Intersection Of Sustainability Research Articles

A critical insight into the intersection of sustainability and technology

Purpose This paper aims to explore the role of blockchain (BCT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in enhancing and incentivizing environmentally responsible, socially inclusive and economically viable tourism practices within the hospitality and tourism (H&T) industry. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on a critical reflection research approach that enables a synthesis of information derived from existing literature's insights and the authors' experiences and observations. By examining frameworks and theories in the literature, critical reflection also helps develop a more comprehensive understanding of the topic. Findings This study portrays how BCT could be used to track the sustainability credentials of tourism providers and how AI can optimize energy usage in hotels. This study depicts how adopting technology-driven sustainable practices in the H&T industry can increase profitability, improve reputation, compliance with regulations, efficiency and a better guest experience. Practical implications The study suggests targeted actions and policy frameworks that can be tailored to different stakeholder groups (hospitality businesses, policymakers and tourists) to overcome barriers and maximize the positive societal and environmental impacts of adopting BCT and AI for sustainable tourism. Originality/value The originality of this study lies in its ability to offer new perspectives and novel recommendations on the diverse uses of AI and BCT in the context of sustainable tourism. Furthermore, the study provides strategic and policy elements (Targeted actions and policy frameworks) for stakeholders to integrate sustainable tourism practices using BCT and AI successfully. This study differs from earlier review studies that primarily focused on adopting emerging technologies and ignoring the sustainability angle in the use of technology.

Media narratives on (Ecological) sustainability: A topic modeling analysis of entrepreneurship news in the MENA region

Amidst the increasing ecological pressures arising from industrial activity and consumerism, with particularly tangible impacts outside of the global north, the private sector is being held accountable to reduce its environmental footprint and transition to sustainable business models and processes. Nevertheless, perceptions of sustainability and its dimensions largely vary between cultures and contexts, while local media discourses both shape and reflect those concepts and narratives. This in turn shapes sustainability practices and the nature and impacts of emerging entrepreneurial business activity. Given the dearth of sustainability research in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) and the region’s extreme vulnerability to climate change, pollution, draughts combined with political instability and institutional fragility, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of media narratives at the intersection of sustainability and entrepreneurship in the region. This was done by means of the machine learning method of topic modelling on two datasets of 486 and 217 news media articles extracted from a major regional English-language news outlet, followed by a manual content analysis of the extracted topics and articles. We find that the term sustainability is highly associated with economic prosperity and that ecology-related themes are often formulated in terms of financial gain, for instance transitioning out of oil & gas dependence. We find a surprising lack of focus on water scarcity and biodiversity, coupled with a welcomed focus on the energy transition, recycling, urban mobility, as well as social networking and minority integration. Our findings hence provide a nuanced contextual understanding of sustainability, which may support businesses and decision-makers alike in (re)defining priorities and reflecting upon the status quo and necessary next steps in the transition to more sustainable societies.

Strategic Social Value Orientation and Sustainability Performance: A commensuration perspective

Firms increasingly express the strategic importance of creating social value in addition to financial and market value in their communications to investors. Yet, it is unclear what a strategic orientation towards social value creation entails and whether it differentiates firms in terms of their sustainability performance. This article provides a conceptualization of strategic social value orientation (SSVO) consisting of three behavioral components (leading business with purpose, support of stakeholders, focus on consequences) and one shared belief (mutuality). Utilizing a novel linguistic, content-analytic measure of strategic social value orientation, we analyse annual letters to shareholders and sustainability ratings across 1580 firm-year observations, indicating that firms with a stronger strategic social value orientation show greater sustainability performance. The article explores commensurability of strategic attention towards social value creation, suggesting that future research prioritize more fine-grained assessments of social value, sustainability strategies and performance. Our study makes two main contributions. First, we advance theory at the intersection of sustainability and strategic orientation literatures by introducing a new concept of a firm’s strategic orientation toward social value creation (i.e. SSVO). Second, we develop and validate an empirical measure at the firm level for analysing a firm’s strategic social value orientation, making an important contribution to the commensuration of sustainability. Our findings offer guidance to scholars and implications for practitioners.

