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Environmental degradation in emerging economies has induced stakeholder pressures on diverse firms to ensure sustainable business performance. Consequently, firms are adopting environmentally ethical cultures and reinforcing green creativity to satisfy stakeholders' environmental needs while attaining green competitive advantage, sustainable production and higher financial performance. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether corporate environmental ethics and green creativity serve as antecedents to higher competitiveness, sustainable production and financial performance, and also examine if green competitive advantage and sustainable production mediate the relationships between corporate environmental ethics, green creativity and financial performance in the context of an emerging economy.

This study using a survey approach examined data from 290 manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises. Data were analyzed and interpreted using SmartPLS 3.0 software, a variance-based structural equation modelling technique. This modelling technique was adopted due to its suitability for predictive research models.

The findings show that corporate environmental ethics and green creativity are critical antecedents to green competitive advantage, sustainable production and financial performance. The results connote that while corporate environmental ethics and green creativity directly and robustly influence green competitive advantage, sustainable production and financial performance, their effect on financial performance is strengthened via the indirect effects of green competitive advantage and sustainable production. Contrasting past findings, corporate environmental ethics negatively related to financial performance in this study context. The findings indicate that the integration of environmental ethics and green creativity can be a unique strategy for mitigating environmental negative risks while improving green competitive advantage, sustainable production and financial performance.

The study is among the few that draws insights from organizational ethics and the natural resource-based view (NRBV) to examine the interactions between corporate environmental ethics, green creativity, green competitive advantage, sustainable production and financial performance. Drawing insights from the findings, the study provides suggestions for managers, academicians, policymakers and governments as well as highlights implications and directions for future research.

Environmental ethics has become an established subject of philosophy in recent decades in response to the contemporary environmental crisis. This paper aims to provide an overview of the key theories and concepts and critically evaluate the extent of their application in tourism studies.

The paper is based on a systematic literature review of published academic papers that link environmental ethics to tourism. It subsequently attempts to provide a comprehensive review of what is currently a nascent field of research enquiry to comprehend and evaluate the relevance and implications of environmental ethics for tourism. Using a theoretical ethical framework of libertarian extensionism, eco-holism and the conservation ethic, moral debates that arise from their use in tourism are analysed. As a field of academic study that presently lacks research enquiry areas for future research investigation are subsequently identified.

The paper forms a part of the “State of the Art” series and subsequently does not present empirical findings. However, through critical evaluation, it demonstrates the complexity of the application of environmental ethics to tourism through differing perspectives within the subject and when nature’s interests are juxtaposed to concerns of anthropic ethics. To develop a stronger environmental ethics amongst tourism stakeholders that recognises the intrinsic value of nature, it is recommended that ecological virtue and literacy are key elements in this process.

The originality of the paper rests in providing a comprehensive overview of the existing level of application of the theories of environmental ethics to tourism; the appliance of theory to debates of tourism’s environmental challenges; and identifying research directions to help fill knowledge gaps.

This study aims to propose the corresponding ways and methods to strengthen the environmental moral education based on scientific research methods, rigorous scientific theory and the specific content of environmental moral education.

In this study, taking 360 volunteers of Yangtze University, Hubei, as the research samples, the 32-week (3 h per week) experimental research was preceded in this study. Among the 360 distributed copies of questionnaires, 289 copies are valid, with the retrieval rate 80 per cent.

The research results show significant correlations between environmental education and environmental ethics; environmental ethics and environmental literacy; and environmental education and environmental literacy.

The research on the environmental moral education in China was still in the primary stage, and there were few results that can be used for reference. As a result, there was a lack of empirical research in this paper, which needed to be further expanded and improved.

This study put forward a series of new judgments and new views to solve the problems, which provided a good theoretical basis for the current education and teaching work of the majority of educators and valuable reference for future research on related topics. This study was helpful to further enhance the environmental moral awareness and environmental moral level. Aiming at the problems existing in environmental moral education, this study proposed a series of solutions to make the whole society, schools and families work together for the improvement and development of environmental moral education.

This study was helpful to promote environmental moral quality and level, promote the harmony between man and nature and form a good habit of environmental protection in the whole society.

Bioethics and environmental ethics have been largely separated, in principle. However, the two types of ethics do overlap when dealing with significant issues such as human embryos, animal experimentation, and responsibility to future generations. In this paper, the possibility of synthesizing these two ethics through the concept of care is considered. Accordingly, the range of the object of the concept of care is similarly broadened. Moreover, after considering the serious defects of care-based theory, a care-based position, which regards human rights or their substitute as a complement to care, is advanced. This position can be said to be a Japanese approach to bioethics.

