Evolution Of Sustainability Research Articles

Evolution of corporate environmentalism, a politico‐social perspective: Concept, command and control to self‐regulatory and voluntary, and future directions

The present research work aims at synthesizing the evolution of Environmental sustainability from the theoretical lens of politico‐social impacts on the corporate environmentalism. The phenomenon of Environmental sustainability as a formally recognized and defined concept started to appear in western discourse in the late 60s and 70s, with formal definition coming only at 80s. Meanwhile, western politics, media and activists became active in putting pressure on corporates for sustainable environmental practices. This lead to the advent of era of regulatory controls where governments in the west took the central role. With the increasing activism of civil societies and other secondary stakeholders, businesses and governments equally realized the need for self‐regulatory (normative) and increasingly voluntary focus on environmental sustainability. Recently, the shift has been to developing nations from the western countries with EU effect and Shanghai effect placing prominence of trade and geo‐politics on cross‐border effects of corporate environmentalism from developed nations on developing nations. However, as shown by the recent researches, market forces are still weak and findings at the best indicate nonexistent or meagre linkage between financial indicators and corporate environmentalism, even in developing nations the trend remains similar. This raises concern about the future politico‐social direction of corporate environmentalism, however, one thing is clear that Asian countries especially India and China will get increasing focus.

Tiered approach to sustainability analysis in sediment remediation decision making

AbstractAll active remediation results in both desirable and undesirable environmental, economic, and social impacts. Balancing such impacts through sustainability assessment poses normative questions—not just objective and science‐based, but those rooted in societal values, requiring engagement and a careful consideration of diverse stakeholders' priorities. Regardless of the site complexity, these priorities should be integrated into assessment approaches, a necessary evolution of sustainability for sediment remediation projects. We explore how analyses of environmental, social, and economic sustainability can be tailored for different tiers of assessment for sediment remediation projects, ranging from simple to complex. Tiers (1, 2, and 3) can be used to categorize evaluations of sediment projects across a range of complexity. Site size and complexity, availability of data, time, resources, expertise, and the level of engagement of various stakeholder groups may dictate the appropriate complexity, tools, and metrics to be used in a sustainability assessment. Assessment approaches in each pillar of sustainability (environmental, economic, and social), listed in order of increasing complexity (i.e., Tier 1 to 3) include:Environmental: (1) best management practices; (2) footprint assessment; and (3) life cycle assessment;Economic: (1) incremental cost‐effectiveness analysis; (2) addition of economic impact analysis with a detailed economic impact model (IMPLAN);and (3) substitution of a more comprehensive and complex economic impact model (Regional Economic Models, Inc.); and,Social: (1) qualitative inference of stakeholder values; (2) quantification of metrics in a multicriteria analysis; and (3) targeted engagement with elicited values from a broad group of stakeholders.Tools at all assessment tiers add value for a project; they can effectively provide context and trade‐offs for stakeholders and decision‐makers. A Tier 1 assessment requires fewer resources and less time than more complex assessments; however, it carries greater uncertainty and may not provide the detail or completeness needed to evaluate the tradeoffs between alternatives, across pillars. The range of options available for Tier 2 medium‐complexity analyses span qualitative and quantitative metrics; aggregation methods are tailored to the governing regulatory framework or stakeholder values; and a variety of tools for measuring environmental, social, and economic impacts. Tier 3 assessments, like those completed for the Portland Harbor Superfund Site, provide the most complex and complete assessments, including a detailed means of obtaining stakeholder values to aggregate the metrics. Tier 3 assessments require greater time and budget but may highlight important differences between remedial alternatives that could be obscured at lower tiers.

Sustainability Mindsets for Strategic Management: Lifting the Yoke of the Neo-Classical Economic Perspective

While sustainability has attracted the attention of managers and academicians for over two decades, the macro-level indicators of sustainability are not moving in the right direction. Climate change continues to be an existential threat for humanity and other indicators of sustainability do not fare much better. The logic of the business case and the associated framing of tension between financial outcomes and sustainability have generated a limited and inadequate response to the existential challenges before humanity today. In this essay, we analyze the evolution of sustainability in the business context and call for a recognition that social and environmental outcomes must supersede economic ones in corporate sustainability thinking. We call for a widening of the spatial, temporal, and moral lenses in the formulation and execution of business strategy to ensure that it is in alignment with the needs of current and future generations of humanity and proportionate to planetary conditions.

