Search results

This paper aims to explore service learning with its insights in empowering corporate responsibility awareness. Attempts to build corporate responsibility widely in incorporating into the sustainability engagement could be demonstrated in fostering the transformative experiential learning with extensive evaluation and reconfiguration of existing programs. The focus on enhancing the learning experience in emphasizing the community engagement would be applied with strengthening the actual performance in encompassing the ability raising awareness about the environmental issues.

The approach used in this paper refers to develop the conceptual framework about the service learning with various strategies to give insight on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Incorporating the approach of conceptualizing the basis of service learning, key consideration was generated into particular enhancement of service learning in contributing to the CSR.

The finding reveals that getting benefit to serving into the community engagement may take beneficial outcomes with its valuable insight to assist in the progress of program designed with associating to enhance corporate responsibility and sustainability awareness. The advancement of the social control among the companies would be deployed within empowering service learning for CSR where sustainability awareness-based community service as embodiment of CSR should be enhanced through nurturing corporate responsibility-based transformative experiential learning. Moreover, this initiative refers to an attempt to strengthen the basis of corporate responsibility and sustainability awareness-based experiential learning, which could enlarge creative thinking with envisioning sustainability and corporate responsibility.

This study is expected to contribute to the experiential learning to enhance the sustainability within the learning setting engaged in achieving what to contribute to the environmental concern. In creating the situation where the balance between serving and learning can be achieved, attempts to encourage them in joining the service learning program should be collaborated with orienting both personal and social community oriented comprehensively in underlying the responsibility awareness, the sustainability-based moral values. These aim to enhance the understanding stage about the care for protecting the environmental concern within learning experience with the goal to produce responsible awareness especially by economic agents such as shareholders, managers, regulators and active participants to promote sustainable benefits.

This investigation is guided by the following research questions: employing Hart and Milstein’s (2003) Sustainable Value Framework as analytic tool, what is the extent of the integration of sustainability focused strategies by Asian-based companies in their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives? How can the ethics of responsibility of Hans Jonas help rethink the current understanding and doing of CSR in Asia towards achieving a truly responsible and sustainable corporate identity?

This research uses Centering Resonance Analysis (CRA), which is a relatively sophisticated form of content analysis methodology suitable for studying formal written communication such as the published CSR reports. To accomplish the complex task of CRA, the Crawdad Text Analysis System 1.2 is used. The Crawdad Text Analysis Software is an analytical software package developed specifically to perform CRA.

Using the Hart and Milstein Sustainable Value Framework as a diagnostic tool, the empirical findings reveal that Asian-based companies’ CSR projects exhibit a very low degree of integration of sustainability strategies. This paper proposes a theoretical process model that explains the planned development of CSR initiatives – through a CSR tract elucidated as corporate sustainability and responsibility – a holistic management approach aimed at providing impetus for companies in Asia to pursue the goal of becoming responsible and sustainable companies. It reconciles the concepts of CSR and corporate sustainability using Hans Jonas’ ethics of responsibility as the philosophical footing.

The primary objective of this study, therefore, is to examine how companies located in Asia embrace sustainability in their CSR engagement. It stems back to the fundamental question, “How do companies in Asia manage their CSR” – i.e. as a strategic response to changing circumstances and new corporate challenges? This question drives this study’s search for empirically based conclusions on current CSR program thrusts and the advancement of sustainability strategies of firms operating in Asia.

Building upon the empirical results gained from the above objective is the equally important goal of the study to advance Hans Jonas’ ethics of responsibility as a basis for a blueprint to a revitalized view of CSR amongst Asian firms in their pursuit to become responsible and sustainable corporations. The integration of philosophical theory adds foundational depth to the study.

Building upon the empirical results gained from the above objective is the equally important goal of the study to advance Hans Jonas’ ethics of responsibility as a basis for a blueprint to a revitalized view of CSR among Asian firms in their pursuit to become responsible and sustainable corporations. The integration of philosophical theory adds foundational depth to the study.

This multidisciplinary study seeks to contribute to CSR literature in two ways. First, it highlights the significance of the need for empirical descriptions of firm-level CSR structures and practices that may give a more thorough account of the overall quality of business involvement of Asian-based firms on sustainability issues. Second, this investigation underscores the need for conceptual robustness to guide CSR initiatives undertaken by firms within a sustainability paradigm. A grounded theoretical model is henceforth presented in this paper to enrich the discussion on the strategic management of ecological responsibility through a holistic approach to CSR.

