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That knowledge acquisition from external sources can play a pivotal role in product design is a well-known fact. However, knowledge acquisition need not play a pivotal role in every context; it is also documented to have a dark side (i.e. negative impacts). Specifically, given that product stewardship, by definition, calls on each party in the product life cycle – including suppliers – to share responsibility for the environmental impact of products, the purpose of this study is to answer the question “whether knowledge acquired from suppliers plays a beneficial role in the context of product stewardship?”

This study focuses on the effect of knowledge acquisition on product stewardship and its subsequent effect on environmental performance. Given that the effect of knowledge acquisition could be moderated by firm-specific and relational factors, this study also considers the moderating role of knowledge exploitation and supplier opportunism. Using primary data, the hypotheses are tested using two-stage hierarchical ordinary least squares regression models involving valid instruments.

Though extant research doubts that knowledge acquisition will always be beneficial, this study adheres to the tenets of knowledge-based view and hypothesize that knowledge acquisition is pivotal to product stewardship and its subsequent impact on environmental performance. But the results suggest an intriguing double-edged effect of knowledge acquisition; while its direct effect on product stewardship is nonsignificant, it seemed to have a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between product stewardship and environmental performance. But whenever knowledge exploitation and supplier opportunism are maintained at ideal levels, this double-edged effect of knowledge acquisition is successfully negated.

While knowledge acquisition is key for new product design, its specific role in the product design that incorporates environmental considerations is still not clear. By proposing that knowledge acquisition could instead have a double-edged effect within the unique context of product stewardship, the study makes an invaluable contribution to the extant literature on knowledge management within supply chain relationships.

This study examines shareholder and board motivations regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) to understand boards' stewardship approaches to environmental issues.

Using content analysis, the authors classify CSR motivations in all environmental shareholder proposals and board responses of Fortune 250 companies from 2013 to 2017 from do little (a shareholder primacy perspective) to do much (a stakeholder pluralism perspective). The authors calculate the motivational dissonance for each proposal-response pair (the Talk Gap) and use cluster analysis to observe evidence of board stewardship and subsequent environmental disclosure and performance (ED&P) changes.

Board interpretations of stewardship are not uniform, and they regularly extend to stakeholders beyond shareholders, most frequently including profit-oriented stakeholders (e.g. employees and customers). ED&P changes are highest when shareholders narrowly lead boards in CSR motivation and either request both action and information or information only. The authors observe weaker ED&P changes when shareholders request action and the dissonance between shareholders and boards is larger. When shareholders are motivated to do little for CSR, ED&P changes are weak, even when boards express more pluralistic motivations.

The results show the important role that boards play in CSR and may aid activist shareholders in determining how best to generate change in corporate CSR actions.

This study provides the first evidence of board stewardship at the proposal-response level. It measures shareholder and board CSR motivations, introduces the Talk Gap, and examines relationships among proposal characteristics, the Talk Gap, and subsequent ED&P change to better understand board stewardship of environmental issues.

The purpose of this paper is to present a public university’s design and implementation of an assessment approach that measures the change in undergraduate students’ environmental stewardship reasoning and knowledge abilities over time.

In support of a university’s strategic emphasis on environmental stewardship, members of a university committee developed environmental stewardship learning outcomes for undergraduate students. The learning outcomes were not required in specific academic courses or in general education. Subsequently, volunteers from a variety of roles, in cooperation with committee members, developed a corresponding assessment test that focused on reasoning and knowledge. The instrument was revised between Spring 2011 and Spring 2014, and its validity was evaluated. An exploratory analysis of student learning over time was conducted using 22 items shared by different test forms.

A series of implementations and revisions resulted in a 50-question test, the Environmental Stewardship Reasoning and Knowledge Assessment (ESRKA), which showed good reliability (0.83). A comparative analysis provided evidence of the validity of the instrument. Results from a small sample of students showed that second-year students generally performed better on the 22 items than incoming first-year students. Those taking the assessment as second-year students, 18 months after their initial assessment, scored significantly higher on the 22 items by about 10.4 percentage points (0.61 standard deviation units, t₆₈ = 6.23, p < 0.0001).

Because of the small sample size and revision of the items, the analysis of student learning is only exploratory.

The learning outcomes and validated assessment instrument may be used either in whole or part by other institutions. The approach to measure changes in students’ environmental stewardship reasoning and knowledge abilities as cohorts over time could assist universities in tracking environmental stewardship learning and could inform strategic implementation of learning opportunities through the curriculum, as well as through other student learning experiences.

Top-level operations leaders can drive organizational performance across a broad range of pro-environmental objectives. The authors’ focus is on understanding which specific leadership competencies are most conducive to green performance outcomes. The authors further consider the influence of Lean thinking on the importance of these competencies.

In study 1, of a multi-method investigation, the authors interview executive search professionals, on how green objectives impact top-level operations leadership searches. In study 2, the authors adopt a multi-attribute choice task to examine how Lean thinking impacts competency preferences. Finally, in study 3, the authors merge secondary data on corporate environmental performance with a survey of top-level operations managers’ assessments. This triangulating multi-method approach provides an integrated and holistic view into these dynamics.

Results show particularly strong associations between resource and energy management outcomes and the specific leadership competencies of stewardship. This set of leadership competencies play the greatest role when Lean thinking is deficient.

While the authors’ focus is on top-level operations managers, and their under-explored impact on environmental performance, such an impact represents only one dimension of corporate social responsibility (CSR) that these managers may be critically influencing.

The associations uncovered in this research suggest critical leadership characteristics to consider in developing and recruiting top-level operations managers, when specific environmental objectives exist.

The study’s findings draw attention to the importance of leadership characteristics among influential corporate decision-makers, instrumental in the environmental progress of firms.

