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Modern renewable energy is crucial for environmental conservation, sustainable economic growth and energy security, especially in developing East African nations that heavily use traditional biomass. Thus, this study aims to examine urbanization and modern renewable energy consumption (MREC) in East African community (EAC) while controlling for gross domestic product (GDP), population growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), industrialization and trade openness (TOP).

This study considers a balanced panel of five EAC countries from 1996 to 2019. Long-run dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares estimations were used to ascertain the relationships while the vector error-correction model was used to ascertain the causal relationship.

Results show that urbanization, FDI, industrialization and TOP positively affect MREC. Whereas population growth and GDP reduce MREC, the effect for GDP is not that significant. The study also found a bidirectional causality between urbanization, FDI, TOP and MREC in the long run.

Investing in modern renewable energy facilities should be a top priority, particularly in cities with expanding populations. The governments of the EAC should endeavor to make MREC affordable among the urban population by creating income-generating activities in the urban centers and sensitizing the urban population to the benefits of using MREC. Also, the government may come up with policies that enhance the establishment of lower prices for modern renewable energy commodities so as to increase their affordability.

MREC is a new concept in the energy consumption literature. Much of the research focuses on renewable energy consumption including the use of traditional biomass which contributes to climate change negatively. Besides, the influence of factors such as urbanization has not been given significant attention. Yet urbanization is identified as a catalyst for MREC.

This study aims to find out the role of green curriculum (GC) in making a green generation (GG) and ensuring sustainability. The study considers the green curriculum a key factor for understanding environmental values orientation (EVO) and adopting pro-environmental behaviors (Pr-EnB) for social, economic, human and environmental sustainability.

The study is quantitative and cross-sectional. Partial least square-structural equation modeling was used to test the research model and data which was collected through a questionnaire survey from university faculty and students in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China.

The findings show that the GC has significant positive effects on EVO and pro-environmental behavior. However, it has no significant effect on social sustainability. There is a positive significant effect of pro-environmental behavior on economic, environmental, human and social sustainability. Whereas, environmental orientation has no significant effect on economic sustainability but significantly influences environmental, human and social sustainability. GC has no significant effect on economic, environmental and human sustainability. However, when considering the combined effects of GC and environmental values orientation or pro-environmental behavior, significant positive effects were found on economic, environmental, human and social sustainability.

The result suggests that implementing a GC positively influences environmental orientation, pro-environmental behavior and various dimensions of sustainability.

These results have implications for educational institutions and policymakers aiming to promote sustainability through green curriculum and help in the attainment of sustainable development goals.

The study fulfills an essential need to obtain sustainability and sustainable development goals through education.

Temporal leadership is a new construct that predicts team outcomes. This study examines the mediating role of shared temporal cognitions and the moderating role of time pressure in the relationship between temporal leadership and project success within sustainable construction projects.

The multi-source and multi-wave data were collected via self-administered questionnaires from teams working on sustainable construction projects. The direct and mediating hypotheses were tested using multi-level structural equation modelling, while moderated mediation hypotheses were examined by applying the bootstrap method using SPSS Process Macro.

The results showed that temporal leadership enables project success via shared temporal cognitions. Temporal leadership is most beneficial for facilitating project success via shared temporal cognitions when teams experience high time pressure.

This is the first study examining shared temporal cognitions as a mediator of the relationship between temporal leadership and project success. Also, this is the first study that considered time pressure as a boundary condition that influences the relationships between temporal leadership, shared temporal cognitions and project success within sustainable construction projects. The study provides valuable advice to project managers and project-based construction organizations about using and managing time within projects.

The consolidation process and morphology evolution in ceramics-based additive manufacturing (AM) are still not well-understood. As a way to better understand the ceramic selective laser sintering (SLS), a dynamic three-dimensional computational model was developed to forecast thermal behavior of hydroxyapatite (HA) bioceramic.

AM has revolutionized automotive, biomedical and aerospace industries, among many others. AM provides design and geometric freedom, rapid product customization and manufacturing flexibility through its layer-by-layer technique. However, a very limited number of materials are printable because of rapid melting and solidification hysteresis. Melting-solidification dynamics in powder bed fusion are usually correlated with welding, often ignoring the intrinsic properties of the laser irradiation; unsurprisingly, the printable materials are mostly the well-known weldable materials.

