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Purpose – This chapter explores the use of evolutionary and institutionalization models to understand the progression of sustainability in organizations and their contribution to sustainable effectiveness. It describes the evolution of Gap, Inc.'s sustainability approach, its increasingly central role in the organization's strategy and design, and the methods it is using to institutionalize this critical change.

Design – The chapter describes alternative models of sustainability evolution and change institutionalization, and then applies the concepts in those models to understand Gap, Inc.'s sustainability journey.

Findings – The models of sustainability evolution and change institutionalization provide different but complimentary views on the extent to which sustainability is embedded in Gap, Inc.'s organization. These models can be a useful tool for assessing progress and recommending actions to increase the institutionalization of sustainability strategies and initiatives.

Originality and value – The findings of this chapter will help senior executives with responsibility for sustainability implementation. In addition to providing indicators for assessment of progress, findings of sustainability's institutionalization should prove helpful in predicting achievement of sustainable effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the strategic role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in global fast fashion companies.

Drawing on the management literature on CSR, corporate social performance and the benefits of a socially responsible behaviour, a conceptual framework of corporate responsibility management is presented. The Gap Inc. case is analyzed to prove how CSR commitment creates stakeholder partnerships and improves corporate brand image.

The main output of corporate responsibility management is solid stakeholder relationships resulting in: employee attraction and motivation, powerful brand, enhanced consumer perceptions, profitability. Through the corporate responsibility management process, fast fashion companies can obtain a sustainable development.

Existing CSR research is primarily focused on a specific level of analysis. Instead the corporate responsibility management framework aims to contribute to a comprehensive analysis of CSR. Moreover it addresses the role of CSR practices in the fast fashion sector which has been rarely investigated to date.

The case study outlines the strategic, marketing, and branding challenges faced by Gap, a brand within the Gap Inc. house of brands. The case contains a summary of Gap's history, which illustrates the driving forces behind Gap's previous growth, its status as an American iconic brand, and its struggle to stay relevant. This sets the stage for Gap's rebranding exercise, which included an attempt at changing their iconic logo. This case provides students with the opportunity to learn about brand life cycles and the implications of a logo change for brand equity, brand associations, and brand positioning.

This research is based on published sources.

The case can be used in courses in strategic brand management, retailing, fashion marketing, marketing communication, or corporate communication at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level. The case will be particularly useful for those who already understand branding and consumer behavior, but who may not have learned anything about rebranding or strategic brand management. It is not suitable for undergraduates who have not studied branding at all.

The aim of this paper is to investigate competitive pricing strategies of apparel brands and retailers.

The paper begins with a broad discussion of competition by examining Porter's five forces model, and narrows by examining price competition within price tiers in the retail apparel industry according to store format and brands. Included are case studies of apparel retailers and brands incorporating concepts of pricing strategies, brand positioning, and price competition, with a focus on retail channel relationships. The paper analyzes the impact of price competition on apparel retailers and brands, and further examines price tiers as a competitive strategy.

The study reveals that the concept of price tiers is applicable to apparel retailers and brands. Price tiering is a vehicle for market positioning for the retail apparel industry. Retailers are enacting a price tier strategy by branding their retail store formats or engaging store brands as a vehicle of differentiation for a tier. Retailers and brands can be successful with a price tier strategy, unless they fail to differentiate between tiers on factors other than on price alone.

The lack of relevant price competition literature, relating to the retailer apparel industry, forced the exploration of price competition literature from grocery and automotive sectors.

The paper provides useful information on the impact of price competition on apparel retailers and brands, and also price tiers as a competitive strategy.

Globalization and its impacts on economies, societies and cultures has been a hot topic of research and discussion in the past few years. Recent times are witnessing the upsurge of another doctrine in the international arena – the practice of isolationism, a policy majorly related to political affairs but extendable to business, sustainability, green behaviour and various other spheres.

Globalization has resulted in various kinds of disordering and reordering of business objectives and practices. Modern day consumers have new needs and lifestyle orientations. The flip side is that increased global operations have precipitated newer challenges for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). But for managing globalization, isolationism is not the answer (Altman, 2007). Isolationism cannot be expected to have reciprocative effects of globalization. In fact, it may be in dispute with interests of many social stakeholders.

Responsible businesses have reoriented their CSR initiatives towards environmental and social stewardship. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the more recent strategic tools that provide a more focussed mandate to address sustainability issues emerging from increased production, consumption and disposal. In the times of vulnerabilities and disruption, there is an increasing emphasis on developing CSR as a horizontal enabler of SDGs.

Fashion & textile industry is the second most polluting industry globally. Fast fashion is having catastrophic impacts on the environment. Due to the massive size and magnitude of the global fashion & textile industry (USD 920 billion in 2018 and projected to grow to USD 1,230 billion by 2024), it becomes important to examine dimensions of CSR, in reference to SDGs in this sector. The fashion & textile industry is one of the most globally integrated. Sourcing, production, supply chain management, market development and retailing are all dependent on integration and collaboration amongst various business entities and regulatory bodies across national boundaries. Isolationism may result in disorientations in the enabling environments of this industry.

As sustainability is going to be the most important directive in coming future, the study aims to examine the cohesiveness between the current CSR initiatives of the fashion & textile sector and the prescribed SDGs. The study will further investigate if the instantaneous momentum of isolationism could cultivate multifaceted challenges for the horizontal integration of CSR in SDGs; and if yes, what will be the nature of these challenges?

Significant investment dollars are now allocated to companies deemed by investors as socially responsible. This socially responsible theme contends that corporations should be held accountable for the totality of their actions and decisions, including CEO compensation levels. This paper investigates whether CEO compensation levels are more associated with traditional performance measures for socially responsible firms than for firms deemed not socially responsible, with the assumption being that social choice firms will be more sensitive to and may attempt to align CEO compensation levels with corporate performance. Rank correlation analysis and regression results using nine performance variables for 270 firms indicated that CEO compensation levels at social choice companies were more highly associated with performance variables than those at nonsocial companies. The study results suggest that social choice companies, in addition to their other corporate good deeds, seem to include CEO compensation levels as a part of their overall corporate decision process.

The chapters in this first volume of the book series “Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness” captured a rich set of cases in which sustainable effectiveness was the central focus. Each chapter illuminated the development of a distinct sustainable system, and had a special focus on reporting theoretically informed and rigorously explored knowledge to guide purposeful design and learning approaches. Collectively the chapters highlighted the processes, organization and design, system regulation, and continuous learning approaches in complex organizational and multiorganizational systems that enabled simultaneous focus on and advancing of economic, social, and ecological outcomes. In this concluding chapter, we capture, via a comparative investigation, some of the learning from the cases about the development of new capabilities, design orientations, and learning mechanisms, and we chart directions for further research and managerial actions.

Although corporate executives would claim that they are constantly bombarded by changes that affect their businesses, in reality there are very few macro‐changes that have significant impact on corporations. However, if the CEO fails to recognize these macro‐trends, it could mean corporate death. On the other hand, the CEO that does detect a macro‐change early in its evolution and constructs a strategy to capitalize on it can reap substantial rewards.