Many studies have developed the corporate sustainability topic. The United Nations has implemented the 2030 Agenda and has brought “quality education” and “industry, innovation, and infrastructure” as two of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The educational processes in higher education can be focused on adding brand value and social value, and they can be promoting the social inclusion. In this sense, the purpose of this study is to answer some questions related to the corporate sustainability practices under the 2030 Agenda lenses in the Latin American higher educational scenario. After the literature review analysis, a conceptual framework was developed.

This exploratory research study proposes an educational conceptual framework, improving the corporate sustainability under the 2030 Agenda lenses. A literature review was developed, involving the seven variables: “Latin America,” “higher education,” corporate social responsibility,” “personal social responsibility,” “corporate sustainability,” “governance” and “sustainability.” A matrix was developed with 25 variable combinations, connecting the seven variables. Three questions have been proposed and answered: “How much research has been developed in the Latin American higher education?” “How can the corporate social sustainability be applied in higher education?” and “Which perspectives can be considered?”

The results of the literature review are presented through the number of papers found with the analysis of the year of publication and the conceptual background. A total of 524 papers were found. Of these studies, 49 addressed the Latin American panorama, 33 had a general approach and 16 promoted interactions between Latin American and European countries, as well as between regions and continents. Six topics emerged from the literature analysis: digital inclusion, internationalization, innovation, research, servitization and social inclusion. These topics are connected in the “discussion” section, and the educational conceptual framework shows the corporative perspectives on sustainability in higher education.

This research study presents “A conceptual framework for the corporate sustainability higher education in Latin America” and it brings some discussion topics: digital inclusion, internationalization, innovation, research, servitization and social inclusion. These topics were identified through the literature analysis, and they were applied in the conceptual framework to improve the quality of education. The implications of this study are connected with the conceptual framework to promote the discussion topics. The implications involved the public and private governance spheres, third sector, as well as the professors, students and other stakeholders of higher educational institutions. These implications can represent an agent of positive change in the Latin American scenario.

The study aims to improve the understanding of the online sustainability disclosure phenomena considering the quantity and nature of the content of the information related to sustainability disclosed in the corporate website of companies, providing evidence about the website sustainability disclosure of different size companies and characterizing the website sustainability disclosure of the Portuguese mold companies.

A content analysis methodology was used to the corporate websites of 83 companies in the sample. A direct approach was followed where the researcher is asked to read and classify the text in a previously defined category, but where the possibility of identifying new categories from the collected data is not excluded.

The information on sustainability disclosed by the mold companies is limited, whether in quantity or concerning the type of information. The information disclosed about environmental and social aspects is scarcer, being the focus more on aspects related to the economic dimension of sustainability, particularly in the areas related to products and services and customers.

The research design can be broadened to include other sustainability dissemination tools and other research methodologies, such as case studies, to provide a deeper understanding of the concerns and initiatives/practices of sustainability of mold companies.

This study contributes to the knowledge of sustainability dissemination practices in SMEs, an area of research that needs to be more explored and, in an industrial sector (molds) that have not received much attention in this area.

Based on the premise of the importance of corporate sustainability communication, the study focuses on the Internet as an information dissemination tool. It provides indications on the theme and information type that can be used to report the company's sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the concepts of sustainability, responsibility and ethics focussing on their links and differences, also to understand how companies move respectively in these field; to understand how companies sometimes move away from the basic and deep meaning of these concepts, landing in a merely utilitarian sphere of personal advantage where ethics, instead of being an irreplaceable and essential stronghold, is found to be a fiction or just an instrument.

The methodology used assumes a theoretical critical approach and, based on the vast literature on the items, is based on a conceptual analysis of the themes of sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethics and of the behaviour that companies can adopt in the three contexts. A critical approach to these issues and concepts can effectively help us to understand how companies are responding to external demands and to the challenges of responsibility and sustainability, which are becoming increasingly pressing.

Ethics, sustainability, CSR and social and environmental reporting are distinct constructs with different meanings but linked by important conceptual and operational relationships.

The results of the research are the consequence of the application of a critical approach based on a theoretical analysis of the concepts under study. It would be interesting to support the results achieved with empirical research studies.

This conceptual path helps scholars and companies themselves to understand the difference between the three key concepts analysed. Only by understanding the basic meaning will it be possible to really make one’s own and pursue it in the correct way.

Nowadays, the authors are overwhelmed by these three concepts which are used as synonyms and incorrectly. This leads to confusion and misunderstandings. Knowledge of the characteristics and differences between these concepts and their concrete applications is of great importance.

