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This final chapter moves from a firm-level perspective to a more general level to connect individual organisational decisions on corporate sustainability to current and future societal and environmental challenges. The chapter starts by illustrating greenhushing, seen as a deceptive strategic silence that occurs when companies voluntarily decrease their communication on sustainability issues. The emergence of novel forms of greenwashing stresses the need to integrate the principles of sustainability in their corporate strategies in an authentic way, and to activate a virtuous circuit of sustainability sensegiving-sensemaking, in which the company can recognise the contribution of stakeholders in decision-making. The discussion then addresses some unresolved tensions in sustainability communication approaches that cause ‘deep-rooted’ greenwashing, thus paving the way for a systemic approach to the phenomenon. The chapter thus presents some speculative sketches that illustrate the social, organisational and environmental costs and benefits of an authentic approach to corporate sustainability. The discussion emphasises the need to establish a shared sustainability culture at different systems' levels and within organisations to avoid environmental and social damaging practices and widen corporate objectives to initiate long-lasting changes. Policy and decision-makers may appreciate this effort to identify responsibilities for each component and priority areas for action.

The purpose of this study posited that tourism companies and more especially hotels located in tourist destinations dependent on air transportation, need to commit more strongly to sustainability because of their greater distance from the main outbound markets. The research focused on determining whether hotels’ star rating, location, age and size influence their sustainability communication and on identifying the characteristics of the messages used in hotels’ sustainability communication.

To accomplish these objectives, a sequential mixed methods design with three interconnected phases was used, including quantitative data and content analysis.

Less than 10% of hotels located in a tourist destination strongly dependent on air transportation and peripheral to the main outbound markets actually communicate about sustainable practices on their websites. Communication practices are dependent on hotels’ star rating, location, size and age.

The study limitations are that it was conducted in only one destination and that the hotel websites’ layouts are heterogeneous, which means that the analysis and comparison of the relevant information is extremely challenging. In addition, the research only considered hotels or similar lodgings, leaving out other types of accommodation.

Hotels in tourist destinations dependent on air transportation need to adjust their sustainability communication in response to the trend among tourists toward greater consciousness about the environmental impacts of their individual tourism-related choices. Hotels also need to provide more accurate and detailed information on sustainable practices, with both affective and rational appeals that focus on tourists’ experiences.

The study was conducted in a destination dependent on air transportation and peripheral to the primary outbound markets.

Designing and developing responsible business practices can create various tensions for service organizations. The purpose of this research is to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between customer engagement (CE) and responsible business practices (e.g. environmental, social and/or governance [ESG], corporate social responsibility [CSR] and diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI]) and explore customer engagement tensions that service organizations may face.

This research develops a list of CE-related responsible business practice tensions and empirically explores their relevance through in-depth interviews with nine ESG professionals.

This paper makes three important contributions. First, we find support for nine distinct but related tensions with implications for CE that organizations must navigate when pursuing responsible business practices. Second, interview participants provide some suggestions for tackling these tensions, which we support with relevant theories. Finally, we develop a conceptual framework that may stimulate future service research and inform the implementation of ESG strategies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to conceptualize and empirically explore the tensions that emerge between responsible business practices and CE. The authors develop a novel analysis of the CE-related tensions that emerge when pursuing an ESG strategy.

The findings are based on a small sample of ESG professionals. Future research may take a quantitative approach to further evaluate the role that these tensions play in engaging customers.

This research provides a conceptual framework that may guide ESG professionals in understanding, framing and navigating CE-related tensions when pursuing responsible business practices.

A social benefit may be found when service organizations are better able to successfully navigate CE-related tensions when pursuing responsible business practices.

This paper aims at providing an overview and synthesis of the existing body of knowledge about greenwashing. Special attention is paid to the articles directly linked with agriculture, food industry and food retail.

A bibliometric analysis was performed over 351 documents extracted from the WoS database, using SciMAT and VOSviewer software programs.

Three periods in the academic literature about greenwashing can be distinguished: ground-setting (2003–2010), trail-blazing (2011–2015) and remarkable growth (2016–2020). Along this evolution, a body of knowledge which stemmed from the literature about CSR has achieved a major development, deploying different research lines such as stakeholders' management, marketing and communication and audit. A specific analysis of the academic literature about greenwashing in agriculture, food industry and food retail has been carried out, showing a need for further development.

