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The overall goal of this chapter is to critique the purported business case for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability, which persists as a major contentious force in convincing companies to become more sustainable. Extant literature on sustainability, CSR and Socially Responsible Investments (SRIs) generally tends to focus on company perspectives decision-making and approaches. This chapter considers an alternative and under-developed perspective and examines CSR from a consumer/public perspective situated in a German context.

This chapter builds a comprehensive literature review and employs a research philosophical point of view underpinned by a social constructionist stance. It examines indicators and attitudes towards sustainability and sustainable consumption together with socially responsible investments and considers whether the buying patterns of German consumers may serve as a rationalisation for a potential business case for CSR and sustainability.

While the awareness of consumers of CSR in Germany towards sustainability tends to be generally relatively prima facie high, it is nevertheless noticeable that German consumers are predominately reluctant to pay a price premium for product possessing a superior sustainability performance. From the alternative lens of SRIs, rather than being a replete and widespread phenomenon, they are still largely a niche market. For these reasons, the potential for the existence of a business case for sustainability, CSR and SRIs tends in reality to be low, in spite of some populist or survey reports and perceptions.

The chapter links a consumer perspective with the business case for CSR. Moreover, it focuses on the German context which tends to be underrepresented in international research.

In this paper, the authors argue that there is a flip side to the business-and-sustainability relationship, which deals with how sustainability affects management practices. The so-called first-class leading companies in sustainability have put sustainability at the centre of strategic planning and defined their business case for sustainability. This paper aims to analyse these companies on sustainability imperatives and propose a comprehensive framework for developing a business case for sustainability.

This paper investigates the sustainability strategies and initiatives of six leading global firms (Nike, Unilever, Siemens AG, General Electric, Interface and Walmart). It provides insights into how leading firms have developed a comprehensive business case for their sustainability initiatives and are enjoying a competitive advantage. The inductive approach, using the case method and interpretive structural modelling, is used to propose a comprehensive framework for defining the business case for sustainability that might help other organisations do well by doing good and create sustainable value.

The success stories of the chosen organisations reaffirm that there is a business case for sustainability initiatives and efforts, as companies derive long-term benefits and also enjoy a competitive advantage. Other firms, which are yet to pave their paths towards sustainability, have a lot to learn from these successes.

The conceptual framework proposed in this paper will be very useful for organisations that are still on the path to establishing a business case for sustainability as there is a lot to learn from the first-class companies practising sustainability and learn from their reflection and experience.

The study in this paper contributes to the existing knowledge base by presenting a comprehensive list of sustainability imperatives that helps an organisation define the business case for sustainability and proposes a conceptual framework in this direction.

The purpose of this paper is to understand communication pathways and factors that cause sustainability initiatives to become contagious from downstream to upstream members of a supply chain, which is termed sustainable supply chain contagion (SSCC).

This study takes an inductive, grounded theory approach, while utilizing established theories.

The decision to implement a sustainability initiative depends on the business case for the organization. Importantly, the findings outline several network and communication factors that overcome the weak business case and, therefore, foster SSCC. Based on these findings, a communication network model of SSCC is outlined. Network factors include the contagion pathways, the role of sustainability and top management teams and communication channels. Communication factors include the alignment of sustainability initiatives with departmental objectives, the articulation of goals and assuring the endurance of a sustainability initiative.

Managers can utilize the proposed model to create conditions that strengthen the business case of a proposed sustainability initiative, thus fostering SSCC. The presented findings reveal different tactics that can assist organizations in communicating sustainability initiatives in a persuasive manner, to permit the proliferation of sustainability across the supply chain.

This research enables a multilevel examination of the factors influencing SSCC.

The paper explores processes associated with the adoption of corporate sustainability communication in a B2B context. It employs a combined action research and sensemaking approach to document moments that precede the initiation of external sustainability communication.

The paper is the outcome of an action research project, where we examine the case of one industrial company that was silent on its multiple sustainability-related practices, but recently decided to become more transparent to the outside world. A processual approach to sensemaking is adopted to show how organisational and non-organisational members actively participated in meaning co-construction.

Corporate silence can be disrupted by triggering events that cause moments of sudden realisation for organisational members, eventually leading to the initiation of sensemaking processes inside the organisation. Once this occurs, the possibility of externally communicating sustainability appears a feasible and strategic approach to pursue. We document how different actors are involved in meaning co-construction and how the entire process of sensemaking unfolds.