Green Procurement Nexus Performance of Manufacturing Firms: Empirical Reflections

Purpose: This literature-based study assessed green procurement practices as a strategic tool for protecting the environment in favour of the performance of manufacturing firms.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: A systematic qualitative scrutiny aided by nomothetic content analysis from the published papers centred on green procurement as a global strategic approach to protecting the environment was employed.
 Findings: Green procurement practices are documented as useful for the performance of firms. Moreover, little has been pronounced on relevant practices in Tanzania. Manufacturing firms are charged for environmental compliance and hence call for a related conceptual study.
 Research Limitation/Implication: The study limited itself to the literature alone out of no cause-effect relationship testing of green procurement practices against performance hence calling for the quantitative study guided by hypothesis testing. 
 Practical Implications: The practical implications of the green procurement nexus on the performance of manufacturing firms are significant and can influence various aspects of a company's operations, sustainability efforts, and overall success.
 Social Implications: The study contributes to the Environmental Social Governance (ESG) agenda by highlighting the green procurement practices to be taken on board for the social wellbeing of the delivery of materials to manufacturing firms in consistency with the governance mechanisms.
 Originality/Value: Suggestion: The novelty of the study on the green procurement nexus and manufacturing firm performance lies in its empirical, multidimensional, and forward-looking approach to understanding how sustainable procurement practices can impact various facets of a manufacturing firm's operations and long-term sustainability. It contributes to the growing body of knowledge on the intersection of sustainability and business performance.

Competitive Sustainability: The Intersection of Sustainability and Business Success

Sustainability that beats the competition is different from sustainability that does not [...]

Climate impacts of the metaverse

Christian Stoll is a research affiliate at the Center for Energy Markets of the Technical University of Munich and at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He co-founded CCRI and works as a management consultant. His research focuses on the intersection of sustainability and cryptocurrencies. Ulrich Gallersdörfer is a research associate at the Department of Informatics of the Technical University of Munich. He is a co-founder and CEO of CCRI, a company providing intelligence and data for cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and related technologies. His research focuses on blockchain technology and adjacent fields. Lena Klaaßen is a PhD student at the Climate Finance and Policy group at ETH Zurich. She is also a co-founder of CCRI. Her research focuses on the role of the financial sector in acelerating investment in low-carbon energy technologies as well as the environmental impact of companies and technologies.

Sustainability reporting as a 21st century problem statement: using a quality lens to understand and analyse the challenges

PurposeThis paper explores quality science and quality management as a potential pathway to resolve the challenges of corporate sustainability reporting (CSR) by establishing the need for a common understanding of sustainability and sustainable development.Design/methodology/approachSecondary research on key documents released by regulatory institutions working at the intersection of sustainability, corporate reporting, measurement and academic papers on quality science and management.FindingsExisting measurement frameworks of CSR are limited. They are neither aligned nor appropriate for accurately measuring a company's ecological footprint for mitigating climate change. Quality for sustainability (Q4S) could be a conceptual framework to bring about an appropriate level of measurability to better align sustainability reporting to stakeholder needs.Research limitations/implicationsThere is a lack of primary data. The research is based on secondary literature review. The implications of Q4S as a framework could inform research studies connected to sustainable tourism, energy transition and sustainable buildings.Practical implicationsThe paper connects to CSR stakeholders, sustainability managers, company leaderships and boards.Social implicationsThe implications of sustainability on people, purpose and prosperity are a part of World Economic Forum's stakeholder capitalism.Originality/valueThis paper fills a research gap on diagnosing and understanding the key reporting challenges emerging from the lack sustainability definitions.