Fiscal sustainability in theEUafter the global crisis: Is there any progress? Evidence from Poland

AbstractIn response to the global crisis, a number of new institutional measures have been introduced in the fiscal framework, both on the EU and on the member states' level, and the question is: Have these measures provided better fiscal sustainability outcomes? We approach this question by looking at the evolution of fiscal sustainability in Poland, which is an interesting case of a member state that without significant market pressure (the only EU country without recession during the crisis) actively promoted several changes in the EU fiscal framework (e.g., six‐pack) and effectively internalized some of these key changes in its domestic fiscal policy, including a domestic expenditure fiscal rule. Our analysis reveals that the fiscal sustainability in Poland has significantly improved in the post‐crisis period of 2009–2017: We detect both improvement of the fiscal sustainability parameters and structural breaks in the fiscal outcomes after the crisis. Namely, in comparison to the whole sample of 2004–2017 the strength of reaction of the primary deficit to a change of the public debt increased in the post‐crisis time by nearly 50%. Importantly, these results are robust with respect to the pension fund reform which led to a one‐off redemption of T‐bonds in amount of 8.5% of GDP. The analysis also reveals a cycle of structural breaks of 2‐and 4 years lags: For the output gap in 2008 Q4, for the primary deficit in 2010 Q4 and for the public debt in 2014 Q1. The case of Poland seems to suggest that the post‐crisis EU fiscal measures can be effectively used to increase fiscal sustainability, if properly approached and internalized into the domestic fiscal framework. More research should be devoted to understanding the political and economic conditions under which such positive outcomes were possible.

Towards sustainable development: Evolution of corporate sustainability in multinational firms

AbstractScholars have often found a lack of strategy in Corporate Sustainability management and literature lacks longitudinal studies that could shed light on the transformations needed to push it forward. In this longitudinal study (2013–2019), we show how Corporate Sustainability has evolved to be now truly embedded in Corporate Strategy. A paradigm shift is taking hold: sustainability is not an altruistic option for managers anymore, it is now considered a source of revenue. A key contribution of this paper is that it lists the most relevant transformations through which the case study organisations went during the period of study, including bottom‐up leadership, purpose‐driven brand management, enhanced long term partnerships, increased transparency and renewed goals and priorities. Results offer implications for theory and practice. Managers willing to improve the sustainability performance of their companies can use the proposed framework to take advantage of the multiple opportunities that arise from the sustainability megatrend.

Case Study Analysis of Sustainability Reporting of an Agri-Food Giant

The purpose of this study was to contribute to the discussion of how large companies in the agri-food sector cope with the growing pressure to perform sustainably and how they disclose sustainability-related information to their stakeholders. To achieve this goal, we used the case study method. We analyzed Cargill’s specific approach to sustainability reporting, who is a company with a 150-year history and worldwide activities. We used reports from the year 2014 and 2018. The core of our analysis lies in the content analysis of the text using 39 corporate social responsibility (CSR) keywords (Cohen, 2010). The frequency of keywords related to the three aspects of CSR was measured to reveal the areas that the company considers most important and those upon which it draws the attention of users. To complement this analysis, we then investigated the linguistic features of Cargill’s sustainability reports, which employed the LIWC2015 program (LIWC–Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) and focused on four features of disclosure (analytical thinking, clout, authenticity, and emotional tone). The findings of our research confirmed that the dominant companies in the agri-food business have reacted to challenges of their social environment and changed their attitude to keep up with the current stage of social development. Sustainability reporting is elaborated and covers all aspects of the company’s activity in sufficient detail. This attitude developed continuously despite it not always being appreciated by Cargill’s stakeholders. The main limitation of our study lies in the method which did not allow even with the greatest effort to eliminate subjectivity. The other limitation relates to the specific features of the company and its position within the world economy and also to its long history, which determined the form and extent of reporting. However, our findings are indicative and inspiring for future research. Our results contribute to the debate concerning the form, content, and evolution of sustainability reporting. Moreover, our results can be used in practice by corporate management, when designing their marketing strategy, plans, and programs. We claim that the biggest challenge for big multinationals like Cargill in these days is to effectively protect the nature and respect the law in jurisdictions where there is traditionally low incentive to obey the rules because of poor regulations and many opportunities to misuse their dominant position.