This study tries to provide a critical discussion of how the three concepts intersect and differentiate, leading to concrete results or results that have nothing to do with their meaning. There are no conceptual papers in the literature that deal with the three concepts and also analyse the implications on the real world.

Corporate responsibility and sustainability (CRS) have emerged as an important topic today. At the same time, alliances and coopetition arrangements, as vehicles for inter-firm collaboration have been shown to support firm performance. Still, there has been a lack of research into how coopetition (collaboration with competing firms) in this area may support firm performance.

This study aims to untangle the relationship between coopetition arrangements including CRS and firm performance. The model permits garnering social performance, which is a key to CRS, and to move beyond the traditional view of the coopetition–firm–economic–performance relationship. This study is based on a survey and primary data from 215 firms in Australia. This study uses multiple indicators for the concepts. Relationships are estimated by multiple regression analyses.

Using survey data from 215 firms in Australia, the research findings confirm that coopetition in CRS can lead to improved firm performance, both in relation to financial and social performances. However, the association between coopetition in CRS and financial performance loses its significance when social performances is introduced as an additional control variable. Further, stakeholder attributes (i.e., effective power and legitimate stake) moderate the relationship between coopetition in CRS and firm financial performance. However, there was no evidence of moderation for the coopetition in CRS – firm social performance relationship.

This study contributes to both coopetition and corporate social responsibility research. This study demonstrates that improved firm performance may be achieved through the promotion of CRS initiatives when a coopetitive approach is adopted, particularly where an understanding of stakeholder attributes is also evident. Firms do not need to shoulder corporate social responsibility alone. They need to find well-fitting partners. There are new ways to improve sustainability in terms of nature and human relationships.

Firms do not need to shoulder Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) alone. They need to find well-fitting partners.

This study provides very novel insights by having integrated the literature on coopetition, corporate social responsibility and sustainability resulting in a new conceptual framework that combines coopetition in CRS and performance. The new conceptual framework has both practical and research implications for coopetition in CRS and firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the sustainability disclosure methods‐instruments practiced by the two most widely employed indexes/instruments (DJSI World and GRI‐G3 Guidelines). The paper suggests that the newly created triple bottom line (TBL) reporting practices need to undergo further standardization and enforcement to avoid, or give early warnings about, future corporate mismanagement that leads to socio‐economic consequences detrimental to investors and consumers in general.

This paper utilizes sample firms from the DJSI World Index and the GRI‐G3 Sustainability Guidelines membership list to draw inferences on sustainability indicators of performance. The authors compare the GRI reporting guidelines with the disclosure indicators of the DJSI World.

The authors' findings suggest that TBL reporting has made enormous progress over the last two decades. However, the two widely used sustainability reporting instruments/indexes (DJSI World and GRI‐G3 Guidelines) differ in disclosure practice‐methods and the authors recommend that further standardization and enforcement is necessary. The authors' view is that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) should become actively involved with the issue of standardization and enforcement of corporate socio‐environmental disclosures. The paper presents evidence that investors have neither rewarded nor penalized firms for adhering to or violating sustainability matters in their corporate decisions.

The authors argue for further standardization and enforcement with regard to the disclosure methods of the two widely used (GRI and DJSI) sustainability indicators in order to avoid future corporate mismanagement that leads to (systemic) economic and socio‐environmental consequences detrimental to citizen investors and consumers in general.

The research is of interest to academicians and practitioners who are interested in the theory and practice of sustainability reporting or TBL reporting. The findings suggest that this newly created disclosure instrument needs to undergo further standardization and enforcement for meaningful and accurate disclosure of economic‐social and environmental performance. The authors' view is that the SEC and FASB should become actively involved with the issue of standardization and enforcement of socio‐environmental disclosure of corporate sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the current status and identify the main trends in leading Russian companies’ corporate sustainability model transformation in the context of achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

A theoretical approach is based on the interpretation of corporate sustainability model transformation within the corporate social performance (CSP) framework. The corporate sustainability model is described according to Dyllick and Muff (2016) business sustainability (BST) 1.0-3.0 spectrum. The analysis is settled on survey data collected from leading Russian companies participated in the “Report on Social Investments in Russia” project conducted by the Russian Managers Association from 2008 to 2019.

This paper finds that the BST 2.0 is becoming a dominant model based on the “creating shared value” goal. The related CSP is characterized by their orientation to the principles of the UN Global Compact; by the emergence of a coordinating role for specialized departments of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and/or sustainability; and by the regular sustainability reporting. The SDGs are generally correlated with responsible business practices that are already in existence in companies. The emerging trend towards the advanced BST 3.0 model including the SDGs integration into the main business processes is constrained by the lack of active cooperation between companies.