The development of scientific knowledge about greenwashing puts this social claim on the spotlight of business management studies, helping to fight greenwashing and, this way, to reduce the environmental impact of corporate activities. Studying greenwashing will help to reduce its frequency and, therefore, heal the planet.

Some previous studies have provided systematic reviews of the literature using different approaches, but they did not untangle the intellectual structure and the evolution of the body of research about greenwashing. This article originally provides a thorough analysis of these aspects, as well as a closer look at the impact of greenwashing practices in the academic literature regarding agriculture, food industry and food retail.

Previous studies support the notion that corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives can have a positive effect on customers in the hospitality and tourism industry. However, most of these studies have ignored response biases and none have incorporated them into their analyses numerically. This study aims at closing this research gap.

The authors utilized a hybrid choice model to test for the hypothesized effects of social desirability (SD) and cynicism biases on reported purchase intention. The authors further compared the results with those of analyses that ignore these biases to demonstrate their distorting influence.

The results indicate that SD and cynicism biases have a moderating effect on reported purchase intention. Older generations and frequent travelers seem particularly prone to bias, and the biases have a distorting effect on the overall survey results.

Traditional analyses that exclude biases, incorrectly, suggest several aspects of CSR that are significant (or insignificant) to purchase intention, provide unreliable results. The authors did not generalize bias-prone respondent segments but urge future research to investigate this.

Hotel managers aspiring to gain competitive advantage through CSR investment must consider biases in their market research. Otherwise, they risk developing CSR initiatives that do not instigate positive customer behaviors, leading to the failure of the investment.

The authors quantified SD and cynicism as significant causes of response bias, which distorts survey results. Previous studies have conceptualized SD without quantifying its impact, while cynicism has been identified as a novel source of bias in the industry. This study further introduces hybrid choice modeling as a novel approach to address response bias that could extend itself beyond the industry studied here.

The deeper understanding of the disclosure of external and internal dynamics of family firms necessarily places the issue of sustainability as one of the most pressing needs from both a research and managerial perspective. Therefore, this perspective article contributes to the debate of sustainability performance disclosure in family firms, proposing a research agenda.

This study has organized the discussion around those elements that most significantly impact the propensity to disclose, with a specific focus on the interconnections and interrelations within them. The proposed research agenda is developed around three key elements: “how” firms disclose, “the reason why” they do it and “what” disclose of their performance(s).

To better understand “how” family firms should disclose their performance, it is suggested to engage in proactive stakeholder engagement to preserve long-term socioemotional wealth. “The reason why” for disclosure is still associated with the legitimization of family firms from an economic, social and environmental point of view. Finally, the “what” depends on several factors, such as the regulatory framework and the market involved.

This paper contains suggestions for family firm managers, consultants and policymakers that are approaching corporate social responsibility (CSR) and non-financial reporting or sustainability disclosure overall, providing an overview of relevant factors influencing this transition process.

This paper suggests a logical framework to combine these three elements of the debate as strictly interrelated to foster the sustainability performance disclosure of family firms.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether volunteer tourism organisations are prepared to learn from feedback on the quality of their responsibility communications, and consider whether analysis and communication of results can influence market improvement.

A purposive sample of five influential website pages of eight volunteer tourism organisations are scored across 19 responsible voluntourism criteria, and compared against the results of two years previously.

The authors report mixed results on how communicating results has encouraged change and industry improvement in responsibility, based on previous research that showed responsibility to be communicated inconsistently at best, potentially greenwashing at worst, across organisations, product types and responsible values.

The paper applies sustainability marketing literature to explain the changes in responsibility communication performance using an innovative tool to benchmark and audit responsibility in online marketing content and providing insight into how best practice marketing necessitates responsible operations. This paper considers whether and how, when presented with evidence, organisations choose to improve for a more responsible voluntourism offer.

The paper is original in providing a practical, industry-informed analysis of the reasons why volunteer operators communicate in the way they do, and the ability to influence their communications to be more reliable, in the context of increased criticism for shallow volunteering. This experiment allows industry associations and lobby groups to influence industry practice based on the evidence that improved communications are possible when specific, tailored advice is provided.