A sensemaking approach sheds light on the complexity of sustainability communication, where multiple actors are involved. This is a useful approach to consider in order to couple sustainability with other organisational practices. Moreover, sensemaking opens a window of opportunity for various societal actors' interventions to shape the role and content of sustainability communication.

The paper offers an original, theoretically informed methodological contribution to the literature on sustainability communication by coupling a sensemaking approach with action research. The approach is employed to examine the role of internal organisational actors in sustainability reporting processes, an area that has received scant attention.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of management control systems (MCS) in organisational change towards sustainability. In particular, it examines the extent to which MCS may be instrumental in transformative organisational change in this sphere.

Through an in-depth case study of an Australian multinational corporation in the property sector, this paper explores the possibilities for MCS to influence organisational change towards a multi-bottom-line, balanced approach to social and environmental challenges facing corporations. MCS are conceptualised using Simons’ (1995) Levers of Control framework. On the question of sustainability, the approach adopted in this paper contrasts with much of the prior literature that largely takes a predominantly pragmatist approach and equates sustainability performance with financial performance. The prior literature generally reports a positive role for MCS in organisational change efforts. By contrast, drawing on the typology developed by Hopwood et al. (2005), this paper views sustainability as requiring a balancing of economic, social and environmental concerns.

The findings indicate that although MCS are not irrelevant, they do not play a transformative role in enabling deep-seated organisational change towards sustainability. The critical literature on the nature of MCS is drawn upon to explore the reasons for the observed non-role.

The analysis sheds light on factors that may influence the effectiveness of conventional notions of MCS in organisational change. The findings contribute to the debate regarding the suitability of continued efforts at using conventional notions of management accounting and MCS in enabling organisational change towards greater social and environmental sustainability. The paper also highlights the value of a critical examination of the usefulness of management accounting and control practices in the context of organisational change towards sustainability.

This paper aims to present a novel pedagogical approach to education for sustainability within the business curriculum that adopts a sustainability audit of a fictional company presented as a case study as the focus of learning, teaching and assessment. It evaluates the user’s ability to provide the active learning called for in education for sustainability literature and hands-on learning that business management students prefer.

This study explores students’ qualitative and quantitative responses to pre- and post-module surveys and module evaluations to establish the effectiveness of focussing learning, teaching and assessment on a sustainability audit. The study, undertaken over a two-year period, adopts four indicators of learning and teaching effectiveness to synthesise, evaluate and present the findings as follows: development of sustainability knowledge and skill, employment skills, career and life skills and engagement.

The study finds that a sustainability audit can develop students’ knowledge and skills in all four indicators of learning and teaching effectiveness. In addition, the findings suggest it can raise students’ learning awareness and recognition of their role in the learning process.

This paper reports the findings of a small scale, two-year study. As such, it presents indicative findings rather than generalised conclusions.

Designing a pedagogical approach to education for sustainability within the business curriculum around the completion of a sustainability audit can offer hands-on learning experiences that meet students’ preferences for interactive, experiential and collaborative learning within real-world environments, employers’ demands for employment-ready graduates and educators’ hopes for sustainability advocates.

This study builds on the existing pedagogic discourse of pedagogic means and methods for education for sustainability within the business curriculum. It provides insight into effective hands-on education for sustainability within the business curriculum and offers experience-based guidance to educators seeking to develop immersive, active and experiential, real-world pedagogical approaches.

Business sustainability urges firms to simultaneously address economic, ecological, and social concerns. It innately combines different potentially competing organizational elements. Therefore, sustainability represents a suitable context for the study and practice of hybridity. Based on an understanding of hybridity as a continuum, in this chapter, the author distinguish between four different forms of hybridity for business sustainability, depending on the degree of integration and autonomy of sustainability initiatives in business organizations. With ceremonial hybridity, businesses only leave the impression to pursue business and sustainability goals but focus their practices on conventional business priorities. Contingent hybridity denotes an approach where ecological and social concerns are only pursued to the extent that they align with business goals. With peripheral hybridity, firms pursue sustainability initiatives in their own right but do not integrate them with core business activities. Full hybridity puts both business as well as sustainability at the core of the organization without emphasizing one over the other. These different forms of hybridity in business sustainability are illustrated with examples from various business organizations. By characterizing different degrees of hybridity in business sustainability, the argument and the examples highlight how organizational hybridity and business sustainability can fruitfully inform one another. The author develop research opportunities for using business sustainability as a context for studying different degrees as well as the dynamics of hybrid organizing and for using different degrees of hybridity for achieving a better understanding of different pathways toward substantive business contributions to sustainable development.