Plato and Aristotle would have found the modern effort to fuse ethics and ecology to be incomprehensible. Despite the fact that oikos—meaning house or household—is a Greek word, Greek science did not entertain a concept of ecology. Nor did Greek philosophy regard nature as morally considerable. Etymology aside, the word ecology in anything like its modern sense of “biospheric house” did not appear in European thought until 1873 when Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, a German biologist and philosopher, used it, with the spelling “Oekologie,” in his The History of Creation. Furthermore, the words “ecology” and “ecological” always had exclusive reference, until quite recently, to a scientific discipline and not to a branch of philosophy. As with the Classical Greek philosophers, so it was also with modern thinkers. Ethics, they held, were concerned solely with interpersonal relations. They could not, therefore, recognize a duty to nature. That we do owe a duty to nature, however, is the carefully considered conclusion of most of the environmental ethicists.

The environment is an important business issue and it will be even more so in future. Environmental reporting nowadays features increasingly in annual reports and elsewhere. It is however not compulsory and corporate decision makers must therefore make a decision for or against such reporting. Ethics is at stake in any decision involving right or wrong. Ethical theory is therefore examined in an effort to establish whether environmental reporting should be done. It is concluded that corporate environmental reporting constitutes the ethical high road.

This chapter argues that environmental ethicists commit a serious error when they require that people hold a moral realist metaethical belief in the intrinsic value of non-human living things and non-living natural things in order to be able to behave in an ethically acceptable manner toward the environment.

Environmental ethics regard this position as the mandatory non-anthropocentrism one must first hold in order to be in a proper moral relationship to the environment. The main reason for seeing this requirement as an error is that it is politically unrealistic insofar most people most of the time behave in political contexts on the basis of instrumental and not intrinsic reasons. To claim that people can behave in a morally acceptable manner toward the environment if and only if they first believe in its intrinsic value is not only politically unrealistic, but also actually false.

The chapter looks at recent studies measuring the behavior of political and moral philosophers which shows that they do not behave in any markedly way better than non-moral philosophers. Ethicists, whom one can assume believe in some form or another of the mind-independent reality of moral properties, are not more morally well-behaved for holding such a belief.

Ethicists, especially environmental ethicists, are in no position to require of us to believe in the intrinsic value of the environment in order to behave in more beneficial ways toward it.

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.

This study aims to investigate how sustainability and ethics are being addressed both by the literature and companies. Furthermore, it seeks to identify the specific strategies that these companies use to foster ethical behaviour and promote sustainability in their business operations.

The study entails a bibliometric analysis and a set of case studies from a sample of companies working in different industry sectors. Based on these tools, it analyses whether – and how – enterprises are placing an emphasis on sustainability and ethics as part of their businesses. In addition, the selected companies' unethical practices or socially irresponsible corporate activities were investigated and presented.

The findings suggest that using an ethics perspective can be a valuable tool in improving the accuracy and correctness of business decision-making. In addition, the paper has identified the fact that sustainability standards can be used to improve customer satisfaction as many important issues are addressed. Finally, the paper highlights the importance of ethical considerations when designing and implementing sustainability standards at enterprises and the need for regulatory guidance in this regard.

The paper addresses the need for studies on how sustainability and ethics are being discussed by both the literature and companies. The paper presents some elements that can be used as possible corporate indicators for a wider implementation of sustainability and ethics objectives in enterprises.

This study aims to explore the unique and synergistic effects of green human resource management (GHRM) and corporate environmental ethics (CEE) on the environmental performance (EP) of manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Yemen, a less developed country (LDC).

Through a cross-sectional survey design, data were collected from 262 manufacturing SMEs in Yemen and analyzed using “hierarchical regression analysis” via PROCESS Macro.

The empirical results showed that GHRM and CEE positively affect EP and, more importantly, that CEE and GHRM have a synergistic effect on EP.

This study makes a theoretical contribution by integrating GHRM, CEE and EP into a single framework, taking into account the perspectives of the resource-based view and the ethical theory of organizing. The results corroborate the unique and synergistic effects of GHRM and CEE on EP of SMEs in the manufacturing sector.

The results of this study offer valuable insights for SME managers/decision-makers, who are anticipated to become more interested in integrating environmental ethics into their companies. This has implications that with the consideration of CEE, SMEs can benefit from GHRM practices to improve their EP.

The study highlights the positive economic and social impact of SMEs adopting eco-friendly practices like GRHM. In today’s economy, it is not sufficient to simply strive for economic growth. It is possible for SMEs to achieve well-rounded performance by implementing the recommended framework that emphasizes the importance of social and environmental well-being.

This study advances the existing work on the impact of GHRM on EP by demonstrating the crucial role of CEE in predicting EP of manufacturing SMEs in LDCs like Yemen. Previous research on GHRM has mainly been conducted on SMEs in developed nations, which may not be entirely applicable to LDCs. It is crucial to understand this aspect in the context of LDCs so that SMEs can adopt environmental practices effectively in the future: how SMEs conserve the environment through their environmental practices.