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This study aims to assess the awareness and knowledge level of procurement officers (POs) in Ghanaian tertiary educational institutions regarding sustainability in general and specifically on environmental sustainability in the Public Procurement Act 2003 (Act 663) as amended.

Through purposive sampling technique and face-to-face interviews using semi-structured open-ended questions, qualitative data was collected from 19 POs who are well vested in the procurement profession and willingly agreed to partake in the research. The qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis technique to help organize and elicit meaning from the data collected and to draw realistic conclusions from it.

The results showed that most POs were aware of the Public Procurement Act 2003 (Act 663) as amended, primarily through seminars and workshops organized by the Public Procurement Authority. The interviewees demonstrated a good understanding of sustainable procurement, considering its social, environmental and economic aspects. However, one respondent primarily associated sustainability with only environmental issues. The POs were, however, of the view that the Amended Act 914 (2016) does not give detailed highlights on environmental sustainability, making implementation very difficult, especially regarding the procurement of goods. Overall, the findings indicate a positive level of environmental sustainability awareness and knowledge among the interviewed POs regarding the Public Procurement Act 2003 (Act 663) as amended.

The findings from the study could be used by policymakers to strategize educational campaigns by using the POs’ knowledge and awareness to the implementers of Act 663 (2003) as amended to effectively ensure environmental sustainability in procurement practices. The findings from the study have also contributed to the literature on procurement policy by drawing the attention of policy formulators to give equal attention to all the sustainability pillars, i.e. social, economic and environmental. This would consequently help the implementers to contribute to achieving sustainable development.

This study is one of the few empirical qualitative types of research seeking the views of POs in tertiary educational institutions in Ghana on sustainability and environmental sustainability as enshrined in the Public Procurement Act 2003 (Act 663) as amended. The findings give positive feedback to policymakers on the knowledge and awareness level of the POs on environmental sustainability and highlight the importance of awareness programmes and educational initiatives by the Public Procurement Authority and other stakeholders to ensure compliance with the Act.

This paper aims to identify, using a literature review and expert panel input, what impedes organizations from implementing sustainable procurement, particularly in an emerging economy context.

The extant literature review was carried out to explore and identify the barriers to sustainable procurement. Using interpretive structural modeling (ISM), the authors established a contextual relationship among the 22 identified barriers. These barriers are then classified into different categories, using the matrice d’impacts cross-multiplication appliqúe an classment (MICMAC) technique, based on their driving and dependence power.

The findings improve our understanding of the critical barriers and their direct and indirect effect on each other in obstructing sustainable procurement practices. The study is the first of its kind in identifying the barriers to sustainable procurement and developing a hierarchical relationship among barriers using an integrated ISM–MICMAC methodology based on data from an emerging economy (Pakistan). With a focus on sustainable practices, this study also responds to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The results of the hierarchical model help understand which barriers are the most crucial to be fixed immediately (i.e. absence of environmental laws and lack of consumer pressure) and how different barriers could influence each other, specifically in emerging economies. The practitioners can use the findings to make more informed decisions to mitigate the crucial barriers that could impede their goals of sustainable procurement.

The study is the first of its kind to identify the barriers to sustainable procurement and develop a contextual relation and hierarchical framework in the Pakistani context.

Due to the environmental concerns in our society, governments are moving towards green purchasing. However, public sector organizations have substantial internal problems. By using a theory of natural resource-based view, this study aimed to analyse the influence of leadership styles and innovation capabilities on green purchasing in the public sector organizations of a developing economy.

Data was collected from 199 purchasing professionals of public sector organizations, and hypotheses were tested through a quantitative method using partial least square-structural equation modelling with the help of SmartPLS version 4 to validate the measurement model.

This study identified that transformational leadership and delegation style of leadership have a significant and positive effect on innovation capability and green purchasing. Similarly, innovation capability mediates the relationship between leadership styles and green purchasing. However, transformational leadership found a more substantial effect on innovation capability and green purchasing than the delegation leadership style.

Results provide insight into the role of leadership styles in green purchasing and innovation capabilities in public sector organizations. Thus, addressing the important issues of how leadership styles and innovative capabilities (IC) can improve green culture, specifically green purchasing, to enhance ecological sustainability.

