Search results

Sustainable fashion.

Bachelor Degree/Master Degree, Master of Business Administration (MBA), PhD.

The case focuses on Osklen, one of the world’s first eco-fashion brands, founded in 1989 by Oskar Metsavaht. For the past 26 years, Osklen had become Brazil’s foremost sustainable luxury venture, and since 2012, under first minority and then majority corporate ownership, pursued an aggressive global expansion strategy. The dilemma of the case juxtaposes Osklen’s creative aesthetics, which leverage unique Brazilian beauty in nature and heritage, with the financial pressures of global expansion. The tension is exacerbated by the 2015 corruption scandal, which decelerated the Brazilian economy and reduced consumer spending on sustainable luxuries in Osklen’s home market; it also risked compromising the appeal of Brazilian brands elsewhere. The case explores the complex interconnections between local and global aspects of sustainability and brings forward the environmental, social and cultural aspects of brands and business to the foreground. The case also illustrates how economic crises impact brands from the initial creative inspiration to the prospects of global expansion.

Students will master tools for strategic analysis (VRIN framework and scenario planning) to a company evolving in an emerging economy. They will learn about the ways to consider and communicate sustainability. Students will be exposed to the importance of aesthetics and multi-sensoriality in business activities.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy

Teaching formats for both BA/MA students and MBA/PhD students in sustainable entrepreneurship and strategic management are offered in the teaching notes.

This case juxtaposes the company’s core values of gender equality, sustainability and inclusivity, with the financial pressures of expanding global operations in COVID-19 times.

This case illustrates the founding and growth of i-did in the broader context of the global circular textile industry. Being the first company that reclaims value of discarded textiles by making design products out of felt, the dilemma is on how i-did can create a blueprint for sustainable leadership in a scalable (financial) business case.

The learning outcomes of this case are as follows: to understand the concepts of circular economy and social impact and how they can be translated to business; to apply their knowledge of strategy and entrepreneurship for sustainable business innovation; to be able to analyze a company according to the Sustainable Development Goals, specifically around gender issues, inclusivity and diversity; to evaluate opportunities for multiple value creation in business; and to have the knowledge and capacity to create a circular business with the help of the Business Model Template.

This case engages students in critically reflecting on sustainability concepts in relation to i-did (theoretical value) and applying novel business model innovation tools to a real-world enterprise (practical value). The students get the chance to explore the ethical challenges the two entrepreneurial leaders face between short-term economic gains (or maybe even survival) and their core values of (gender) inclusivity, circularity and diversity.

Teaching notes and a summarizing two-pager are available for educators.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The objective of this chapter is to understand innovative processes of resource redeployment taking place during consumption. We label this as consumer entrepreneurship. We define consumer entrepreneurship as the process of sharing and recombining resources innovatively to seek opportunities for self-creating user value. Through the illustration of heterogeneous forms of consumer peer-to-peer sharing, we argue that consumer entrepreneurship: (1) differs ontologically from a view of entrepreneurship as creation of exchange value; (2) bridges the notion, established in marketing studies, of consumers as value creators with the field of entrepreneurship; (3) develops mostly when the process of sharing is regulated informally, based on trust relationships; and (4) thrives as groups of sharing consumers discover and enact their values through the experimentation of multiple forms of product and service procurement. On the basis of these points, consumer entrepreneurship contributes to provide a novel perspective on hybrid organizations, that is, a view of hybrid organizations as everyday spaces where consumers create heterogeneous forms of (utilitarian, social, or environmental) value that they personally use as opposed to reward exchanges. Relative to the current definition of hybrid organizations (Pache & Santos, 2013) and organizing (Battilana & Lee, 2014), we argue that consumer entrepreneurship helps better explain “why, when, and how” consumers increasingly engage in peer-to-peer sharing organizations – a fledging and still underexplored way of organizing consumption worldwide.

The authors adopt a biographical methodology to investigate how a privately funded art museum has risen to become a key visitor destination on the island of Tasmania, Australia.

The authors utilise both entrepreneurship and consumption as collecting lenses to gain insight into the success of a new arts venture. In addition to biographical methodology the authors utilise in-depth interviews and participant observation.

The analysis shows what can be achieved when alternative paths to creativity and innovation are pursued. The creativity inherent in such actions does not necessarily have to be substantial. Sometimes incremental approaches to achieving something different from the norm are sufficient.

Implications include the continued merits of adopting a biographical approach to uncovering longitudinal insight into interlinking entrepreneurship and consumption practices. This approach enables key impacting events over time to be identified as they impact on the direction taken by the art entrepreneur.

There is growing evidence that administrative approaches to arts governance are limiting in their effectiveness. This paper addresses the call to be more entrepreneurial in arts governance practices.

There are only a limited number of papers on entrepreneurship and consumption in the arts and this research adds to knowledge in the area.

Drawing on the multiplicity of context approach, this study investigates whether female entrepreneurs are more likely than male entrepreneurs to create environmentally oriented organizations. This study aims to examine how context, measured by gender socialization stereotypes and post-materialism, differentially affects the kinds of organizations entrepreneurs choose to create.

To test the hypotheses, this study utilizes Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data from 2009 (n = 17,364) for nascent entrepreneurs, baby businesses owners and established business owners in 47 counties. This study also utilizes the World Values Surveys to measure gender ideologies and post-materialist cultural values at the country level. To test the hypotheses, a logistic multi-level model is estimated to identify the drivers of environmental venturing. Data are nested by countries, and this allows random intercepts by countries with a variance components covariance structure.

