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This chapter investigates the impact of coordination and control mechanisms on the orientation to performances, looking at the relation between Corporate Foundations and their Founder Firms. The research starts from the consideration that the relationship between CFs and Founder Firms can be considered similar to the relationship between headquarter and subsidiaries in large corporations, as the ties are very strong and significant.

In order to address the impact of control and coordination mechanisms on CFs’ orientation to performance, we managed a survey addressed to 188 CFs from six European countries, representing the most significant context for corporate philanthropy in Europe.

The results of a linear regression show that only selected mechanisms are effective for boosting CFs’ orientation to performance, and that these tools must be adapted to the specific nature of the CFs.

The study can help Founder Firms to identify the more effective mechanisms to improve the performance of the CFs they support, in order to ensure the possibility for both the parties to pursue the shared value creation.

The research has put in evidence that CFs must be explored taking into consideration their close tie to Founder Firm, which differentiates them from other interdependent foundations.

This article aims at investigating knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) between founder firms and corporate foundations (CFs), looking at mechanisms able to enhance CFs’ orientation of effectiveness.

We analyze 50 questionnaires collected through a survey of CFs based in Italy (redemption of 42.7% of the total). We use a number of regressions to verify the change of explained variance moving from a basic model with control variables (enter method) and a model including KTE mechanisms with an impact on orientation to effectiveness (stepwise method).

The analysis produced a model which underlines the influence of knowledge transfer mechanisms in stimulating orientation to effectiveness. The adoption of specific knowledge transfer mechanisms by founder firms can have a significant influence on how CFs manage their effectiveness. Three mechanisms emerge from the study as elements with a positive impact.

The results apply to nonprofit or public bodies, especially if we consider partnerships or organizational networks. The individuated criteria for selecting a positive KTE could drive similar choices of other nonprofit bodies.

The study individuates a set of practices that are potentially able to influence positively the orientation to effectiveness of CFs, and the capacity to perform their activities and respond to social needs more successfully.

This research considers CFs as founder firms’ subsidiaries, with a growing strategic importance. This research reveals how KTE mechanisms can foster the development of orientation to effectiveness if implying interaction, firms’ commitment, autonomy, and alignment with the firms’ strategy and CFs’ purposes.

Wineries today are faced with the prospect of having to include environmental sustainability into their practices but implementation can be hard, complicated or even undesired. This research aims to examine firm features, specifically winery size and foreign direct investment, as potential sources of variability regarding environmental sustainability attitudes and practices.

Questionnaires were administered via telephone interviews with 63 wineries in France. Production surface and wine activities in other countries were the independent variables examined as potentially predicting environmental sustainability attitudes and practices, leading to competitive positioning and perceived firm success.

The findings clearly show that bigger wineries are more likely to practice environmental sustainability, but they do not necessarily have more positive attitudes toward environmental sustainability. For winery managers, firm size and environmental sustainability practices interact because they are perceived to lead to competitive advantages such as augmented product quality and better innovations. Larger firms are also more sensitive to micro pressures emanating from customers, competitors and distributors regarding environmental sustainability. Finally, wineries engaging in foreign direct investments have more positive attitudes toward and engage in more environmental sustainability practices than firms that remain domestic.

Rather than comparing firms that are environmentally sustainable versus firms that are not, this research examined actual firm characteristics that may influence management’s propensity to engage in environmental sustainability practices. This research provides explanations for why there are augmented environmental sustainability practices by larger wineries and the sources of subjective norms encouraging larger wineries, versus smaller wineries, to practice environmental sustainability.

The research focuses on analysing the effect of wine tourism (WT) on the green performance (GP) of Spanish wineries, as well as the mediating role of green intellectual capital (GIC) and the moderating effect of circular economy practices (CEPs) developed by wineries in this main relationship. In addition, age, size and protected designation of origin (PDO) membership are introduced as control variables to increase the precision of the cause–effect relationships analysed.

A conceptual model is proposed through the literature review carried out and then verified through structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) based on data obtained from a survey of 202 Spanish wineries between September 2021 and January 2022.

The results of the study show that WT activity has a positive and significant effect on the GP of wineries, also demonstrating the mediating effect of GIC and the moderating role of CEPs in this relationship.

The study contributes to the academic literature in several ways. First, to the best of our knowledge, no previous study has addressed the impact of WT on the set of wineries' ecological intangibles. Second, to the authors’ knowledge, no previous study has analysed the mediating effect of GIC on the WT-GP relationship. Third, there is no previous attempt to deal with the moderating role of CEPs in the main relationship under analysis. Fourth, the proposed theoretical model has not been previously addressed in the academic literature.

This study intends to test the relationship between banks’ board diversity, detected with age and gender characteristics, and banks’ social performance. The resource dependence theory posits that board diversity is a strategic tool able to enrich the board of directors by expanding skills and the number of links with stakeholders, which have a strategic role in achieving a competitive advantage and sustainable goals, especially in the banking sector.

The research hypotheses are tested using a sample of 46 European banks observed from 2009 to 2017. The gender and age diversity data of bank board members are hand-collected from banks’ social reports.

The empirical results show that bank social performance is positively influenced by board gender and age diversity. Thus, the human capital determined by a higher bank’s board diversity constitutes an essential resource for adopting more sustainable business models.

This paper analyses the association between board diversity and social performance, providing empirical evidence for the European banking sector in the period after the 2008 global financial crisis. The banking literature provides scarce evidence on the topic; however, the empirical results claim the strategic importance of the appointment of directors to the banks’ boards to balance corporate strategy with social and environmental issues generating a positive impact on sustainable growth.

This study aims to focus on sustainable supplier selection in a construction company considering a new multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method based on dominance-based rough set analysis. The inclusion of sustainability concept in industrial supply chains has started gaining momentum due to increased environmental protection awareness and social obligations. The selection of sustainable suppliers marks the first step toward accomplishing this objective. The problem of selecting the right suppliers fulfilling the sustainable requirements is a major MCDM problem since various conflicting factors are underplay in the selection process. The decision-makers are often confronted with inconsistent situations forcing them to make imprecise and vague decisions.

This paper presents a new method based on dominance-based rough sets for the selection of right suppliers based on sustainable performance criteria relying on the triple bottom line approach. The method applied has its distinct advantages by providing more transparency in dealing with the preference information provided by the decision-makers and is thus found to be more intuitive and appealing as a performance measurement tool.

The technique is easy to apply using “jrank” software package and devises results in the form of decision rules and ranking that further assist the decision-makers in making an informed decision that increases credibility in the decision-making process.

The novelty of this study of its kind is that uses the dominance-based rough set approach for a sustainable supplier selection process.