Results provide insight into the role of leadership styles in green purchasing and innovation capabilities in public sector organizations. Thus, it addresses how leadership styles and IC can improve green culture, specifically green purchasing, to enhance ecological sustainability.

The objectives of this study are twofold. Firstly, this study aims to examine the challenges of green public procurement (GPP) involvement among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) government suppliers. Secondly, it investigates the differences in the perceived challenges between the small- and medium-sized groups of companies.

The study draws on the quantitative method. The questionnaire was distributed to SMEs that supply green goods or services to the government and which are listed in the MyHijau directory. Using convenience sampling, a total of 394 questionnaires were distributed and 126 usable questionnaires were received, representing a response rate of 31.98%. A descriptive analysis of the mean score, standard deviation and mean score ranking was used to analyse the overall results. The t-test analysis was carried out to examine the differences between the small- and medium-sized groups of companies.

All five categories of the barriers, i.e. financial, legal, people, knowledge and organizational challenges, are perceived as the important challenges for SMEs’ involvement in GPP. Of the five categories, “having lack of knowledgeable staff on GPP” under the category of “people” challenge is ranked as the most major barrier. In relation to the differences between the two groups of enterprises (small- and medium-sized), medium enterprises are more affected by two items under the “organization” challenge, i.e. “The company has not targeted suppliers that promote environmentally-friendly products/services” and “The company has not established a clear objective on purchase of green products and services”, as compared to the small-sized enterprises through their GPP involvement.

By understanding the difficulties faced by SMEs in engaging with GPP, various practical measures can be formulated to support the SME businesses in mitigating the challenges faced for their involvement with GPP, which subsequently will lead to the country’s target to reach the sustainable development goals.

This study extends empirical evidence on barriers or challenges that may hinder the involvement in government green procurement, with a specific focus on SME government suppliers.

This paper aims to analyze regulation regarding sustainable construction procurement in Southeast Asia and provide a reconstruction of regulation regarding the sustainable construction procurement to prevent land degradation.

This was done through legal research methods, mainly historical and systematical interpretation. The approaches used in this paper are the conceptual approach, statute approach and comparative approach.

By analyzing the related legal norms, it can be understood that many nations in Southeast Asia do not have regulation regarding sustainable construction procurement. Between Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, only Indonesia has a ministrial regulation that provides general norms regarding sustainable construction procurement. Regarding the reconstruction of regulation, the bare minimum standards consist of principle, indicators, pillar, the phases of the procurement, law enforcement, both preventive and repressive, and sustainable procurement committee.

This research is limited to regulation in Southeast Asian region. By analyzing the regulation, this paper will provide a reconstruction of regulations regarding sustainable construction procurement that will act as an ground rules. Having the same ground rules will create synergies between countries in Southeast Asia to apply the principles of sustainable procurement and move together toward to prevent land degradation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first systematic legal research that compares regulations from three nations in Southeast Asia regarding sustainable construction procurement and also the first paper to provide reconstruction of regulation regarding sustainable construction procurement to prevent land degradation.

The aim of the study has been performed to investigate the relationship between sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices and the cost performance of manufacturing firms in Bangladesh. Moreover, this paper highlights the key environment-friendly approaches and their association with financial performance in Bangladesh.

The paper empirically assesses sustainable supply chain performance using four major supply chain practices, including sustainable procurement, sustainable production, sustainable distribution and investment recovery, and compares it with the cost performance. Twenty-four variables were identified through different literature and distributed as a structured questionnaire among the managers appointed in different manufacturing firms in Bangladesh. An empirical study was conducted using the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The results find a positive relationship in two variables of sustainable supply chain practices, including sustainable procurement and investment recovery, while sustainable distribution negatively impacted cost performance. In addition, sustainable production found no effect on cost performance.

The paper emphasizes the financial perspective of a sustainable supply chain without explicit consideration of sustainability's environmental and social dimensions.

This study has implications for the literature on the SSCM approaches of manufacturing firms in the least developed economies. In addition, this study could work as a guideline for some manufacturing industries that prefer a policy or standard to alter their traditional supply chain management system to a sustainable supply chain.

