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The purpose of this paper is to integrate the notions of management control systems (MCS), mindfulness and sustainability, and introduce a framework demonstrating how sustainability outcomes – specifically occupational health and safety (OHS) improvements – can be accomplished by incorporating mindfulness-based interventions (or mindfulness-based training) as an effective MCS enabler.

The authors have conducted an integrative literature review to synthesize the knowledge of the mindfulness, sustainability and MCS literatures with a specific focus on OHS.

The findings revealed that there is a dearth of research that has investigated the potential linkages between mindfulness, MCS and sustainability. While some studies have explored the role of MCS in promoting sustainability and corporate social responsibility concepts, as well as the linkages between mindfulness and sustainability, this paper specifically looked at how mindfulness-based interventions can be applied in the organizational context to enhance OHS sustainability outcomes.

This paper introduces a framework that shows how mindfulness-based interventions, as a means of MCS, can be used to enhance desired OHS sustainability outcomes.

This paper extends the sustainability, mindfulness and MCS literature by explicating how mindfulness-based interventions can be used as one of the key MCS enablers that support sustainability and OHS outcomes. Accordingly, the authors argue that this is one of the few early review papers that have investigated the potential connections between mindfulness, sustainability and MCS in the OHS context.

This paper aims to look at the sustainability practices adopted by the Pakistani hotel industry. Sustainability is a relatively under-researched notion from the perspective of the developing world, and in particular, the research lacks evidence from the Pakistani hotel industry.

The authors follow an exploratory multiple case study design to study the sustainability practices adopted by the Pakistani hotel industry. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with the senior hotel managers.

The results suggest that sustainability is only partially integrated into the business strategy for most of the sample hotels, and a systematic approach to sustainability is currently lacking. Overall, the central focus of the hotels is on developing commercial performance, whereas some fragmented social and environmental sustainability initiatives are implemented on an ad hoc basis.

This study identifies some practical issues and challenges in relation to sustainability implementation in the Pakistani context. It is suggested that the government, community organizations and the private sector firms need to actively collaborate to promote the sustainability agenda.

This paper extends the extant literature by exploring sustainability implementation in the Pakistani hotel industry. While there is limited sustainability research in the context of the developing world, this study contributes by bridging this gap in the present literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on global supply chain sustainability and provide an important pathway to develop an initial understanding of how organizations can develop more resilient and socially sustainable supply chains in a post-COVID world.

To gain fresh insights on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on supply chain social sustainability and resilience issues, an extensive literature review was conducted. To this end, recent scholarly research articles, articles from practitioner journals, magazine articles and policy documents and reports, as well as blogs and briefings published by international organizations were critically reviewed.

The findings suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with a major shake-up of global supply chain operations and has contributed to varied sustainability outcomes. While the pandemic caused reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, it has had serious social implications for the livelihoods and well-being of workers and their families. The findings further suggested that it is imperative for companies to build resilience in their global supply chain operations to better respond to future shocks and disruptions by adopting strategies such as employee protection schemes, advanced digital technologies, diversification, localization and regionalization and stakeholder collaboration.

This review paper contributes to emerging global supply chain sustainability literature and practice by synthesizing and explicating the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on supply chain social sustainability and resilience. In addition, this paper offers some practical recommendations to enhance the social sustainability impacts and resilience of global supply chains in a post-COVID world.

Manufacturing companies continue to encounter a diverse set of obstacles while embracing sustainable development goals. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to explore critical sustainable development-related barriers to flexible packaging manufacturing companies in the New Zealand context.

Drawing on a qualitative multiple case studies approach, the authors collected data from the New Zealand flexible packaging industry. Semistructured interviews were conducted with the senior corporate managers in two large flexible packaging companies. Following the thematic analysis approach, the authors analyzed the information collected from the participants and synthesized our findings under the key dimensions of internal and external barriers to sustainable development.