The Challenge of Sustainable Development Goal Reporting: The First Evidence from Italian Listed Companies

This research investigates the extent to which the voluntary disclosure of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), assumed to be the most recent innovation in social disclosures and corporate sustainability reporting, is diffused among Italian listed companies through different instruments of disclosure (voluntary or non-voluntary). Our findings reveal that SDGs awareness amongst the business community is high and that the majority of highly-traded, liquid, and highly-capitalized Italian companies have introduced SDGs in their disclosure and story-telling practices, while the exact nature and requirements of the SDGs, and the definitions of specific key performance indicators (KPIs) related to those goals, are still missing. Italian companies prefer using non-financial statements and sustainability reports to disclose information about their commitments to SDGs, and most of them started to report information about SDGs in 2016. Additionally, this research seeks to identify the significant differences between SDG reporters in different sectors, under the assumption that operating in a specific sector could significantly affect a company’s decision to disclose information on their SDGs. This research highlights, following the recent evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure and sustainability reporting, the increasing relevance of SDGs in Italian companies’ disclosure practices and, at the same time, the gaps to be covered for their effective implementation.

Piloting a capital-based approach for characterizing and evaluating drivers of island sustainability- An application in Chongming Island

Islands have been a focal point of sustainable development efforts. To understand the dynamic evolution of island sustainability is of great importance. In this study, a capital-based approach is piloted for measuring sustainability in Chongming Island along with its interactions with nearby mainland Shanghai, and to estimate the dynamic changes along with its responsible drivers. Initially, as per the capital-based approach, a three-tier indicator system with 31 indicators is developed to reflect sustainability by five capitals, namely, natural, social, human, financial and physical capitals. Subsequently, a detailed analysis is conducted to analyze the dynamic changes of each capital from 2000 to 2017 for both Chongming and mainland of Shanghai. Results show that: natural, physical and financial capitals followed a significant increasing trend, whereas a slight decline was observed in social capital. Also, no specific trend was noted in human capital for both study regions. Furthermore, as compared to the island, mainland seems to develop a higher sustainability for the respective time span. It is recommended that Chongming Island should focus on strengthening social and human capitals in the future. A wider and new public-private partnership is encouraged to improve public participation. This framework clearly depicts the dynamic evolution of sustainability, would help stakeholders to identify the restricting elements hindering the overall sustainable development, make it understandable and comparable for decision-makers to monitor gaps and proposing initiatives to reduce inequalities.

Evolution of sustainability in global green building rating tools

Green building rating tools (GBRTs) are well-known and important instruments for assessing building sustainability. GBRTs constantly upgrade to meet rapid development, one of which is achieving a reasonable balance among the “three pillars” of sustainability, namely, environmental, social and economic sustainability. This study analyzes the changes and trends in the three sustainability pillars of GBRT and reinforces the previous GBRT longitudinal studies in terms of research sample, time span, equal terms, and research depth. Ten global GBRTs are selected by specific screening principles, and a unified criterion framework is presented to compare these selected GBRTs on equal terms. The changes of GBRTs are then analyzed on three levels, namely, categories, subcategories, and criteria. The results show that in the past three decades, there is a continuous decrease in the weight of the environmental category, an obvious increase in the weight of the social category and a little rise in the wight of the “economic” category. “Pollution,” “physical comfort,” and “flexibility” are identified as “sensitive criteria” of environmental, social, and economic categories, respectively, given their significant changes; they are also critical factors for the evolution of GBRT for the past three decades.

The Links between Human Diets and Health and Climate Outcomes in the World's Macro-Regions during the Last 50 Years.

