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This study aims to understand the sustainable development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), analysing their current practices in the social, environmental and economic domain.

To fulfil this objective, an exploratory, qualitative approach was adopted, using the multiple case study methodology and focusing on eight cases (SMEs) in Portugal. Data were collected through interviews, since this technique allows proximity and interaction with decision makers and those responsible for firms’ sustainability.

From content analysis of the interviews held, the results show that SMEs are aware of and committed to sustainability and that the external context and some of its particularities have a significant impact on their sustainable development. These SMEs undertake various practices of a social, environmental and economic nature, highlighting especially environmental ones such as efficient resource consumption, using more sustainable resources, recycling waste and waste management.

This study contributes greater knowledge of the phenomenon of SMEs’ sustainable development and identifies practical examples that could increase this firm segment’s awareness of the importance of sustainable practices associated with developing their business.

In this study, new and innovative sustainability practices are presented in the SMEs. The authors can underline that this study contributes to reinforcing the theory about the topic investigated by adding knowledge about sustainable development in the SME context. It deepens knowledge in this scientific area, which can be spread in the scientific community and among SMEs.

With the increasing concern over environmental pollution and global warming, companies are required to act responsibly to mitigate these environmental issues. Their activities should adhere to the standards of environmental sustainability. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the impact of green supply chain management (GSCM) and total quality management (TQM) on environmental sustainability, with environmental management practices (EMP) as the moderating factor.

A quantitative study was adopted using the management data from various manufacturing companies in Jordan. A total of 362 responses were collected, and the proposed hypotheses were tested using a structural equation model.

The study findings revealed that both GSCM and TQM significantly and positively influenced environmental sustainability. The impact of TQM on environmental sustainability was higher than that of GSCM. Moreover, no evidence was found on the moderating role of EMP.

The study’s results highlighted to the decision-makers the main practices to expand the quality implementation across their supply chain to improve environmental sustainability. The study also demonstrated the reasons behind the insignificance of EMPs in strengthening the relationships between GSCM, TQM, and environmental sustainability.

While there are very few studies examining the relationships between GSCM and TQM on environmental sustainability. This study adds to the literature body as one of a few empirical studies that tested the integrated effect of GSCM and TQM practices within the context of the manufacturing industry in a developing country. Moreover, this study takes a holistic approach by tapping into EMP to confirm whether it moderated the relationships between GSCM, TQM, and environmental sustainability.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

This article studies the role played by sustainability operations management (OM) practices in the relationship between governance and environmental and social performance adopting the lenses of the upper echelons theory and the resource-based view. In particular, the authors study three main relationships: (1) the impact of governance on the implementation of sustainability OM practices, (2) the impact of sustainability OM practices on sustainability performance and (3) the mediating role of sustainability OM practices in the relationship between governance and sustainability performance.

To test this study’s research model, the authors retrieved secondary data of 430 firms from the United Stated (US) and Europe and analyzed it using partial least squares (PLS)-based structural equation modeling (SEM).

This study’s results suggest that sustainability OM practices are needed to achieve higher social and environmental performance outcomes from governance, highlighting the key role of the OM department in the achievement of a sustainability strategy.

This paper adopts the environmental, social, governance (ESG) neglected focus and aims to provide a better understanding of and reveal the interrelationship between governance and sustainability OM practices (i.e. environmental and social).

This study explores the relationships among sustainability implementation barriers (resource, managerial and regulatory barriers), sustainability practices (sustainable construction materials, sustainable construction design, modern construction methods and environmental provisions and reporting) and sustainability performance (environmental, economic and social) in hill road construction (HRC).

Primary data were collected from the 313 HRC practitioners with the help of a questionnaire, and research hypotheses were tested employing structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal a mixed effect of sustainability implementation barriers. Resource (managerial) barriers are negatively related to all practices except environmental provisions and reporting (sustainable construction materials), while regulatory barriers only negatively impact modern construction methods. On the other hand, all sustainability practices positively impact environmental performance, whereas economic (social) performance is positively influenced by all practices, except environmental provisions and reporting (modern construction methods), and positively affects economic performance.

In order to transform HRC toward sustainability, the barriers to sustainability implementation, sustainability practices and performance need to be understood by practitioners; however, the relationships have not previously been empirically assessed in extant literature. Besides, past research appears to be predominantly focused on the environmental aspect, thereby neglecting economic and social aspects. This study is a modest attempt to bridge these research gaps.

Wineries today are faced with the prospect of having to include environmental sustainability into their practices but implementation can be hard, complicated or even undesired. This research aims to examine firm features, specifically winery size and foreign direct investment, as potential sources of variability regarding environmental sustainability attitudes and practices.

Questionnaires were administered via telephone interviews with 63 wineries in France. Production surface and wine activities in other countries were the independent variables examined as potentially predicting environmental sustainability attitudes and practices, leading to competitive positioning and perceived firm success.

The findings clearly show that bigger wineries are more likely to practice environmental sustainability, but they do not necessarily have more positive attitudes toward environmental sustainability. For winery managers, firm size and environmental sustainability practices interact because they are perceived to lead to competitive advantages such as augmented product quality and better innovations. Larger firms are also more sensitive to micro pressures emanating from customers, competitors and distributors regarding environmental sustainability. Finally, wineries engaging in foreign direct investments have more positive attitudes toward and engage in more environmental sustainability practices than firms that remain domestic.