The consolidation mechanism of HA was identified during its processing in a ceramic SLS device, then the effect of the laser energy density was studied to see how it affects the processing window. Premature sintering and sintering regimes were revealed and elaborated in detail. The full consolidation beyond sintering was also revealed along with its interaction to baseplate.

These findings provide important insight into the consolidation mechanism of HA ceramics, which will be the cornerstone for extending the range of materials in laser powder bed fusion of ceramics.

The present paper aims to focus on the role which German controllers play so far in the process of sustainable transformation in for-profit organizations, the current obstacles to a wider engagement here and ways to overcome these obstacles.

The analysis combines two qualitative study designs. Empirical data is generated via a job advertisement analysis and an explorative survey with 107 subjects from management accounting/controlling and sustainability management. The generated data is interpreted against the background of the theory of institutional logics and Abbott’s (1988) theory of professional jurisdiction.

We find that controllers are in a state of tension. On the one hand, the pressure to integrate sustainability into companies is increasing. On the other hand, they seem to be rather reluctant to get involved. The institutional logics that shape their profession play an important role here, as does an unclear relationship with the sustainability department, which has its own claims here. Based on these observations, we identify the core obstacles to the transformation of the controllers’ profession and discuss solutions which can guide the transformation of this profession.

The present paper provides insights from a unique combination of different quantitative study designs and different perspectives on the possible role that controllers can play in advancing sustainable transformation in companies.

The purpose of this study is to examine the associations between board size, board independence and triple bottom line (TBL) reporting. The TBL report consists of three components, namely, environmental, social and economic indices.

This study’s sample consists of top 50 listed companies from the year 2017 to 2019 on Tadawul Stock Exchange. Ordinary least squares, quantile least squares and robust least squares are used to investigate the associations between board characteristics and TBL reporting, including its separate components.

The authors find a significant negative association between TBL reporting and board independence. Social bottom line is significantly and negatively related to board size and board independence. Results indicate that board independence negatively influences the TBL disclosure of companies. Therefore, companies are encouraged to embrace TBL reporting. This suggests that businesses should improve the quality of their reporting while ensuring that voluntary disclosures reflect an accurate and fair view in order to preserve a positive relationship with stakeholders.

The present study explains the evidence for the determinants of the TBL in Saudi Arabia.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework emerged as a guidepost for the transition to sustainable development. To achieve this transition, companies are encouraged to integrate these goals into their business strategies, processes and corporate reporting cycle. The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the corporate SDGs reporting literature, develop insights into the state of this research field and identify a future research agenda.

Using a structured literature review (SLR) methodology, the paper reviews 65 empirical papers published in this field to identify how the current research is developing, offers a critique and identifies future research avenues to advance this field.

Corporate SDGs reporting is developing as a research area of great importance. The findings reveal that current SDGs reporting literature lacks theorisation, overly focusses on publicly listed companies and succinctly describes organisations’ engagement with the SDGs as superficial. Surprisingly, regions such as North America, the UK and other emerging economies have received less attention from scholars. Further, only a few authors have specialised in this field, and there currently exists low levels of international collaborations among authors as well as practitioners.

The paper provides a novel contribution to the emerging field of corporate SDGs reporting. The key theoretical implications from this study’s SLR include the need for more interventionist research. Although there is an increasing number of accounting scholars developing research within this field, the prevailing research is concentrated on corporate SDGs engagement, drivers of SDGs reporting and scope of SDGs reporting. Furthermore, the scientific discourse remains largely under-theorised with positivist framings primarily focussed on the “what” questions. Thus, a modification to the current approaches and research methods is necessary to advance this field further.

The study provides practitioners with valuable insights into the current state of corporate reporting on the SDGs. To achieve more substantive engagement and reporting, a deeper understanding of the factors that influence corporate behaviour and disclosure practices is necessary. In particular, the study identifies new opportunities for practitioners to enhance the value relevance of corporate SDGs reporting.

The paper offers a comprehensive structured review of the empirical papers published on corporate SDGs reporting. It contributes to deepening this nascent research field by identifying five distinct areas where accounting and business scholars may focus to advance the field further and contribute to achieving the SDGs agenda.