Globally, traditional food security fears have been supplemented by concerns about food system sustainability that link current agricultural production practices to damages of environmental ecosystems and the world’s climate, thus threatening the natural resource base of future generations. This paper aims at creating a better understanding of the evolution of diet sustainability from 1961 to 2013. Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations were used to investigate the situation for the world as a whole as well as for its macro-regions Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and Oceania. We define diet sustainability by (a) the share of daily per capita calorie intake derived from vegetable/plant products and (b) the variety of vegetable/plant products consumed, measured by the Simpson diversity index. Moreover, total calorie consumption is considered. Then the correlations between diet sustainability and (a) macro-regional life expectancy rates and (b) food system greenhouse gas emissions are calculated. The results show that diet sustainability has not changed much during the last 50 years. Moreover, the nexus between diets and health and climate outcomes is not fully evident at the macro-regional level. Therefore, Malthus 2.0, i.e., scientific food pessimism, should be avoided. In particular, the limitations of dietary contributions to human and planetary health ought to be more widely acknowledged.

Análisis para elaboración de un modelo de sustentabilidad en logística y movilidad urbanas de la ciudad de Tulcán

En la medida en que la población mundial continúa urbanizándose, las ciudades representan una proporción cada vez mayor de la economía nacional y mundial y los efectos de las actividades humanas dejan su huella en la atmósfera a través del cambio climático, se hace más urgente y necesario encontrar formas de gestión y planificación urbanas equitativas que maximicen el potencial individual y colectivo de desarrollo de la sociedad y propendan por un uso más sostenible de los recursos naturales. Es sabido que hoy en día más de la mitad de la población del globo vive en áreas urbanas. En América Latina y el Caribe esta proporción es mayor y varía en consonancia con el ingreso nacional, sobrepasando el 80% en ciertos países. En la mayor parte del África, el Medio Oriente y el Asia el grado de urbanización es todavía del orden de un tercio de la población nacional, pero las próximas décadas verán un aumento inexorable y, en algunos casos, muy acelerado, en la proporción de la población que ha-bita temporal o permanentemente en zonas urbanas. (Dávila, 2012. Movilidad urbana y pobreza: Aprendizajes de Medellín y Soacha) Este análisis busca determinar la importancia de satisfacer necesidades y aspiraciones de la población de la ciudad de Tulcán, fundamentada en tres componentes: el desarrollo social, económico y ecológico, que permitan ampliar el concepto en miras de establecer un modelo sustentable. Para esto se presentó un análisis documental de la evolución de la sustentabilidad centrada en el entorno de preservar al medio ambiente, mediante una adecuada utilización de recursos, y el análisis con las diferentes áreas de la logística y la movilidad urbana, con énfasis en estrategias aplicadas hacia la sustentabilidad. Mediante la recolección y análisis de una serie de datos se presenta la metodología, y técnicas que han permitido obtener resultados sustentables en cuanto al ámbito de logística y movilidad urbana en diferentes zonas geográficas similares a la de Tulcán. Además, se expone que la sustentabilidad en la movilidad urbana requiere el uso de un sistema de transporte adecuado, con consumo de energía moderado, que cumpla tiempos establecidos, recursos no contaminantes, lo que es uno de los principales motores de crecimiento económico y social de las grandes ciudades del mundo.

Sustainability, Innovation and Rural Development: The Case of Parmigiano-Reggiano PDO

Sustainability is becoming a pivotal guide for driving the governance strategies of value chains. Sustainable policy should have as its objective the perpetuation of production models over time to maintain its environmental, economic and social dimensions. Therefore, measuring the sustainability of a production system is fundamental to deepening the understanding of ongoing trends, considering the pressure exerted by agricultural policies, market dynamics and innovations introduced in the production system. The purpose of this paper is to present a holistic framework for assessing the sustainability of food quality schemes (FQS), including the role of both stakeholders within the value chain, and the territorial dimension. This paper discusses the use of dimensional indicators and proposes synthetic indexes to provide an overall picture of the evolution of sustainability of a specific production system. Particularly, the evolution of sustainability in the Parmigiano Reggiano Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) production system is evaluated over the period 2000-2018. It is assumed that its evolution is due to the effect of 20 years of innovations which have impacted on product quality, value chain performance and rural development, modifying the sustainability of the whole production system.

