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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of value added (VA) as an indicator of intellectual capital (IC), and its impact on the firm's economic, financial and stock market performance.

The value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC™) method is used on 300 UK companies divided into three groups of industries: high‐tech, traditional and services. Data require to calculate VAIC™ method are obtained from the “Value Added Scoreboard” provided by the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Empirical analysis is conducted using correlation and linear multiple regression analysis.

The results show that companies' IC has a positive impact on economic and financial performance. However, the association between IC and stock market performance is only significant for high‐tech industries. The results also indicate that capital employed remains a major determinant of financial and stock market performance although it has a negative impact on economic performance.

The VAIC™ method could be an important tool for many decision makers to integrate IC in their decision process.

This is the first research which has used the data on VA recently calculated and published by the UK DTI in the “Value Added Scoreboard”. This paper constitutes therefore a kind of validation of the ministry data.

The use of natural resources by organizations has a significant impact on society, resulting in business firms playing a vital role in developing sustainable development. As a result, corporate sustainability has become an integral aspect of a company’s vision and policy in the modern days. Companies issue sustainability reports based on various criteria and metrics, thereby attempting to gain a competitive edge. This study aims to assess and prioritize the numerous factors that influence corporate sustainability performance.

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to prioritize the identified determinants of corporate sustainability performance based on the literature. Several experts from business and academia were engaged to build a comparison matrix for assessing the various aspects of corporate sustainability performance. As a result, various corporate sustainability determinants were determined and prioritized following an extensive literature review using the AHP.

The most critical component for companies is an economic indicator. Developing environmentally and socially responsible suggestions must be a priority for the organization’s economic performance. Economic performance is believed to be most heavily influenced by innovation and in the other category like environmental and social performance are highly influenced by environment management policies and shareholder responsibility, respectively. Researchers’ findings suggest that to promote sustainability, top executives should devote all of their attention to innovation, environment management policies and shareholder responsibility.

These studies are primarily concerned with developed countries. And, the other fundamental constraint of the AHP study is that the rating scale adopted in the analysis is conceptual. Therefore, pairwise comparisons with a variety of indicators have the potential to introduce bias into the results.

This paper proposes a methodical and operational technique for selecting the ultimate priority of sustainability indicators when it comes to exploiting competitive information on business performance. The paper also recommended sustainability rating technique might be carried out once every six months to improve the overall quality and performance of the organization.

The advantages of adopting and executing corporate sustainability are enormous, and managers must determine whether sustainability is profitable or not. This question prompts further inquiries. For example, what are the numerous critical determinants of corporate sustainability performance? Several scholars throughout the world are looking at it for this reason. As a result, it is essential to comprehend and prioritize the various determinants of corporate sustainability performance.

With the recent increasing relevance of sustainability, multinational enterprises are faced with divergent stakeholder demands and persistently shifting priorities. This study aims to examine stakeholders’ perceptions of the sustainability performance of a gold mining subsidiary in Ghana.

Using a purposive sampling technique, the authors interviewed managers and employees of the case enterprise, officials of regulatory institutions and host community members on their perceptions of the case enterprise’s sustainability performance. The authors triangulated the opinions expressed by these stakeholders with data from annual reports. The data were analysed through the lens of stakeholder theory.

The authors found that while members of the host community and the regulatory institutions were keenly interested in the case enterprise’s social and environmental activities, they perceived their performance as unimpressive, considering the economic benefits derived from the mining operations. On the contrary, the managers and employees of the case enterprise were satisfied with their environmental compliance and social intervention programmes, even though the company’s economic position had declined. The authors submit that the variations in the sustainability performance perceptions among the stakeholders are due to the lack of a deeper understanding of the other stakeholders’ expectations.

To equitably satisfy diverse stakeholder expectations, the study highlights the role of stakeholder collaborations in understanding the expectations of more salient stakeholder groups such as community members and employees, as well as the lesser salient groups such as academics. It also demonstrates the fluidity of sustainability and its benefits in designing a consensual sustainable management strategy. This implies that managers of the case mining enterprise make the necessary efforts to meet the diverse stakeholder needs while attaining their primary objective of creating wealth for shareholders.

Compared to advanced economies, studies on sustainability performance in emerging economies are limited. Nonetheless, these limited studies leave out stakeholder perceptions, focusing more on quantitative performance indicators. Using thematic and content analyses, the authors investigate stakeholder perceptions on the sustainability performance of a case mining subsidiary operating in Ghana. The study focused on Ghana because it is ranked with South Africa as the top two producers of gold in Africa. Nonetheless, unlike South Africa, Ghana faces more sustainability challenges from the mining sector due to weak institutions in enforcing sustainability standards.

