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Buildings, which account for approximately half of all annual energy and greenhouse gas emissions, are an important target area for any strategy addressing climate change. Whilst new commercial buildings increasingly address sustainability considerations, incorporating green technology in the refurbishment process of older buildings presents many technical, financial and social challenges. This paper aims to explore the social dimension, focusing on the perspectives of commercial office building tenants.

Semi‐structured in‐depth interviews were conducted with seven residents and neighbours of the case‐study building undergoing green refurbishment in Melbourne, Australia. Responses were analysed using a thematic approach, identifying categories, themes and patterns.

Commercial property tenants are on a journey to sustainability. Tenants are interested and willing to engage in discussions about sustainability initiatives, but the process, costs and benefits need to be clear.

The findings, while limited by non‐random sampling and small sample size, highlight that the commercial property market is interested in learning about sustainability in the built environment.

The findings highlight the importance of developing a strong business case and transition plan for sustainability in commercial buildings. As sustainable buildings become mainstream, tenants predicted the emergence of a “non‐sustainability discount” for residing in buildings without sustainable features.

This research offers a beginning point for understanding the difficulty of integrating green technology in older commercial buildings. Tenants currently have limited understandings of technology and potential building performance outcomes, which ultimately could impede the implementation of sustainable initiatives in older buildings.

Many Third World capital project investments lack “sustainability” — they are often successfully designed and implemented but then fail to operate well enough or long enough to realise the full intended benefits. It is argued here that the administrative environment within which such projects operate is a major determinant of their suitability. The remedy proposed is for international development finance institutions to establish special units to facilitate a creation of a supportive administrative environment.

The topic is restricted to the components of total quality management (TQM), in which a set of values, tools and techniques unites the descriptions of TQM. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact on an additional core value of the components of TQM, namely the sustainability of values, tools and techniques.

A strategic perspective of sustainable quality management is applied, rather than tactical and operative ones. The term “sustainable quality management” is used.

The paper contends that quality management (in general) and TQM (in particular) should be scrutinised by stressing the sustainability of values, tools and techniques.

Sustainable quality management provides a potential to improve and extend the theory generation and the best practices of TQM in the future. An important area for further research is to examine the extent of sustainable quality management practices beyond the organisational boundaries and traditional channel structures. Sustainable quality management is complex to implement and evaluate.

The paper provides theoretical and managerial ideas and insights in order to anticipate and avoid the non‐sustainability of TQM practices.

One contribution is a model of a circulation approach to TQM. Another contribution is a model of the sustainability of TQM, which connects and reconnects corporate values, tools and techniques in quality management.

Agricultural systems in Mekong Delta have transformed to cope with climate change. Various researches pointed out that integrated agriculture-aquaculture (IAA) farming systems (i.e., rice-shrimp, rice-fish…) emerged as potential climate adaptive practices. However, limited studies are attempting to assess the sustainability of these agricultural practices. Therefore, it is essential to assess whether or not these systems will be sustainable in the context of climate change and what can be done to make it sustainable. The present study conducted the sustainability assessment of the rice-shrimp system to identify potential areas for improvement as well as policy implication to increase resilience and adaptation of coastal IAA system which could contribute to the understanding of other coastal agricultural deltas around the globe.

This study used a quantitative approach including the assessment protocol of van Asselt et al. (2014), the assessment framework of Vanloon et al. (2005), and the MCA methodology to flexibly and holistically assess the sustainability level of agricultural systems.

Results concluded that rice-shrimp systems have the potential to improve livelihood, food security, and adaptation of coastal farmers. Major improvements should be considered for productivity, efficiency, and equity themes, while minor improvements can be made for stability, durability, and compatibility themes.

This research could be used as a guideline for sustainability assessment in a context-specific case study of IAA, which showed a potential for the application of other climate-smart IAAs in similar contexts around the globe.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how institutions of higher education (IHEs) in the USA communicate sustainability through their websites. Specifically, the authors compare how and to what extent sustainability is communicated through an institution‐wide sustainability website versus operational and academic department websites.

This paper describes the results of a content analysis of over 700 websites at IHEs in the USA which were selected in a stratified random sample. Each website was coded with responses entered into a data matrix. The data in the matrix were then evaluated and compared for important factors related to communicating about campus sustainability.

Although there has been an increase in the number of commitments to sustainability by IHEs, at the time of this content analysis the commitment was not reflected on the websites of the IHEs sampled. Given the common use of websites at IHEs in the USA to communicate to large groups, colleges and universities should ensure that their websites reflect actual practice.