Unsustainable Science

Unsustainable Science

Study on Structural Characteristics of China’s Passenger Airline Network Based on Network Motifs Analysis

The air passenger transport network system is an important agent of social and economic connections between cities. Studying on the airline network structure and providing optimization strategies can improve the airline industry sustainability evolution. As basic building blocks of broad networks, the concept of network motifs is cited in this paper to apply to the structural characteristic analysis of the passenger airline network. The ENUMERATE SUBGRAPHS (G, k) algorithm is used to identify the motifs and anti-motifs of the passenger airline network in China. A total of 37 airline companies are subjected to motif identification and exploring the structural and functional characteristics of the airline networks corresponding to different motifs. These 37 airline companies are classified according to the motif concentration curves into three development stages, which include mono-centric divergence companies at the low-level development stage, transitional companies at the intermediate development stage, and multi-centric and hierarchical companies at the advanced development stage. Finally, we found that adjusting the number of proper network motifs is useful to optimize the overall structure of airline networks, which is profitable for air transport sustainable development.

Socioeconomic Aspects of the Forests in Portugal: Recent Evolution and Perspectives of Sustainability of the Resource

Portuguese forests have always played an essential role in the socioeconomic development of national rural areas, but also in several forest-based industrial sectors, such as the cork, pulp and paper, and wood panels industries. In addition to these dominant sectors, there are also several other uses for forest timber, such as being the major raw materials to the production of furniture or devoted to the growing biomass pellets production industry. This review article presents the evolution of the forest industrial sector throughout the recent past, and its impact on the development of the rural environment, from a socioeconomic perspective, namely concerning the jobs and value-added creation, as well as the importance of the forest in national industrial development. It shows the importance of sustainable forest management for the development of the rural environment, as an essential sector for the creation of wealth and for the establishment of populations in the interior regions of the country.

Sustainability at Spanish ports specialized in liquid bulk: evolution in times of crisis (2010–2015)

ABSTRACTIn Spain, 28 Port Authorities of general interest moved more than 168 thousand tonnes of liquid bulk (34% of overall traffic) in 2015. Almost 82% of this amount corresponded to eight ports (G-8) that have a refinery within their facilities. This unique degree of specialization and concentration makes this set of ports an ideal sample to analyse the evolution of their sustainability levels, particularly during the crisis started in 2008 and onwards. A proprietary methodology based on Multidimensional Synthetic Indices has been used. The comparison of the findings obtained for 2010 and 2015 allows a diagnosis of the evolution of port sustainability measured through the economic, institutional, environmental and social dimensions to be established, as well as a study of the patterns of behaviour that each port has followed in this issue.

Scaling up CSR practices to sustainability capabilities: A micro-foundational perspective

This paper aims to contribute empirically to discussions related to organisational change and evolution of sustainability in organizational settings. We explore longitudinally and across levels of ...

Fiscal Sustainability in the EU after the Global Crisis: Is There Any Progress?

In response to the global crisis a number of new institutional measures have been introduced in the fiscal framework, both on the UE and on the member states’ level, and the question is: have these measures provided better fiscal sustainability outcomes? We approach this question by looking at the evolution of fiscal sustainability in Poland, which is an interesting case of a member state that without significant market pressure (the only EU country without recession during the crisis) actively promoted several changes in the EU fiscal framework (e.g. 6-pack) and effectively internalized some of these key changes in its domestic fiscal policy, including a domestic expenditure fiscal rule. Our analysis reveals that the fiscal sustainability in Poland has significantly improved in the post-crisis period of 2009-2017: we detect both improvement of the fiscal sustainability parameters and structural breaks in the fiscal outcomes after the crisis. Namely, in comparison to the whole sample of 2004-2017 the strength of reaction of the primary deficit to a change of the public debt increased in the post-crisis time by nearly 50%. Importantly, these results are robust with respect to the pension fund reform which led to a one-off redemption of T-bonds in amount of 8.5% of GDP. The analysis also reveals a cycle of structural breaks of 2-and 4 years lags: for the output gap in 2008 Q4, for the primary deficit in 2010 Q4 and for the public debt in 2014 Q1. The case of Poland seems to suggest that the post-crisis EU fiscal measures can be effectively used to increase fiscal sustainability, if properly approached and internalized into the domestic fiscal framework. More research should be devoted to understanding the political and economic conditions under which such positive outcomes were possible.