Environmental issues are rapidly emerging as one of the most important topics in strategic manufacturing decisions. Growing public awareness and increasing government interest in the environment have induced many companies to adopt programmes aimed at improving the environmental performance of their operations. State of the art literature has proposed many models to support executives in the assessment of a company’s environmental performance. Unfortunately, none of these identifies operating guidelines on how the systems should be adapted to support the deployment of different types of “green” manufacturing strategies. The present paper seeks to illustrate techniques and architecture for performance measurement systems (PMSs) to support the implementation of feasible “green” manufacturing strategies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the links between a company’s position in a corporate network with its financial performance and strategic risk in the context of the largest Central European stock market.

This study integrates the theory of social network analysis (SNA) with corporate governance theory with a special focus on resource dependence theory. Using the framework of network social analysis, the authors use network measures of social capital and embeddedness.

The results of studying companies listed on the Polish stock exchange indicate that a company’s corporate network position has a significant negative impact on strategic risk while having no influence on its financial performance. The research also highlights the importance of a firm’s corporate governance model for both performance and strategic risk.

The data collected, and SNA measures used made it possible to conduct a cross-sectional study. Compared to longitudinal studies, this type of study has a couple of disadvantages addressed in the paper. In the future, the dependencies observed in this study should be tested using longer-term data.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper integrating the corporate personal and capital networks to test risk and performance dependencies in the context of Poland’s corporate governance model. The findings and conclusions can also be applied to analyzing Central and Eastern Europe stock markets.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between organizational performance and the pattern of strategic decisions formalized in the planning of a Brazilian heavy construction company between 2006 and 2014. In this period, the company experienced a recurrent pattern of maintaining strategic decisions, despite the systematic decrease in performance and investments in the formal strategic planning (SP) and monitoring of results. The research focus is on strategic inertia and the influence of social determinants on the relationship between performance and the strategic actions negotiated in formal planning.

This is a single-case study. The exploratory-descriptive research comprises data collection on performance and strategic decisions from the period between 2006 and 2014. The analysis was guided through documentary material and data collected from 16 interviews conducted with members of the middle to top management concerning performance, goals, and strategic initiatives. The interviewees’ statements were used to apprehend the interpreted dimension of SP expressed in the meanings attributed to this process. The analysis adopts a sociological base, and strategic inertia is the underlying phenomenon that guides this analysis.

The results show the interactive effect caused by political, cognitive, discursive, and ceremonial mechanisms obstruct the company’s strategic decisions. This case study illustrates that the conditions for the phenomenon of path dependence were created, reinforcing the strategic inertia observed in the maintenance of a reproduced pattern of strategic initiatives and goals, even though the performance was recurrently unsatisfactory. In this case, strategic inertia showed a complex relationship between the interpreted performance and strategic actions negotiated in formal planning, conditioned by mechanisms of trajectory reinforcement that interfered with the conditions for strategic change.

Strategic inertia demonstrates a complex relationship between the interpreted performance and strategic actions negotiated in formal planning, conditioned by mechanisms of trajectory reinforcement that interfere with the conditions for strategic change. Future research on social mechanisms from the perspective of strategy-as-practice could be developed to capture the tacit components, language, power games, and other relevant categories in the social interaction of strategy development at the organizational level. In addition, future research could focus on investigating the extent to which path dependence is contingent, assuming that it is a temporary and, therefore, reversible process.

This work contributes to the view of SP from the social perspective and shows that the relationship between performance and strategy has biases that can compromise performance. The work highlights implications for maintaining strategic initiative patterns, which shape a path whose function is less associated with its effects on performance and more associated with the commitment to instrumental results, due to the social nature of organizations.

This work deals with social mechanisms that influence strategic decisions. Since organizational performance depends on strategic decisions, the social nature of strategic inertia has causal implications to economic and social impact of organizations.

This work argues in favor of the influence of self-reinforcing mechanisms of path dependence in the relationship between performance and strategic decisions. The results extended the predominantly structural approach of path dependence by considering interpretive aspects related to the political, discursive, cognitive, and ceremonial dimensions of strategic inertia.

Prior research shows that companies that achieve high performance excel at certain financial objectives. This chapter addresses the question: Do companies that excel at these financial performance objectives also excel in integrated reporting and sustainability reporting?