Since the Brundtland report’s call for sustainability, planetary conditions have deteriorated. This paper suggests that corporate hypocrisy is a major barrier toward the adoption of sustainability and offers a typology of business behavior that can move closer toward the adoption of true and strong sustainability.

This article uses a normative lens to build upon prior literature and anecdotal evidence from the field to present a typology of business archetypes that represent a variety of responses toward sustainability.

The authors propose five typologies of business behavior that represent responses toward sustainability: business-as-usual, hypocritical pretender, hypocritical co-opter, responsible enterprise and purposeful enterprise. The first three typologies represent existing hypocritical approaches using weak sustainability. The last two typologies decrease corporate hypocrisy; improve alignment of talk, decisions and action; and help an organization adopt true and strong sustainability.

This is a normative paper that critiques existing literature and practices in corporate sustainability and proposes new directions. It necessitates further research in the form of case studies and empirical cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis. It implies assessing firm impact in non-traditional ways and will call for the development of new measures and indicators of firm performance from a social and environmental perspective.

The typology can provide practitioners and researchers with one possible solution to eliminate or decrease corporate hypocrisy in relation to sustainability, reporting and communications.

Planetary conditions have worsened, and business activity continues to contribute to deteriorating conditions. This research attempts to help businesses move away from hypocritical and destructive practices and to adopt true and strong sustainability practices for a flourishing planet. Furthermore, the authors articulate policy and practice recommendations in this context.

After decades of failure to make progress in achieving planetary sustainability, this research offers a model for practitioners and researchers to use in defining the actions necessary to achieve the elusive concept of sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore storytelling in sustainability reporting. The author posits that large PLCs use their sustainability reports to support the construction of a fairytale of “sustainable business”, and asks if organisations with an alternative purpose (social enterprises, values-based SMEs) and/or ownership structure (co-operatives, partnerships) can offer a counter-narrative of the sustainability–business relationship.

The paper uses the literature on storytelling and organisational mythmaking to gain insight into the construction of narratives and their impact on the reader. A narrative analysis is conducted of the sustainability reports of 40 organisations across a range of entity classes, including large PLCs, values-based SMEs, co-owned businesses and social enterprises.

The analysis indicates that the narratives presented in sustainability reporting are of much the same form across entity classes. The author argues on this basis that sustainability reports represent stories targeted at specific stakeholders rather than accounts of the organisation’s relationship with ecological and societal sustainability, and urges scholars to challenge organisations across entity classes to engage with sustainability at a planetary level.

The paper seeks to contribute to the literature in two ways. First, the author illustrates how the literature on storytelling can be used to analyse organisational narratives of sustainability, and how narrative forms and genres can be mobilised to support potential counter-narratives. Second, the author explores and ultimately challenges the proposition that organisations less often examined in the literature, such as social enterprises and co-operatives, can offer alternative narratives of the sustainability–business relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to review research and strategies in Australian business education that aim to foster graduate capabilities in sustainability concepts and practices, also to present a case study of teaching practice along with ideas for future development.

The authors report on a research project by seven Australian universities, with financial support from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), on how to develop and grade graduate capabilities with sustainability identified as a core graduate skill. An example is presented from the Faculty of Business and Economics of a strategy in action – the use of a case study (centred on sustainability practices at the university) to enhance the skills of merit scholars.

Corporate social responsibility is a well‐established concept in business management theory, with sustainability principles emerging as a core feature. In the higher education sector, the spirit may be willing, but training in the application of these principles has been implemented as an add‐on rather than an embedded part of the curriculum. Although efforts are being made to find ways of nurturing graduate capabilities in sustainability practice, a significant obstacle is the lack of teaching models and materials. The authors offer findings from the ALTC graduate skills project as well as a case study of implementation.

The authors report on practical innovations in fostering business graduate skills in implementing sustainability principles, assess the utility of current education practice and present some suggestions for future learning and teaching strategies.