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Curriculum design is often a challenge. It is particularly so when the subject is sustainability, which is an aspirational but contested concept, draws on a range of disciplinary insights and is relatively new to university curricula. There is no single “right way”, or even agreement across the disciplines that inform the collective enterprise about general approaches to sustainability curricula. The likely content is ill‐defined and spans departmental units and budget areas in most traditional universities. Like other societal and institutional attempts at realising sustainability, curriculum design for sustainability is beset by difficulty, yet an essential intellectual activity. This paper aims to focus on these issues.

The paper compares actual curriculum development processes for “sustainability” in two very different Australian universities, as studied using participant observation and qualitative interviews.

The paper draws out some of the common challenges of interdisciplinary curriculum design for sustainability, and identifies four principles transferrable to other institutional adaptation settings. It argues that curriculum design is an opportunity to develop collegiality, and further advance the problem area under discussion.

Case study research is often difficult to generalise to other settings. The opportunity to observe two sustainability curriculum design processes, operating in parallel, provides transferrable insights.

This study examines how compliance with government and firm's own policy and reverse logistics practices relate with firm environmental performance.

This study draws on insights from stakeholder theory, and follows a two-phase research approach. The first phase utilized an extended literature review that seeks to provide a qualitative and comprehensive understanding of the research problem. The 2001–2023 data was collected from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, complemented with Google Scholar. The second phase involved an empirical study—adopting a quantitative cross-sectional survey design with a self-administered questionnaire to validate the theoretical conceptualizations deriving from the literature review. The empirical data were collected from 203 food and beverages manufacturing firms in Uganda and analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach.

The study findings suggest that compliance with government policy positively influences firm environmental performance, both directly, and indirectly through fostering reverse logistics practices, and that the relationship between compliance with government policy and reverse logistics practices is contingent upon compliance with the focal firm's own policy.

The study findings will enhance the theoretical and conceptual development of the ideas that underpin stakeholder theory and applications. The Ugandan government will come up with better mechanisms for enforcing compliance with policy regulating the application of reverse logistics practices. In addition, the study advances the use of multi-method approaches in investigating interesting research aspects requiring in-depth examination. However, considering the fact that the empirical study was conducted in a single country context, and focused on firms more or less from the same sub-sector, the findings of the study might not be generalizable globally.

This study provides useful insights to logistics and supply chain managers involved in reverse logistics activities in food and beverages manufacturing firms. These managers can know how to leverage reverse logistics practices to enhance environmental performance of firms amidst environmental policies in the industry where they operate.

This study contributes to the built body of knowledge in operations, logistics and supply chain management literature; understanding about reverse logistics practices as a mechanism through which compliance with government policy influences environmental performance of firms. The interaction between compliance with government policy and compliance with firm policy is essential in explaining the performance effects of reverse logistics practices. In addition, the study advances the use of multi-method approaches in investigating interesting research aspects requiring in-depth examination. Complementing extended literature review with and empirical research to investigate reverse logistics practices influences on firm environmental performance, and incorporating the role of policy in explaining this relationship should make considerable contribution. Besides, the study highlights important areas for future research.