The paper provides a comprehensive framework for evaluating the coordinated effect of SSCM practices on cost performance where variables of four specific activities of SSCM and cost performance are adopted from different studies. Further studies could be initiated, including some other eco-friendly supply chain variables, and the effect could be evaluated from an environmental perspective.

The study attempts to explore the effectiveness of green supply chain strategies (GSCS) and sustainable practices (SP) in achieving a circular supply chain (CSC) within a business-to-business (B2B) context. The study further investigates the moderating role of green innovation (GIN) on the relationship between GSCS and SP.

The conceptual model was developed by adopting constructs from the existing studies. A self-administered tool was created, and data were gathered from supply chain (SC) specialists in the food, energy, tire, textile and paper industries. The structural equation model was employed to test the hypothesis, analyzing 243 responses obtained.

The findings indicate an affirmative association between GSCS, SP and the achievement of CSC, with SP acting as a partial mediator between GSCS and CSC. Results show that GSCS and SP are crucial for transitioning toward a circular model in the SC, emphasizing resource regeneration and sustainability. The data from our sample suggest that GIN significantly moderates the relationship between GSCS and CSC. These insights underline the importance of green strategies and sustainable practices (SP) in fostering CSCs in a B2B setting. The study’s implications are significant for SC management, suggesting that firms must integrate green and SP to achieve circularity and long-term viability.

This article brings forward a distinctive perspective on sustainability within the field of SC management emphasizing the crucial need for implementing CSC and GSCS in a B2B context.

The survival of hotel business in maintaining market competitiveness depends on the constant improvement of the quality of hotel facilities and services. The key to sustain hotel business is lean on the adaptability of the hotel management team towards current lifestyle trends and its surrounding context in fulfilling customer satisfaction. Because of hotel operating service complexity, the hotel contributes a higher impact on environmental degradation in performing their daily activities. Therefore, hoteliers need to determine sustainable strategies to minimize environmental impact and at the same time be able to provide satisfaction to their customers. However, green initiatives require a proactive action by the organizational management engaging both employees and guests in the environmental management process. Thus, this paper aims to review the concept of green practices, the implementation of green practices from the stakeholders’ perspectives (manager, employee and customers) in the hotel industry, the performance impact from the green practices on the sustainability pillars and to further develop a conceptual green practice to sustainable hotel operations and performance impact.

This paper identified relevant empirical research that published in the recent 10 years from January 2012 to December 2021. The articles are searched through reputable databases such as Emerald, Elsevier and Taylor and Francis. The obtained data were screened preliminarily from 108 research papers. The post-screening process has finalized a total of 57 articles as the findings for this paper, where the themes were delineated to the attributes that need to implemented by the stakeholder in hotels industry, that is, manager’s perspectives, employee’s perspectives and customer’s perspectives.

The findings of this paper revealed that there are 27 attributes of green practices and initiatives for sustainable hotel operations from the manager perspectives (10 attributes – Green Marketing Strategy, Green Managerial Attitude, Eco-Innovation Investment, Marketing and Sustainability, Environmental Management Strategy, Green Supply Chain, Green Managerial Awareness, Green Procurement, Green Human Resources and Green Technology), employee perspectives (5 attributes – Employee Green Awareness, Employee Green Training and Educating, Employee Environmental Behaviour, Employee Green Performance and Employee Green Reward) and customer’s perspectives (12 attributes – Customer Perception, Customer Loyalty, Customer Awareness, Customer Behaviour, Customer Trust, Green Supply Chain, Green Value, Green Marketing Strategy, Customer Perceived Value, Service Quality, Brand Image and Hotel Design). All of the attributes are aligned to the performance effectiveness as the major concern in the hotel’s operations and impacted towards the sustainability pillars, environmental performance, economic performance and social performance. Sustainable practice in organization benefits the owners towards sustainable economic, environmental, socio-cultural and legal policy.

This review paper provides key elements of current green practices and sustainable initiatives for the hotel’s operations, as proactive measures. The novelty of the findings is to be able to convey valuable inputs to the relevant stakeholders (hotel’s owner, consultants, designers, maintenance officers, hoteliers, staffs, customers and end-users) in perceiving the elements of green practices into the preliminary planning of the hotel’s design. The review also helps to identify practices and measures to the performance impact to the hotel’s operations.