Fiscal Sustainability in the EU After the Global Crisis: Is There Any Progress?

In response to the global crisis a number of new institutional measures have been introduced in the fiscal framework, both on the UE and on the member states’ level, and the question is: have these measures provided better fiscal sustainability outcomes? We approach this question by looking at the evolution of fiscal sustainability in Poland, which is an interesting case of a member state that without significant market pressure (the only EU country without recession during the crisis) actively promoted several changes in the EU fiscal framework (e.g. 6-pack) and effectively internalized some of these key changes in its domestic fiscal policy, including a domestic expenditure fiscal rule. Our analysis reveals that the fiscal sustainability in Poland has significantly improved in the post-crisis period of 2009-2017: we detect both improvement of the fiscal sustainability parameters and structural breaks in the fiscal outcomes after the crisis. Namely, in comparison to the whole sample of 2004-2017 the strength of reaction of the primary deficit to a change of the public debt increased in the post-crisis time by nearly 50%. Importantly, these results are robust with respect to the pension fund reform which led to a one-off redemption of T-bonds in amount of 8.5% of GDP. The analysis also reveals a cycle of structural breaks of 2-and 4 years lags: for the output gap in 2008 Q4, for the primary deficit in 2010 Q4 and for the public debt in 2014 Q1. The case of Poland seems to suggest that the post-crisis EU fiscal measures can be effectively used to increase fiscal sustainability, if properly approached and internalized into the domestic fiscal framework. More research should be devoted to understanding the political and economic conditions under which such positive outcomes were possible.

Sustainability evolution in the Australian property market

PurposeThe relationship between sustainability and value in property has been a major area of investigation over the past decade. However, in spite of the extant literature and research, the connections made by valuers in practice of the value relationship are still unresolved. The purpose of this paper is to investigate, in the Australian context, valuers’ perception of the relationship between sustainability and value; and their experience and knowledge of sustainability in valuation practice.Design/methodology/approachThe research investigates valuers’ perception and knowledge of sustainability and its inclusion in valuation practice in Australia. The approach uses a longitudinal survey of valuers from 2007 to 2015 tracking valuers’ knowledge, understanding, inclusion of sustainability reporting and the perceptions of the relationship between sustainability and market value.FindingsThis paper presents findings from a longitudinal survey that has been conducted in Australia since 2007, identifying changes between 2007, the height of the property market and sustainability engagement prior to the global financial crisis, and the subsequent years to 2015. The growth of sustainability in the property market is significant, however, valuers’ knowledge and reporting on sustainability is not demonstrating the same level of development. As a result, this is inhibiting valuers reporting on sustainability and has implications for practice and treatment of market values.Practical implicationsThis research highlights the need to examine how to assist valuers to more rapidly develop knowledge and experience to reflect the implications of change in practice. Current approaches being developed in the UK and Europe, like the introduction of RenoValue professional development programs and guidance documents, to assist valuers to develop their knowledge needs to be implemented in the Australian environment as current approaches are inadequate, and steps need to be taken in order to assist their development of knowledge and experience as the market demonstrates growth and acceptance of sustainability. This research identifies the need to re-examine how professional development is undertaken and knowledge developed by those practicing in the profession in Australia.Originality/valueThis longitudinal survey is the only research that has spanned a substantial period of time attempting to ascertain valuers’ perception of the relationship between sustainability and value; and attempts to track the knowledge development of valuers in the context of sustainability. The findings identify how the market is developing and adhering to a product model development theory, however, also identifies more fundamental issues and implications for valuation praxis, in the development of knowledge and ability of valuers to adapt to change and reflect these valuations.