We compare a sample of high performance companies (HPC) with a sample of companies that purport to support integrated reporting, and a sample that purport to support sustainability reporting. Our hypotheses are that HPC will equal or exceed the integrated reporting and sustainability reporting practices shown by International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) companies and US companies will be less at these practices than non-US companies.

Our findings indicate that IIRC companies and GRI companies generally do not meet the high financial performance measures of the HPC. Based on an integrated reporting and sustainability reporting matrix, we show that HPC exhibit equal performance on the practices of sustainability and integrated reporting compared to GRI companies, but both HPC and GRI are lower on these practices than IIRC companies. Also, US companies disclose less information in sustainability reports and integrated reports as compared to non-US companies. Overall, all three groups fall short of full compliance with standards of integrated reporting and sustainability reporting.

This chapter provides evidence as to the financial performance and the current state of integrated reporting and sustainability reporting among HPC, GRI, and IIRC companies. This chapter highlights the global need for a generally accepted set of standards for sustainability and integrated reporting practices.

This paper aims to explore how a Malaysian palm oil company responded to the pressure for change towards sustainability in their sustainability reporting of negative incidents and in actual sustainability practices.

The study used qualitative methodology through an interpretive case study of a palm company. The study gathered primary and secondary data via semi-structured interviews with key organisational members and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informal conversations, focus groups, document/annual report content analyses and observations. Symbolic and substantive management was used as the theoretical lens to explain the findings.

After experiencing a series of negative events regarding their social and environmental performance, the case company responded by using selective disclosure and a symbolic/legitimising strategy to address the majority of recurring negative events. In actual practice, the company changed structurally but policy-implementation gaps remain despite these changes. Strategically, the company changed in terms of its expansion policy but remained unchanged in traceability issues. The increased awareness of sustainability in the company’s culture appeared to suffer in favour of profit and cost/efficiency considerations that remain prominent. Both substantive and symbolic changes were found in both reports and practice but were more inclined to be symbolic.

The study provides guidelines for companies changing towards sustainability in both practice and reporting, in their effort to contribute to sustainable development goals.

The study provides evidence of symbolic and substantive changes as complementing activities instead of a dichotomy, which was mostly assumed in previous literature and suggests companies adopt a combination of these depending on the severity of sustainability-related issues, level of scrutiny and cost/efficiency considerations.

The purpose of this study is to propose a conceptual framework for the exploration of appropriate lean techniques applicable to medium and large construction companies and measure their impact on the competitiveness and economic performance of construction companies in United Arab Emirates.

A questionnaire survey is conducted on 215 construction professionals in UAE to investigate the lean technique’s effect on the construction companies’ performance. The data collected were analyzed with SPSS 20.0 version software using the Cronbach’s a reliability test, correlation coefficient test and Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test.

Analysis of lean techniques in the construction industry reveals 21 lean techniques. These techniques were categorized into the six types of lean core values. Process focus was found to be the most applied type of construction core value in the surveyed companies. This is required to focus on applying other core values as it will impact the company’s economic performance positively.

The integrity of the research findings is based on the accuracy and reliability of collected data from 215 respondents working for construction companies in UAE, implementing lean construction techniques within a their daily activates and not achieving significant project achievements in terms of quality improvement, speed and cost reduction without adopting the overall lean construction framework.

This research recommends a systematic approach for the implementation of the anticipated framework within a cyclical look-ahead period and emphasizes the practical implications of the proposed approach in the construction companies.

Research significance emphasizes increasing the effectiveness of the construction industry and influences the development of lean construction framework, which improves lean construction practices using the lean techniques. This contributes to the effort of applying lean techniques in the construction industry. Limited studies have been done in the construction industry, mainly in UAE, compared to lean manufacturing.

The paper aims to examine the influence of closed and open innovation practices on economic performance. This papert also examines the mediating roles of innovation performance and firm performance. The study uses innovation theory based on knowledge management for theoretical support.

The methodology involves two steps. First, all the variables relevant to the adoption of innovative approaches and performance parameters are identified. Subsequently, primary data are gathered from decision-makers of 200 biotechnological firms and a structural equation modeling analysis is performed.

The study's results showed that the open innovation practice, such as interaction with large research and development (R&D) firms and customers, influences the performance parameters. The findings indicate that closed and open innovation practices positively impact performance measures like innovation, firm and economic performance. The results also indicate the mediating role of firm performance. However, the innovation performance was not found to mediate the relationship.

This examination gives experimental bits of knowledge from any confining influence innovation approaches in India. Analysts and specialists of firms can use the results of the current study to comprehend the effect of various innovation practices on different performance measures.