The findings from this study may encourage IHEs in the USA to better communicate their practice related to sustainability. The implementation of the sustainability communication component in AASHE STARS may also play an important role in increased and better communication about campus sustainability.

This study describes the first large‐scale content analysis of university websites evaluating sustainability characteristics. This paper gives a starting point and recommendations for IHEs who wish to enhance communication about sustainability through their websites.

The purpose of this paper is to examine which firm characteristics affect the usage of sustainability incentives in executive remuneration contracts, and whether these sustainability incentives have an impact on shareholders’ return.

The analysis is based on a sample of 212 firms from the FTSE 350 firms over the period of 2009-2011.

The results indicate that there is a significant relationship between the adoption of sustainability incentives in executive remuneration and firm size, compensation committee independence, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) sustainability committee, CSR sustainability index, and resource efficiency policy variables. Further, there is evidence to support a positive impact on the shareholders’ return.

The results of this study should be interpreted within two limitations. First, the limited numbers of the sample years due to the limited number of firms used sustainability incentives. Second, the use of a dummy variable in the measurement of the adoption of sustainability incentives in the analysis.

The paper includes implications for the development of sustainability incentives within the performance measurement system and compensation contracts that could be a solution for the agency problem.

This study provides empirical evidence on an increased use of sustainability incentives in UK firms, and identifies firm’s characteristics that explain such increase in the sustainability incentives, finally its positive impact on the shareholders’ return.

The purpose of this study was to explore college students’ understanding of sustainability and, specifically, the extent to which students see social justice as being integral to sustainability.

Between fall 2015 and 2017, an online survey study was deployed to students at a Midwestern University in the USA to assess attitudes and concerns about environmental issues and awareness of the university’s activities related to these issues. This analysis included ten assessment items from a larger study, of which 1,929 participants were included in the final sample. A chi-square goodness-of-fit and variable cluster analysis were performed on the included items.

Items such as “recycling,” “economic viability” and “fair treatment of all” were identified as integral to the concept of sustainability, while items such as “growing organic vegetables” and “reducing meat consumption” had high levels of “not applicable” and “don’t know” responses, with differences arising across gender and class standing. Social justice-related items were seen as more distally connected to sustainability.

This study is limited by a non-random sample of students.

College students tend not to recognize the integral nature of social justice or the relevance of food to sustainability, providing an opportunity for universities to better prepare their students for a sustainable future.

Universities might adopt policies and curricula that address these areas of ignorance.

This study is among the first to identify specific areas of college students’ lack of understanding about sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the adverse selection in participation in the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NRCMS), as well as in outpatient and inpatient service utilization, in Chaoyang, Beijing, China.

Probit model is established to test whether the rural Hukou family member in Combined Household (CH) is statistically different from the Pure Rural Household (PRH) in enrollment in NRCMS. Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) model is adopted to examine the difference in the utilization of outpatient and inpatient between the rural Hukou family members in the two kinds of households.

This paper finds that the rural Hukou family member in CH has more probability to enroll in NRCMS than the counterpart in PRH. In the period of six months, the rural Hukou family member in CH exceeds PRH by 0.73 times in outpatient visit number per capita. The former average spends yuan 157 more in outpatient service and is reimbursed yuan 53 more from NRCMS than the latter. Moreover, on average, rural Hukou family member has no difference in the inpatient service utilization between the two kinds of households in the period of 12 months.

This is the first study to empirically test the adverse selection in China's medical insurance market from the perspective of two different types of households, which are CH and PRH.

Sustainability can be assessed in the dimensions Profit, Planet and People. A problem with the approach is that these dimensions cannot be added. Another problem is that performance seldom is related to global system boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to study the “what” of sustainability by linking this to global boundaries and proposing “how” the authors could manage change toward sustainability.

Sustainability definitions are reviewed to identify main stakeholders. People value defined as utility is compared to Planet harm as carbon emissions and People harm as prices of products. This approach is examined in business studying the global processes of housing, transporting, providing food and cement manufacturing.

The relative indicators with focus on People utility compare to Planet and People harm seem to be relevant for measuring the level of sustainability. The Crippled Bottom Line of People value/Planet harm and People value/Planet harm is proposed as the “what” to measure and the change process of “understanding-defining-measuring-communicating-leading change” is proposed as the “how” to change.

The research is based on identifying the main stakeholders based on sustainability definitions and from that point mostly on deductive reasoning.

The practical implications are that organizations could define sustainability indicators with objectives that are linked to global limits.

Advocating the use of price as a social indicator could have social implications.

The paper contributes to the discussion of how to link global limits to organizational measurements and targets.