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The purpose of this chapter is fivefold. First, it highlights that, despite apparent progress, business in general, and marketing in particular, has made little impact upon environmental sustainability. Second, it offers four explanations for the persistent challenges that contribute to this lack of meaningful progress. Third, it presents two theoretical lenses (i.e., assemblage theory and socio-ecological systems theory) for viewing environmental sustainability from new perspectives. Fourth, it offers a mid-range theory, biomimicry, to bridge the gap between these higher-level theories and managerial decisions on the ground. Finally, it offers implications and ideas for future research based on these persistent challenges and new perspectives.

Our paper is theoretical in focus. We offer a conceptual analysis of persistent challenges facing business efforts in environmental sustainability and suggest useful lenses to integrate marketing decisions more closely with our natural environment.

We present biomimicry as an actionable framework that seeks inspiration from nature and also explicitly grounds marketing decisions in the natural world.

Our paper draws attention to the challenges facing firms seeking to achieve better performance in environmental sustainability. In addition, it offers a set of fresh theoretical perspectives as well as future issues for scholarly research in this domain.

Our work is designed to be provocative; it articulates reasons why business efforts in environmental sustainability do not scale to meaningful impact upon our planet and explores theoretical lenses by which those efforts could be more impactful.

The purpose of this study is to give an in-depth understanding of the nature of business processes (BPs) from the perspective of their dynamism and knowledge intensity that will allow for their correct classification and provide practical and useful implications for their more relevant and effective management. A simple and low labor-intensive BP nature assessment approach is proposed that will allow for objective assessment and internal benchmarking of all BPs in a specific context of execution based on their nature.

The research is divided into two parts. The first comprises a systematic literature review (SLR) based on the resources of the ProQuest, Springer Nature and ScienceDirect full-text databases and the second includes illustrative case studies.

Building on the SLR, the authors identified and reviewed 3,385 articles and defined a set of criteria by which the nature of BPs can be assessed. Further, the authors proposed a BP nature assessment matrix together with complementary questionnaires for the evaluation of process dynamism and knowledge intensity. To demonstrate the logic of this approach, two illustrative case studies were presented.

The article contributes to the theoretical reflection on the nature of BPs in the knowledge economy. From the practical point of view, a novel approach to the assessment of the nature of BPs is offered. The approach is open and as experience is accumulated it will develop according to the data and recommendations collected.

This paper aims to explore the concept of resilience set within a family business context and considers how familiness and the nature of noneconomic factors, such as relationship dynamics influence performance. This paper provides new insights into the nature and impact of familiness as a mediating device, uncovering the potential for reframing resilience theory and practice.

The paper draws on a review of the extant literature in the areas of resilience and familiness as a means of developing a deeper understanding of the social-ecological system of the family firm.

The study reveals family business as a complex interrelationship between complimentary social-ecological systems. It highlights the complexity of family business and the challenges of the relational nature of familiness and how this presents additional layers of complexity in the decision making process and implementation.

The paper draws on literature that is dominated by western culture and may partially or not at all reflect the issues associated with organisational resilience in family firms with such backgrounds and their culturally bound social-ecological systems.

The paper seeks to fill a knowledge gap by exploring the key elements of organisational resilience in the context of familiness. The work calls for further research into the nature of familiness connections mediating the nature of family relational dynamics. It further provides a framework indicating how these elements can shape and subvert day-to-day management events, raising implications for theory and practice and calls for deeper empirical research to be undertaken.

This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato Si’ (Praised Be: On the Care of Our Common Home) is an excellent opportunity for building a conversation between spirituality, ecology, and sustainable business.

Integral ecology integrates concerns for people and the planet. It sees the world as systemically linked ecology, economy, equity, and justice accessible through natural and social sciences, arts, and humanities. Integral ecology shows a path to sustainable business functioning through frugal consumption, acknowledging the intrinsic value of nature, and seeking holistic management knowledge.

The book collects chapters from economists, business scholars, philosophers, layers, theologians, human scientists, and practitioners from Europe, North America, and Asia and highlights the meaning of sustainability in relation to human and non-human life and introduces new approaches to sustainable business practices and sustainability leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to address the current debate between business ethics and economics by examining the underlying ideologies of each side.

It is our intention in this article to examine the stories business ethicists and economists utilize to explain how the world works. A two dimensional model is employed to accomplish this goal by plotting the two sides' different theories of human nature on one axis and the two sides' different theories of society on the other axis.

This article provides a framework for assisting practitioners and scholars/teachers in better understanding the origins and causes for the debates that take place on complex issues regarding the economic domain.

A limitation of this article is that while it offers better understanding of positions, it does not offer guidance to the reader in crafting future strategies. Space does not warrant doing so in this article; however, it is an important issue.

The framework in this article can be utilized to help managers and students understand the debate between business ethicists and economists, help them to examine and form their own positions, and be better prepared to take part in debates that promote societal progress.

While scholars have described the current debates well, little coverage has been placed on how the debate arose. By knowing how past and current positions were developed, it is our hope that more informed frameworks addressing developing social issues can be developed in the future.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of the efficiency of working capital management (WCM) on the performance of a sample of Indian companies and explore how the nature of the firm's business influences the significance and direction of this impact.

The data for this study were collected for the period of 2012–2018 for 414 non-financial firms listed on the Bombay Stock exchange. Fixed-effect regression models were run by taking Tobin's Q and return on equity (ROE) as dependent variables, and net trade cycle (NTC) and its components as explanatory variables in the presence of liquidity, leverage, size, age and growth as control variables. Sample firms were segregated into manufacturing, trading and service groups, and regression models were used for all the groups to understand the effect of the nature of a firm's business.

WCM efficiency has a significant impact on the performance of the sample firms. Non-financial Indian firms deliver better financial performance by maintaining lower NTC. Like NTC, its components also impact firm value and profitability. The results report that the significance of the relationship varies depending upon the nature of the firm's business.

The previous research studies had not used a sample of large number of Indian firms. Unlike previous studies, this study reports the influence of the nature of business on the relationship between WCM and firm performance. Further, this paper also examines how the individual components of working capital influence the performance of Indian firms.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

Despite their economic significance, empirical evidence on the growth constraints facing micro-businesses as an important subset of small and medium enterprises remains scarce. At the same time, little consideration has hitherto been given to the context in which entrepreneurial activity occurs. The purpose of this paper is to develop an empirically informed contextual understanding of micro-business growth, beyond firm-level constraints.

The paper draws on 50 in-depth interviews with stakeholders and micro-business owner–manager entrepreneurs (OMEs henceforth) in a peripheral post-industrial place (PPIP henceforth).

The paper shows that, beyond firm-level constraints generated by their OME-centric nature, there are “additional costs” for micro-businesses operating in PPIPs, specifically limited access to higher-skilled labour, a more challenging, “closed” business environment and negative outward perceptions stemming from place stigmatisation. All of these “additional costs” can serve to stymie OMEs' growth ambition.

The paper is based on a limited number of interviews conducted in one region in England. However, the contextualisation of the findings through a focus on PPIPs provides valuable insights and enables analytical generalisation.

The article develops a context-sensitive model of micro-business growth constraints, one that goes beyond the constraints inherent in the nature of micro-businesses and is sensitive to their local (socio-institutional) operating context. The implications serve to advance both how enterprise in the periphery is theorised and how it is addressed by policymakers and business intermediaries to support the growth of micro-businesses.