the gold standard for corporate sustainability and is the first global index to track the leading sustainability-driven companies based on RobecoSAM's analysis of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors. How should we, similarly, rate the defence organizations (MoDs/DoDs) from the perspective of (their) sustainability?

Hi RG community,

I am scheduled to delivery a talk to undergraduate students and working degree professions and I need your suggestion.

What are contemporary supply chain problems that traditional lean six sigma tools cannot easily solve. The goal of my human engineering talk is to introduce machine learning and artificial intelligence to motivated students. Each student will understand supply chain fundamentals.

I look forward to your suggestions.

John W

A business phenomena / practice of disposing unsold new product before even usage starts has gained attention lately. Clothing giants like H&M and Burberry have been burning new clothes. Burberry though, promised to abandon this practice. Similarly, Amazon (in Germany) has found to destroy returned unused goods. This unsustainable practice seems to be rather widely used. Is there any academic literature, including interesting empirics, case studies, theorising that has been done to research this phenomena?

Where are we heading in terms of sustainability-themed research? Would love to hear about ongoing research projects that inspire

What metrics would a company executive want to know if they needed to be convinced to start being more sustainable in their business. What questions would they ask themselves?

E.g. Does non-financial performance increase financial performance?

Do investors really care about sustainability?

What advantage does it give to go beyond shareholder needs and address stakeholder needs too?

etc.

I need to make a business case for sustainability.

We are conducting a research that investigates relationship between Corporate Sustainability Performance and Corporate Financial Performance in banking industry. We want to analyze differences in perception among different regions of the world. For now we used North America, Europe, and Asia. But results are inconclusive.

Anyone has a better idea? Maybe according to Human Development Index or legislation regime?

Hello!

I'd like to know when it's going to be published your article because I'm very interested in cite your methodology for my doctoral thesis of Corporate Sustainability of the mexican companies.

Thanks a lot

Please refer me some journal papers if possible.

Hello research community,

My research team and I are designing and piloting several smart communities. As a personal project I want to write a series of peer reviewed articles focused on integrating our applied research with theoretical studies hence I am seeking to expand our research themes. The obvious research themes transportation, digital economy, and security. I am hope this community can suggest additional research themes and sources.

I look forward to your recommendations.

- John W.

PS. For perspective, take a look at the Bill Gates Smart City project.

https://futurism.com/bill-gates-smart-city-arizona/

Quest for collaboration

I am exploring how corporate involvement in harnessing community environmental resources affect the sustainability of these resources

Its very true that SR disclosures are important for manufacturing SMEs too. According to literature, numerous problems are listed for SMEs to implement SR such as: money, resources, awareness, knowledge and administrative support. Apart from all arguments, we comprehend GRI disclosures for manufacturing SMEs we found that there are some indicators which are important but SMEs can't consider them into their Sustainability reports such as

EC2: climate change risk

G4-EN7 Energy reductions in products and services

G4-EN20 Ozone-depleting substances (ODS)

G4-EN34 Environmental grievances

G4-LA15 Negative impacts for labor practices in the supply chain

G4-HR1 Investment agreements and contracts that include human rights clauses or underwent screening

G4-HR4 Significant risk of freedom of association in operations and suppliers

G4-HR12 Grievances about human rights impacts

G4-SO3 Risks related to corruption

G4-SO4 Communications and training on anti-corruption

G4-SO5 Confirmed incidents of corruption

G4-SO6 Political contributions

G4-SO7 Anti-competitive behavior

G4-SO11 Grievances about impacts on society

G4-PR2 Non-compliance concerning the health and safety impacts of products and services

G4-PR4 Non-compliance with regulations concerning product and service labeling

G4-PR6 Sale of banned or disputed products

Listing few of the indicators from exhaustive list of 102 specific disclosures of GRI G4 for manufacturing SMEs. 

Any suggestions..

looking for people to contact for interviews (for the federal Belgian council on sustainable development)

Has anyone come across or used an instrument (survey) to capture corporate sustainability strategy? 

I am looking for an established source (journal article, book) that clarifies what are the key factors of:

- company culture

- corporate governance

that promote sustainability-thinking in organization (for sustainability thinking I mean things like sustainability awareness, effectiveness of sustainability programs/projects in the organization, long-term thinking, etc.)

Any specific reference to the manufacturing industry is even more appreciated.

Thanks.

The study is going to cover the Indian Commercial Bank over a period of a decade.

Operational efficiency and its effect on a bank's sustainability is to be studied. 

How to evaluate the timing for implementation of sustainable strategies' (Green Innovation; 3R:reduce, reuse and recycle; sustainability reporting and e-commerce) in small firms over a period of time. Kindly share your views and research work if any.