This work fills a critical gap in the authors’ understanding of how top-level operations managers influence green corporate objective, and how their contributions are valued across settings.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of intertemporal stewardship that incorporates stewardship, based on a foundation of spirituality, into financial decision‐making models.

Argues that stewardship, which shares some common ground with sustainable development, must become an integral component of financial decision‐making. Using agency theory as a point of departure, discusses the Anglo‐American and Continental European‐Japanese models of financial decision‐making, and how they can be reformulated to embrace stewardship and the spiritual foundation upon which stewardship is based. The key to linking spirituality and stewardship is our concept of self‐fullness – the simultaneous pursuit of reasonable self‐interest and reasonable concern for the common good of all human beings. The reformulated model of financial decision‐making is labeled intertemporal stewardship theory.

The merger of spirituality, stewardship, and financial decision‐making is crucial for the survival and prosperity of businesses and the people they serve. The failure of businesses in the new economy can be traced to the loss of values regarding spirituality and stewardship.

Empirical research must be conducted to test the validity of the proposed intertemporal stewardship theory.

It is essential that managers base their decisions on internalized spiritual and stewardship values that they do not “park at the door” when they arrive at work. Managers should never lose sight of these values, and their decisions should always be grounded in these values. Without such grounding, it is very possible that once again managers will be caught in a cycle of “irrational exuberance”. Therefore, it is critical that these values become not only an integral part of financial decision‐making but also an integral part of education for financial decision‐making.

The financial bottom line is that financial decision‐making can no longer be devoid of spiritual and stewardship considerations if an organization is to survive and prosper over the long term. Neither can business organizations deny spirituality and stewardship considerations if they are to be socially responsible members of society, contributing to and upholding a moral existence for all humanity. In this sense then, the conception of intertemporal stewardship theory that is offered in this paper takes a step toward realizing these greater goals.

This chapter is in line with the strand of literature on urban environmental stewardship and examines how cities around the world have been teaming up with each other in order to foster cocreation and codeployment of nature-based solutions (NBS) to tackle global environmental challenges and promote climate-resilient communities. This chapter describes such an effort that cities made to build international alliances and networks as a new wave of “city diplomacy.” Indeed, recent environmental negotiations at the global level on sustainable development and climate change have proven how cities of different size, with diverse socioeconomic and environmental conditions, were able to put NBS on the agenda and show their transformative power for the common good. Throughout the chapter, the European policy context is always placed at the meso level, between the macro (international arena) and the micro (city) dimensions, in order to demonstrate how the European Union has been instrumental in connecting the global, regional, and local agendas on NBS for renaturing cities.

A growing religious-environmental movement is working to reconcile environmental thought and practice with the mission and ministry of religious organizations. We examine two leading interfaith social change organizations and identify key strategies they routinely employ to create shared meaning and alignment between environmentalism and faith. They reframe stewardship in religious organizations by (1) highlighting and interpreting environmental themes in sacred texts and scriptures, (2) celebrating and fostering mutual awareness of environmental action by faith-based organizations, and (3) providing resources and creating linkages between clergy and lay leaders across religious congregations. By emphasizing moral and spiritual rationales for the adoption of resource-saving products and behaviors at both the congregational and household level, these networked organizations help shift the perception of global climate change from an insurmountable problem to one that is being addressed in cooperation with similar others. Our investigation reveals organizational actors deeply engaged in growing moral calls for political action to address climate change and underscores the need for more socially realistic models of technology adoption and behavior change.

The paper presents a simple method of valuation that can sit beside ideology of a unitary economics, which seeks a synergy between materialistic and non‐materialistic aspects of welfare. The non‐materialistic item considered here is environmental stewardship, the lack of which is widespread among neoclassical economists. This is due to the belief that technology could always offset the problems of resource scarcity. The paper uses the basic tools of neoclassical economics to illustrate that resource scarcity is a real issue and that an improved sense of environmental stewardship is warranted. This illustration involves the valuation of environmental capital from the statement of national accounts. Scarcity indicators are defined in terms of the price of environmental capital. This price, which consists of an interest rate and a cost of depreciation, is empirically estimated for Australia.

Environmental management systems (EMS) seek to make companies simultaneously more competitive and environmentally responsible. Improved environmental performance can be sought from the adaptation of techniques that emphasize reduction of waste and process/product redesign in the quest of reducing environmental impact. However, EMS lacks a framework to quantify improvements and much of the evidence of EMS's impact on financial performance is anecdotal. This lack of theoretical development has served to diminish corporate support, thus reducing the likelihood of EMS implementation due to a perceived cost disadvantage. This paper proposes, and tests, a framework to quantify EMS improvements to determine the impact of EMS strategies on financial performance. Our findings suggest that implementation of an EMS strategy does not negatively impact a firm's financial performance.

This paper offers a personal perspective on the author's experience working with issues relating to the long-term management of nuclear contaminated sites, from the programmatic to the site-specific. Long-term care is and will be far more challenging than remediation activities; thus, the dynamics of long-term care require different approaches to problem solving. The need for nonlinear thinking will challenge management that has traditionally relied on linear approaches. Integrated risk management potentially offers some powerful and flexible tools for identifying and managing uncertainties. Managing uncertainties involves not only traditional budget, schedule, cost, and worker safety issues, but also other influences that are not easily quantifiable, including regulatory, cultural, social, political, legal, and “quality” issues. Understanding and incorporating changes in social context is critical to the planning and implementation processes of long-term care; the Department of Energy (DOE) must utilize processes that have consistency over time and that involve the public throughout the process. Management in the long term must reflect an understanding of how human systems function and how they couple with technological systems. DOE's relative success with its Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Program exhibits some of these components. Many are now recognizing these components as key needs for any long-term care program for long-lived hazards.