Lean is a continuous improvement methodology that has succeeded in eliminating waste in a variety of industries. Yet, there is a need for more research on Lean implementation in several under-studied contexts, including crisis situations such as those created by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This research investigates how Lean programs were impacted by COVID-19, while previous research has primarily explored how Lean was used to solve problems created by the pandemic.

A mixed-method research approach was used to analyze employee feedback on how COVID-19 impacted the Lean programs using data from various levels of four energy-based utilities in the United States. First, an online questionnaire collected qualitative and quantitative data from a broad sample of participants. Then, a follow-up semi-structured interview allowed the elaboration of perceptions related to the research question using a smaller sample of participants.

Out of the 194 responses from the four companies, only 41% of the respondents at least somewhat agreed that COVID-19 impacted the Lean program at their company; of the remaining 59%, 35% indicated they were neutral, while 24% disagreed. The themes from the qualitative portion indicated that, while employees believed their companies had successfully found a new way to do Lean within the constraints of not always being in person, the collaboration and engagement were more challenging to sustain, and COVID-19 also otherwise made it more difficult to implement Lean. Meanwhile, some believed there was no impact on the Lean program.

The COVID-19 and Lean peer-reviewed literature published from 2020 to September 2023 focused primarily on using Lean to address problems created by the COVID-19 pandemic vs studying the pandemic's impact on Lean programs. This research partially fills this literature gap in understanding the impact COVID-19 had on Lean initiatives.

The authors investigate the impact of the stringency of environmental policy on the financial performance of European automobile manufacturers. This paper contributes to the debate about the impact of environmental policy on a firm's competitive performance.

The authors use cross-country sector-level panel data for 71 firms from 18 European countries from 2010 to 2019. The authors apply a fixed-effect model and then, to address the endogeneity issues, the authors use the generalized method of moments (GMM) model. To further examine the validity of the results, the authors use a data-mining modeling approach as a robustness test.

By considering the dynamic impact of environmental policy and overcoming the endogeneity issues, the results show that the impact of the stringency of environmental policy on a firm's financial performance depends on the time horizon: the stringency of environmental policy has a short-term negative impact but a long-term positive impact on a firm's financial performance.

The authors limited the study to the auto industry in Europe. In addition, future research could consider the impact of environmental policy on other financial performance indicators such as Return on Sales or Return on Equity. Also, it would be interesting to conduct a similar study in the United States or China using a firm-level data set to examine the robustness of the results.

Stringency of environmental policy improves a firm's financial performance in the long term. It is essential for firms and managers to consider the dynamic impacts of environmental policy on their financial performance and adopt a long-term perspective when evaluating the costs and benefits of complying with environmental regulations. The findings help management develop a long-term vision for investment and budget allocation. The results support management's view for strategic decision-making against the common budget argument and challenges for stockholders when it comes to adopting new technologies and planning long-term investment.

It is crucial for firms to recognize the broader societal benefits that come with environmental policy. Firms must not only focus on their financial performance but also on their social responsibility to protect the environment and contribute to the greater good. Therefore, firms must take a long-term perspective and recognize the broader societal benefits of environmental policy in order to make informed decisions that support both their financial success and their social responsibility.

This paper contributes to the literature by helping to explain the inconsistent results of studies about the impact of environmental policy on a firm's competitiveness. Using a firm's financial performance as one of the main metrics for competitiveness, this study takes into account both endogeneity and contemporaneity in evaluating the impact of the stringency of environmental policy on a firm's financial performance.

American Community colleges are vital to the country's economic mobility and are leaders in developing and facilitating career, technical, and workforce education. This study explored employer perspectives on employees' common and specialized skills across industries in the United States.

Employers were profiled for one year using a case study and content analysis method. They submitted performance records for at least three employees who graduated from community college career, technical, or workforce programs.

Data revealed that overall, employees were successful at work, but employers focused on employability skills across disciplines (common skills); specialized skills employers focused on were associated with business operations and processes and seemed to be something other than industry-specific technical knowledge.

This article and the research it refers to constitute original work that has not been reproduced or published. The value of this article is premised on new longitudinal data, which could be used to improve and progress institutional CTE and WD programs.