Revisiting the sublimation printability of cellulose‐based textiles in light of ever‐increasing sustainability issues

AbstractSustainability, being a recent buzzword, has been given an increasing emphasis in all industry fields, especially in the textile industry, since it is one of the main contributing sectors to resource consumption and thus environmental pollution. Among them, coloration of textiles should be paid special attention due to offering enormous savings in terms of sustainability. Within all fibres, cotton, being one of the cellulosic fibres, has been the most widely used material alone or together with poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET). Therefore, we focus on the coloration of cellulose‐based fibres and its blends with PET in this review. There is only one single coloration technique at the intersection of sustainability and coloration, that is, sublimation or heat transfer printing, because it is the most eco‐friendly approach for the coloration of textiles. There are many studies on this issue, in which either cellulose, that is, cotton, or the transfer paper is modified/treated. In spite of many attempts for sublimation printability of cotton and its blends with PET, they still have problems in terms of sustainability that limits its applicability. In light of ever‐increasing sustainability issues such as Agenda 2030, new developments are yet to be expected for achieving sustainable coloration of cellulose‐based textiles and their blends. Therefore, it is high time to revisit the sublimation printability of cellulose‐based textiles, to mention the latest developments considering nanotechnological advancements, and to give a future perspective in this field.

Identifying and Exploring Sustainability Determinants of Mental Health Recovery-Oriented Interventions: A Mixed Methods Study Protocol

Mental health recovery is the new paradigm in the mental health service delivery system worldwide. Recovery-oriented services go beyond traditional clinical care that is centered on symptom remission, aiming to help people: restore social connections with other individuals and the community; develop hope and optimism for the future; reconstruct an identity beyond that of a “mental patient”; discover meaning in life; and feel empowered to gain control over treatment (CHIME framework). Over the last ten years, several efforts at implementation of recovery-oriented interventions have been documented in the scientific literature. However, little attention has been given to their sustainability, even though it is reported that not all health interventions can fully sustain their activities beyond the initial implementation phase. The aim of this mixed methods case study is to better understand the factors that determine the sustainability of two recovery-oriented interventions (peer support and recovery training) after their roll-out in four organizations in Canada that provide community housing for adults with mental health challenges. Qualitative and quantitative data will be collected from managers, service providers, and implementation team members that oversaw the implementation process along with organizational documents. Data collection and analysis will be guided by the Consolidated Framework for Sustainability Constructs in Healthcare, the Framework for Reporting Adaptations and Modifications, and the Program Sustainability Assessment Tool. Findings will expand our current evidence base on the intersection of sustainability and mental health recovery interventions that remains under-explored.

The Impact of Leadership Diversity on Firm Performance in Singapore

The intersection of sustainability and corporate governance is particularly evident in leadership diversity, which has gained increasing prominence in recent years. The central question of leadership diversity’s impact on firm performance remains open, including for Asia, which has been relatively less-studied. This paper seeks to contribute to this literature, adopting a multi-dimensional view of leadership diversity in Singapore’s public-listed companies. We examine diversity in boards and senior management combined, in order to better understand the impact of diversity among firm strategic leadership. Based on random effects regression analysis using data from 577 companies, our results generally provide support for a beneficial diversity impact. Gender, age, and education leadership diversity were found to have a positive influence on financial performance. We further found gender diversity and performance to have an inverted U-shaped relationship, with the inflexion point being gender parity. This suggests a potentially important role for gender parity in firm leadership governance.

Justice, What a Dream!—Mapping Intersections of Sustainability and Inclusion

This paper takes on the important concepts of inclusion and sustainability, in both their broad and discursive understandings, to map out the interrelations that teachers, who work within different areas of the Austrian school system, make between different, key aspects of their work and organization. The complex intersections of school organization, sustainability, and inclusion were analyzed following a situational analysis approach that made use of different types of mapping (e.g., messy, situational, positional) of data gathered from semi-structured interviews with a teacher-training student and teachers positioned across the Austrian school system, some of whom with experience in classrooms with, for example, refugee, d/Deaf, and neurodivergent students. The findings from these data display ways of being oriented towards sustainable and responsible as well as inclusive engagement, especially within educational spheres. By and large, what emerged from the data was the clear result that school organization as a whole plays one of the biggest roles in determining whether or not non-mandatory subjects such as “sustainability” are given space and time in the classroom. Therefore, if we want to promote topics on sustainability and a focus on climate justice in education, efforts need to be made to bring these topics into the official curriculum.