The findings revealed that internal barriers to sustainable flexible packaging are linked to economic, operational and technical issues. Conversely, external barriers include global crises and disruption, customer behavior and preferences and institutional and infrastructural-related aspects. Based on the analysis of empirical findings, the authors further identified the underlying reasons for sustainable flexible packaging barriers and recommended guidelines that could assist corporate managers and policymakers in addressing obstacles inhibiting the flexible packaging industry from adopting sustainable business practices.

The authors argue that this study is one of the early studies to consider inhibiting factors to incorporate sustainable development into the New Zealand flexible packaging industry context. Building on a range of theoretical perspectives, the authors extend the current body of knowledge seeking to advance the sustainable development agenda in the New Zealand flexible packaging industry and offer recommended pathways fostering sustainable development in a distinctive manufacturing context.

The purpose of this research is to ascertain the impact of audit committee (AC) activism and independence on the quality and quantity of environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures for energy sector firms in Australia. This paper aims to understand how AC attributes such as meeting frequency, and the number of independent directors influence the compliance with the global reporting initiative (GRI) guidelines and quantity of ESG disclosures.

Bloomberg ESG disclosure scores and company reported AC attributes are collected and analysed using the pooled ordinary least square (OLS) regression framework with Petersen’s (2009) technique by using a two-dimensional cluster at the firm and year level. Further, this paper uses a lagged independent variable and two-stage least square approach to address endogeneity concerns.

The results show a significant positive effect of AC activism and independence on the level of compliance with the GRI guidelines, indicating the favourable effect of AC attributes on ESG reporting quality. Likewise, AC attributes positively affect the quantity of ESG disclosures. Notably, the impact of AC attributes is more pronounced on environmental disclosures.

This paper validates the significance of the management control mechanism in improving the quality and quantity of ESG disclosures for an environmentally sensitive sector, hence offering a potential answer to reduce agency and legitimacy issues for the sensitive industry firms.

This paper aims to unravel the relationship between market-driven impacts of climate change and firms’ deployment of renewable energy (RE) innovation. The purpose is to understand how market-related forces, influenced by uncertainty, shape firms’ behaviour in response to climate change challenges.

Drawing on the behavioural theory of the firm (BTOF), the paper develops a conceptual model to decode the relationship between each category of market-driven impacts and the resulting RE innovation within firms. The model takes into account the role of uncertainty and differentiates between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and domestic firms.

The analysis reveals five key sources of market-driven impacts: investor sentiment, media coverage, competitors’ adoption of ISO 14001, customer satisfaction and shareholder activism. These forces influence the adoption of RE innovation differently across firms, depending on the level of uncertainty and the discrepancy between environmental performance and aspiration level.

This paper contributes to the literature in four ways. Firstly, it emphasises the importance of uncertainty associated with market-driven impacts, which stimulates different responses from firms. Secondly, it fills a research gap by focusing on the proactivity of firms in adopting RE innovation, rather than just operational strategies to curb emissions. Thirdly, the paper extends the BTOF by incorporating the concept of uncertainty in explaining firm behaviour. Finally, it provides insights into the green strategies of MNEs in the face of climate change, offering a comprehensive model that differentiates MNEs from domestic firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of advertising skepticism and need for cognition with consumers’ attitudes toward brand. There is currently limited understanding on how advertising skepticism and need for cognition relate to the consumers’ attitudes.

Using a “within-brand-comparison” strategy, a mock print advertisement of a telecom brand is shown to 204 cellular services users in Pakistan. This is followed by a survey. Data are analyzed using a variance-based structural equation modeling.

The relationship of advertising skepticism with attitude toward brand is negative and partially mediated by the sequence of brand image, advertisement believability and attitudes toward advertisement. In contrast, the relationship between need for cognition and attitude toward brand is positive and fully mediated by the sequence of brand image, advertisement believability and attitudes toward advertisement.

The paper fills some theoretical as well as empirical gaps by showing how (in a within-brand comparative advertisement context) advertising skepticism and need for cognition relate to the consumers’ attitudes toward brand.