The research sample includes only large Russian companies with a significant industry diversity, participating in the “Report on Social Investments in Russia” project, thereby restricting the analysis of non-participants. The relatively low repetition of participants in this long-term project does also restrict the degree of generalization. Future research could be based on the findings of this paper to create and test hypotheses via a nationwide study of Russian businesses as well as cross-national comparative studies.

The analysis of the corporate sustainability model transformation through studying the key CSP framework elements could support Russian companies in creating systemic changes of their principles, processes and outcomes measurements in the context of achieving the UN SDGs.

This study contributes to existing literature by combining the corporate sustainability model transformation analysis with the CSP framework. It describes the experience of large Russian companies that publicly position themselves as national leaders in the field of CSR and sustainable development.

A green agenda has become a growing subject throughout an increasing number of European listed real estate companies over the last decade. The focus on sustainability is presumably not only goodwill or legislation driven but is rather a benefit driven action to achieve an economic surplus. The purpose of this paper is the development of an adequate sustainability definition, the investigation of the effect of a sustainability agenda on a company level, and the identification of possible financial benefits.

This is an explorative qualitative and quantitative study. First, the authors developed a four‐bottom‐line real estate sustainability agenda in accordance with the guidelines of the European Public Real Estate Association and the Global Reporting Initiative. Second, the study examines 80 European listed real estate companies from 2006 until 2009, and third, the study applies a panel analysis with conditional and unconditional regression techniques.

After classifying firms across different levels of sustainability intensity and quantifying the impact of an intensive green agenda the authors found a positive linkage between a green agenda and a green performance, especially in terms of an increased ability to generate revenues and a decreased level of idiosyncratic stock volatility. As a result, green commitments are not merely altruisms but are economically driven instead.

This paper gives, to the authors' knowledge, a first insight of how European real estate listed companies behave in terms of corporate social responsibility. The study contributes to the theoretical literature of corporate sustainable real estate companies by establishing an economic transmission mechanism as well as providing empirical evidence in favour of responsible activities.

Over the past two decades, there has been an increasing interest on corporate social responsibility by a number of constituencies – corporate managers, research scholars, policymakers and investors. In this context, corporate sustainability performance (CSP) has been a central focus of attention. This paper aims to analyze CSP determinants in Brazil, an important emerging market. Firm CSP is proxied by the membership to the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) which comprises environmental, social, economic and governance issues.

Logit panel data models are estimated for a sample of 2,685 firm-year observations in the period of 2006-2015.

Results show that firms operating in environmental risky industries tend to be leading CSP firms in Brazil which might be a positive consequence of the Brazilian environmental legislation that could be forcing such firms to be more committed to environmental issues. High ownership concentration reduces the probability of a firm’s membership to the ISE index signaling that large controlling blockholders may not see sustainability and governance concerns as relevant. Larger Brazilian firms and the ones with more growth opportunities tend to be CSP leaders. Additionally, the financial crisis of 2007-2009 had a negative effect on CSP in Brazil.

The implications of the present findings may be of interest to academics and firms’ stakeholders. The fact that firms from environmental risky industries exhibit higher concerns with CSP, probably because of the Brazilian environmental rules that has advanced in the past decades, show the prominence of policymakers in the critical scenario of environmental issues. When designing regulation, policymakers should be conscious of the importance of social issues and pay attention to all ways available to foster firm sustainability concerns. The additional evidence that dominant shareholders do not appear to see CSP as a relevant concern in Brazil points out an agency conflict in which large blockholders’ interests may be prevailing over other stakeholders’ interests. That is important to academics who study the role played by ownership structure on firm’s policies. Furthermore, larger firms, as well as the ones with more growth opportunities, seem to invest in CSP, possibly for seeing it as a way to generate competitive advantage.

As per the authors’ knowledge this is the first paper to point out the relevance of industry environmental sensitivity over firm’s commitment to sustainability issues in Brazil. Additional evidence is provided on the negative effect of ownership concentration on the probability of firm’s membership to the ISE sustainability index using a longer period as well as robust logit panel data model estimates compared to previous studies. Unlike previous works, the paper analyzes the complexity of a sustainability index in the Brazilian market. Such index comprises corporate social responsibility, sustainability and corporate governance concerns. This set of concerns makes it a complex index and requires a deeper rationale for the determinants of CSP as proxied by the membership to it, under the stakeholder and agency theoretical frameworks.