Making transparency transparent: a systematic literature review to define and frame supply chain transparency in the context of sustainability

Supply chain transparency and its connection to sustainability is a current topic in supply chain management research. The term supply chain transparency is used very loosely in this discourse. Therefore, this article aims to clarify the understanding of supply chain transparency in the context of sustainability to enable future research. In a content analysis-based literature review, 92 peer-reviewed articles were identified in the intersection of sustainability, supply chains, and transparency. Only 30 articles contained a definition of transparency. Supply chain transparency was used and defined very differently among the researchers. By providing a general definition and framework of sustainable supply chain transparency, the term “supply chain transparency” gains more clarity. Three dimensions of transparency were identified: sustainable supply chain information, involved stakeholders, and perspective. The supply chain transparency research was conducted primarily in the context of the food and apparel industry. Transparency was characterized differently among the industries and was studied with different foci. Furthermore, the review revealed a focus of supply chain transparency research on the social dimension of sustainability. Additionally, a wide range of topics on supply chain transparency has been covered in the existing literature, and opportunities for future research are outlined. Future researchers are also encouraged to define transparency more clearly.

The Emergence of a Sustainable and Reliable Supply Chain Paradigm in Supply Chain Network Design

Shorter product life due to technology development and changing customer needs requires optimal supply chain management and structuring. Achieving this optimization brings productivity to the organization. A sustainable and reliable supply chain (S&RSC) as an emerging paradigm, with a comprehensive view, leads the supply chain network design (SCND) issue to the desired situation. This study, as part of an emerging theme, presents a systematic review and classification of 42 articles at the intersection of sustainability, reliability, and supply chain network design. In this regard, in a historical course, the four concepts of green supply chain, socially responsible supply chain, sustainable supply chain, and reliable supply chain in the form of four structures of history and definition, deriver and importance, substrate and practice, evaluation, and implementation are discussed. The result of the review shows that the articles that study the integration of sustainability and reliability in SCND are vibrant and rapidly growing in various industries. Developing countries and manufacturing companies with the largest number of articles have been the research fields of the studies. Most of the studies have considered the structure of the supply chain as a forward flow. The key contribution of this review is the development of a comprehensive framework of S&RSC from the conceptual point of view, elements, assessment tools, and its implementation context. The present review can serve as a guide for various stakeholders. In particular, practitioners and policymakers can effectively develop their own strategies and policies to advance the sustainable‐reliable program.

Smart Mobilities: A Gendered Perspective

Gender equality and sustainable development are two central priorities of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while Agenda 2030 stresses on inclusion both as an outcome and a process input. Simultaneously, urban and transport planning fields are confronted with the challenges of connecting the domains of infrastructure provision, sustainability, and mobility for all. The intersection of sustainability and gender-fair spatial (vis-à-vis mobility) development has so far been neglected and downplayed in both research and policy making at all levels. Rooted in the idea of smart, inclusive, and integrated transport, this paper sheds light on the linkages between gender and transport, and calls for new conceptualizations on smart cities, smart mobilities and gender equality. It highlights how smart solutions can be designed to retain inclusivity at its core. To this end, the paper cites examples on gendered dimension of smart mobilities at the hierarchies of data collection and analyses, planning and policy making.

Examining the Scholarly Literature: A Bibliometric Study of Journal Articles Related to Sustainability and the Arts

The Arts shows great promise in working toward a sustainable future as they can have a significant influence on the development of cultural norms. Using bibliometrics, this study uncovers the current body of scholarly literature related to the intersection of sustainability and the Arts. The results show that while there are very few articles (n = 77) published in scholarly journals related to this area, the number of manuscripts and the number of journals publishing manuscripts related to this subject area is increasing. Further, while there is no one individual who stands out to date as a leader in this field, the results show that Australia and Canada have produced the most published articles. Finally, this study demonstrates that scholarly articles related to the Arts and sustainability are mostly being published in well-established interdisciplinary sustainability-related journals and journals associated with the field of education for sustainable development. The results of this study give a more definitive answer to the question: what scholarly literature resources currently exist on the intersection of the Arts and sustainability and offers the scholarly community a better idea of what and how those involved in this area are publishing and mobilizing knowledge regarding their work.

Planetary health: a new science for exceptional action

Planetary health: a new science for exceptional action