This study seeks to examine motivations, challenges and strategies implemented to sustain environmentally friendly practices in Macau hotels and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on such practices.

Executives in sustainability departments of hotels in Macau were purposefully targeted for the in-depth interviews. Ten executives were interviewed either face-to-face or via video call.

The findings revealed that hotels in Macau implement sustainable practices. The main motivation for their implementation was the need to protect the environment, compliance and business-driven reasons. The major challenge involved the implementation costs. The pandemic had a limited impact on the implementation of these practices.

The study recommends that the Macau government should establish clear environmental policies and regulations for hotels with guidelines and support systems. Hotels can also benchmark their performance and collaborate on sustainable practices, develop innovative financing mechanisms and cost-efficient waste recycling practices, organize customer education and engagement programs to promote environmentally friendly practices and incorporate crisis management and resilience strategies into environmental strategies.

The current study denotes that the “sustainable development” concept is crucial in Macau because the largely gaming-driven hospitality industry has been developed over the last decade, significantly impacting environmental degradation. This study examined how hotels respond to these environmental challenges and how their responses can be sustained in the long term. The authors suggest the environmental practice indicators that can be helpful for the hospitality industries in Macau. Social and economic implications are discussed based on the findings.

The purpose of this study is to get a clearer knowledge of the reasons for, approaches to and challenges associated with integrating sustainable development concerns into pipeline construction projects in New Zealand. To achieve this, this study delves deeply into sustainable construction to understand the reasons behind and incorporate sustainable development trials into their newly established product management and development procedure. As a result, this study looks at identifying key elements of sustainable construction practices and various interpretations of sustainability in the construction industry; offering a strategy for incorporating sustainable construction practices into the pipeline construction project in New Zealand; and benefits and difficulties that the construction industry encounters when implementing sustainable construction. Finally, a framework is developed to help in understanding the issues and potential solutions for integrating sustainable building methods into the pipeline construction project in New Zealand.

This study followed a four-step method (Figure 1), beginning with the identification of the data, continuing with the first screening of the data, determining eligibility and, finally, including the data. This data collection is being done to provide knowledge and direction for further research. Data were collected from various websites on the Web of Science and from Scopus databases. Additionally, data were gathered with the assistance of aggregator databases such as Scopus (scopus.com) and publishing databases such as Elsevier (sciencedirect.com), Inderscience, Taylor and Francis (tandfonline.com), Emerald Insight (emeraldinsight.com) and Google Scholar. These databases have been considered by a number of scholars to be reputable databases.

This research provided a thorough description of the key justifications for sustainable construction. This study demonstrated how the idea worked in practice by reviewing the literature on the relevance and analysis of sustainability in construction. This body of research identified crucial components of sustainable construction techniques and varied interpretations of sustainability in the construction industry. To better grasp the current application considerations in the construction sector, it also offered literature on sustainable construction methods. To determine the most effective strategy to make certain adjustments to the current construction processes, the literature also includes a wide range of sustainability-related topics in both developed and developing country contexts. This study also demonstrated the many perspectives and strategies for sustainable behaviors. Because the purpose of this study was to develop a strategy for implementing sustainable construction in New Zealand, it was of the utmost importance to shed light on the most well-known and prominent sustainable construction applications from across the world. The output of this aim provided the literature on construction practices to acquire insight into the ongoing conversations on sustainable practices and systems in the construction industry. This was done to obtain insight into the existing talks.

This research's contribution to the body of knowledge is demonstrated by the fact that this study has led to a better understanding of sustainable construction practices in the construction industry as well as the identification of the most significant challenges that businesses, organizations, educators and policymakers must face to improve their ability to put these strategies into practice. This research has provided a solid foundation for future research that aims to advance knowledge in this field by providing options for future research to evaluate the influence that the approach has had on enhancing the implementation of sustainable construction. Additionally, this study presents options for future research to evaluate the influence the approach has had on improving the implementation of sustainable construction. The successful completion of the research aim in the more traditional forms of higher education in the built environment can contribute to a better representation of new trends in the practice area associated with expanding and improving the construction industry sustainably.