Findings indicate that female entrepreneurs are more likely to engage in ecological venturing. Societies with high levels of post-materialist national values are significantly more likely to affect female entrepreneurs to engage in environmental ventures when compared to male entrepreneurs. Moreover, traditional gender socialization stereotypes decrease the probability of engaging in environmental entrepreneurship. Likewise, female entrepreneurs in societies with strong stereotypes regarding gender socialization will more likely engage in environmental entrepreneurship than male entrepreneurs.

The present study uses a gender analysis approach to investigate empirical differences in environmental entrepreneurial activity based on biological sex. However, this research assumes that gender is the driver behind variations in ecopreneurship emphasis between the engagement of males and females in venturing activity. The findings suggest that female entrepreneurs pursuing ecological ventures are more strongly influenced by contextual factors, when compared to male entrepreneurs. Future research can build upon these findings by applying a more nuanced view of gender via constructivist approaches.

This study is one of the few to investigate ecologically oriented ventures with large-scale empirical data by utilizing a 47-country data set. As a result, it begins to open the black box of environmental entrepreneurship by investigating the role of gender, seeking to understand if men and women entrepreneurs equally engage in environmental venturing. And it responds to calls that request more research at the intersection of gender and context in terms of environmental entrepreneurship.

Extending the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), this paper aims to measure the relative importance of different barriers to sustainable fashion consumption (SFC).

Existing studies have mainly adopted a qualitative methodology for identifying barriers to uptake of SFC, this study uses six of the main identified barriers: environmental apparel knowledge, perceived value, price sensitivity, product attributes and variety, availability and scepticism into the TPB framework to test and reveal which barriers have the greater impact on the TPB cognitions and consequently on building intention towards SFC. To test this model a survey study among 669 consumers from Europe, Asian and North America was conducted, structural equation modelling is used to test the research hypotheses.

Findings confirm the role of TPB cognitions on predicting intention and show that the proposed barriers provide a satisfactory explanation of the TPB model. Furthermore, results show that product attributes and variety and environmental apparel knowledge have the greatest impact on the TPB cognitions and on building intention towards SFC. Differences were found between the impacts of the price for the three continents.

This research contributes to the emerging sustainable fashion literature by examining the impact of different barriers to SFC in an extended TPB framework. To the best of our knowledge price sensitivity, availability and scepticism have never been studied in the context of sustainable fashion. It also provides a multifactor group analysis which uncovers differences among consumers from different continents.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and encapsulate the enablers that can facilitate education for sustainable development in higher education (HE). The study also aims to understand the interdependence between the enablers.

The study adopts the total interpretive structural modelling approach to comprehend the interaction and transitivity between the enablers. Cross-impact multiplication matrix analysis was applied to rank the enablers and classify them on the basis of the driving and dependence power into dependent, autonomous, independent and linkage enablers.

An extensive literature review and expert opinion helped in identifying 10 enablers that can promote sustainability in higher education. The structural model revealed government policies, media, accreditation/sustainability audit, sustainability leadership and institutional commitment as the crucial enablers that can drive sustainability and activate the enablers with high dependence and low driving power.

The results of this study will assist the policymakers and management of universities and colleges in understanding important factors that can facilitate sustainability in higher education. Universities and colleges to incorporate sustainability in their system need to transform not only the core higher education activities of learning and teaching, research and engagement, also the way the colleges operate its culture, governance, structure and how it supports the staff and students.

So far, research on sustainability in higher education has looked into each factor in isolation. This research provides a comprehensive view of the factors and has attempted to establish a multidirectional interplay between factors facilitating sustainability in higher education (SHE).

The UN proclamation of 2005–2014 as the decade of education for sustainable development has been instrumental in creating awareness and driving higher education institutions (HEIs) in integrating sustainability into their system. The purpose of this paper is to explore and encapsulate practices adopted by universities and colleges across the globe in integrating sustainability in education (here refers to curriculum and pedagogy), research, campus operations and outreach programs.

The review analyzed 229 peer-reviewed research studies in the time period 2005–2018 selected from 44 journals. The literature review was done in phases. The first phase was the selection of the database, the second phase was refining the database by eliminating irrelevant studies and the last phase was distributing selected studies on the basis of the journal, year and country of publication, research paradigm, sustainability integration in higher education, teaching techniques adopted by HEIs and research focus in publications.

This study contributes to the literature review of sustainability in higher education. From the literature review, it is evident that sustainability has made inroads into HEIs, but only a few universities have been successful in implementing it holistically, integrating all the triple bottom line dimensions in balance.

The study has practical implications for HEIs planning to integrate sustainability into teaching and learning and other aspects of educational practices. The findings and the examples of successful implementation of sustainable education by institutions around the world would help universities and colleges in formulating policies, strategies and practices that would promote sustainability on campuses.

The literature reviews on sustainability in higher education so far have focused either on curricula, pedagogical approaches, assessment and reporting or barriers and solutions. This study attempts to offer a comprehensive view of the initiatives adopted by the institutions in incorporating sustainability in education, research, campus operations and outreach programs.

The purpose of this paper is to appraise and evaluate empirical research on circular economy in food systems, consolidating the existing knowledge and identifying shortcomings in this emerging body of research.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review of 136 studies from the electronic databases Scopus and Web of Science. The authors also developed a thematic analysis and summarized the results in a framework.

The authors identified seven critical issues for the transition to circular food systems: consumer behavior, multistakeholder coordination, business models, digital technologies, barriers, transition processes and performance and measurement systems. Moreover, the authors provide an agenda for future research on these topics.

While reviews on the circular economy are spreading rapidly, no reviews have comprehensively addressed the critical issues for the transition to circular food systems in the business, management, and organization domains.