I have been reading some articles about sustainable marketing. Now i am trying to understand it and put it in perspective to other corporate sustainability research fields.

Now i have seen there are many different definitions of sustainable marketing, one of them is from (Emery

"A holistic approach whose aim is to ensure that marketing strategies and tactics are specifically designed to secure a socially equitable, environmentally friendly and economically fair and viable business for the benefit of current and future generations of customers, employees and society as a whole."

Whereas marketing, defined by Kotler 2011 as: 

"The process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return."

Now, some of the articles I have read are in the field of sustainable supply chain management. Based on the definitions of marketing and sustainability marketing, the notion i get is that sustainable  supply chain is a  necessary conditions for sustainable marketing, because it is necessary in the “creation of value”, which is an element of marketing according to Kotler.

Because If upstream partners of a business, which itself has a sustainable value chain (all activities meet environmental and social criteria. Plus,  after transaction, the product does not have negative effects on the customer or society or environment (also long term), it could be considered as sustainable.

But the input which was obtained from upstream partners, who contribute negatively in a socially and environmentally way through their operations, would make the business of the “sustainable focal company” in the end not sustainable?

 And is this rationale, why emery defines sustainable marketing as a “holistic approach”? 

Thanks in advance.

Globalization has spurred the growth and prominence of Corporate Social Responsibility, especially in the areas of non-employment of child labour, human rights, environmental pollution, social-marketing and social activities. The changing global environment has forced the corporations now to change the way of dissemination of information regarding their operations on corporate social responsibility and corporate sustainability issues. Corporate sustainability reporting is getting very popular in these days but still in India it is just at nascent stage. But research proves that its importance is growing year after year. As far as Indian scenario is concerned there is only limited number of companies which are showing their sustainability plans and performance to the various stakeholders. Indian corporations are following Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines to prepare the sustainability reports. These days companies are presenting their sustainability performance to the various users with the help of websites and also through published reports. I want to know the practices of CSR Reporting in Annual Accounts.

Dear all,

I hope all is well. I have recently started working with the MSCI KLD STATS Social Ratings data set as available on WRDS. 

In many papers which make use of the KLD dataset, social ratings are said to range between -2 and +2 (e.g., "MSCI KLD assigns a score of zero, one or two for each of the concern and strength areas." - Ekin Alakent Mine Ozer , (2014), Can companies buy legitimacy? Using corporate political strategies to offset negative corporate social responsibility records, Journal of Strategy and Management, Vol. 7 Iss 4 pp. 318 - 336 // "The KLD categories are rated on a scale ranging from -2 (major concerns), -1 (concern), 0 (neutral), +1 (strength), to +2 (major strength)" - Hillman, Amy J.; Keim, Gerald D. (2001): Shareholder value, stakeholder management, and social issues: what's the bottom line? In Strat. Mgmt. J. 22 (2), pp. 125–139). However, the data set on WRDS is only binary (1, 0 depending on whether concern or strength was present).

Do you know which data or scale these papers are referring toand where the difference is coming from?

Thanks a lot,

Martin

The integrated thinking concept is linked to integrated reporting and is defined as an organization’s active consideration of the relationships between its various operating and functional units and the capitals (financial, manufactured, intellectual, human, social and natural) the organization uses and affects (IIRC, 2013). 

Besides, the notion of integrated thinking is akin to a system thinking perspective in accounting, which suggests that it is necessary to look within the business for evidence of interactively developed strategies and control.

So, what is the nature of integrated thinking in a real life or a real organization system ? 

Hello everybody,

a colleague and me, we are working on an study that aims at analyzing (and rating) climate change strategies of companies and the interlinkages with companies' actual carbon performance.

We have about 40-50 companies from two sectors: energy-intensive (steel & cement; about 15 cases) and automotive industry (about 30 cases).

We developed a scheme for assessing the climate change strategy of these companies. It consists of 10 different measures that companies can implement in response to climate change (e.g. product/process improvement, emission trading, etc.). Based on publicly available data (CDP database, sustainability reports, etc.) we rated each company in each of these 10 categories/measure with a score from 0-4 (doing nothing-being highly active).

Additionally, we have calculated carbon performance indicators including carbon intensity (CO2 per USD sales) for each company.

We have done these two analyses (strategy and performance assessment) for 2008 and 2013.

Now my question: which (statistical) method would/could you recommend for

...comparing the companies/sectors

...comparing the companies' performance between the two points in time

...analyzing the relationship between strategy and carbon performance?

Thanks in advance for your help! It's much appreciated.

Best regards,

Matthias