Rather than comparing firms that are environmentally sustainable versus firms that are not, this research examined actual firm characteristics that may influence management’s propensity to engage in environmental sustainability practices. This research provides explanations for why there are augmented environmental sustainability practices by larger wineries and the sources of subjective norms encouraging larger wineries, versus smaller wineries, to practice environmental sustainability.

This study aims to examine the relationship between environmental commitment and environmental sustainability practices of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Uganda.

This study employed a cross-sectional and correlational design using evidence from 106 manufacturing SMEs in Uganda. Data was analyzed through Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 23.

Results show that environmental commitment is a significant predictor of environmental sustainability practices and its dimensions which comprise of eco-friendly packaging, energy efficiency, waste management and water conservation of the manufacturing SMEs in Uganda.

This study offers initial evidence on the association between environmental commitment and environmental sustainability practices using evidence from a developing country’s perspective. The results also provide new insights on the relationship between environmental commitment and the dimensions of environmental sustainability practices which comprise of eco-friendly packaging, energy efficiency, waste management and water conservation.

Archivists are charged with the preservation of their collections by reducing deterioration because of temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pollutants and other factors. The methods archivists use to preserve their collections may have a negative impact on the environment. This paper aims to identify factors for building environmentally sustainable archives to help guide archival environmental sustainability practices.

This paper identifies factors through a literature review, and conducts a content analysis of the websites of seven national/state archives. The analysis focuses on the policy statements of these archives.

The authors found that the literature lists 31 factors under 7 categories: electricity, facilities, water, exhibitions, pollution, collection practices and education and outreach. The content analysis of the policy documents or statements demonstrated that archives applied and addressed mostly “resource-related” efforts to protect the environment, such as factors related to electricity, facilities, water and pollution. However, factors related to “work-related” efforts, such as exhibitions, collection practices and education and outreach, were ignored.

This study can provide insights to archivists on current implementation and help to guide their further environmental sustainability practices.

Little is known regarding archivists’ implementation of environmentally sustainable practices. This study focuses on identifying factors for environmental sustainability of archives addressed by literature and existing archives, trying to find the gap between literature and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the sustainability reporting practices of oil and gas (O & G) companies and the integration of sustainability in the management of their supply chain.

A content analysis of sustainability report of 30 companies was conducted based on the Pacific Sustainability Index that contains 21 topics on social and environmental reporting. An analysis was also conducted on supply chain management (SCM) topics related to supplier management, product stewardship and logistics management.

There is inconsistency in the sustainability reporting practices among the O & G companies studied. While 63 percent of the companies expressed higher environmental intent compared to social intent, their reporting of environmental performance is lagging behind social performance reporting. There is also a lack of supply chain indicators in the sustainability reporting guidelines. This affects the companies ability to report their supply chain practices objectively.

The findings of this study can be used as a guideline to improve the sustainability reporting practices and to identify relevant supply chain indicators that can be incorporated in a sustainability reporting index.

There is a lack of research on sustainability reporting practices in the O & G industry context, especially in terms of SCM. Previous studies focussed on companies in specific countries and/or do not incorporate all sustainability dimensions, namely, economic, environmental and social factor. We think that this is the first comprehensive study on the sustainability reporting practices and the integration of sustainability in SCM in the O & G industry.

Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) is a relatively new sub-field of supply chain management (SCM). The performance of SSCM is based on the triple bottom line approach encompassing people-planet-profit, hence being defined not in only in social and environmental terms, but also the economic. The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated study which uses antecedent-practices-performance principles in order to determine the drivers of SSCM practices, and the impact of these practices on sustainable supply chain performance. The importance of the study lies in the fact that the Indian Government is making significant efforts to boost the manufacturing sector, and sustainability is among the significant imperatives for Indian manufacturing to be competitive globally.

A conceptual model based on the antecedents-practices-performance principles was developed, and included six constructs identified from the literature: the drivers being the motivators of sustainability, lean management (LM) and supply management (SM), the practices were the environmental and social practices in the supply chain and, finally, the sustainable supply chain performance; eight hypotheses were conceived in the model development process. The survey instrument was conceptualised from an in-depth study of literature and was employed to conduct a survey of 211 operations and supply chain managers and functional heads from the Indian manufacturing industry. The scales were validated by employing the confirmatory factor analysis, followed by structural equation modelling to develop the structural relationships between the constructs using Amos 20.0.

The results of the SEM suggest that the antecedents, i.e. motivators, LM and SM, have a significant bearing on environmental and social practices in the SCM; these practices, in turn, also have a positive relationship with SSCM performance (except the relationship between LM and social practices in SCM) with acceptable goodness-of-fit measures. Thus out of the eight hypotheses, seven can be said to statistically significant.

In addition to the motivators of sustainability, the study based on extant literature has considered LM and SM among the drivers of sustainability in SCM. The study has also identified that in earlier studies, the focus has been on environmental practices, and this integrated study has also included social practices in the supply chain.

This study suggests that sustainability performance may also be realised through lean and SM principles; an integrated perspective has been adopted with the consideration of both environmental and social practices. Further, the proposed model represents a novel integration of literature from diverse domains such as environmental management, business ethics and corporate social responsibility as well as performance management.