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This paper develops the concept of positive sustainability or positainability to go beyond many leaders’ traditional understanding of sustainability as primarily avoiding harm. Rather, executives need to embrace a positive perspective in terms of doing good and creating value in a firm’s core business as the next level of sustainability management. Positive sustainability is defined as the combination of doing good and avoiding bad to arrive at innovative solutions for achieving a “net positive impact” in the core business rather than merely targeting “no net loss” by reducing harm for the environment and society.

This is a conceptual paper with an example, and it relies on prior insights from related research fields, including the sustainable development goals, corporate social responsibility, creating shared value, positive psychology, social entrepreneurship and social innovation.

Many organizations have recently launched sustainability initiatives, which often focus on achieving efficiency gains, for example, by reducing power consumption to lower carbon emissions in the face of climate change and to simultaneously save costs. In future competition, however, avoiding unsustainability in the core business and potentially doing good in separate social responsibility programs will not be enough. Furthermore, a focus on “quick win” efficiency gains may limit a more fundamental transformation, which is needed in many firms. There is a massive shift in consumer expectations, especially among younger generations, concerning firms’ active contribution to solving environmental and social challenges. Consistent with positive psychology, these market shifts require a positive perspective in terms of doing good in the core business.

The concept of positive sustainability has major implications for innovation, transformation and communications management. Even those firms that view themselves as leaders hardly realize the opportunities from positive sustainability. By developing innovative solutions, products and services, companies may positively contribute to the environment and society. In the medium to long term, this positive impact will often exceed the short-term benefits of efficiency-centered programs. Most firms and leaders will simply have no choice but to embrace a “net positive impact” because customers strongly expect companies to take action in terms of positive sustainability.

The triple bottom line of sustainability performance is well known; however, little research links it to consumer brand perceptions and intentions. This is important because consumers believe that brands should develop sustainability strategies and conduct business in ways that support those strategies. Using the theoretical lenses of signaling theory and spillover effects, this study aims to examine the impact of negative messages about brands’ triple bottom line sustainability activities on consumer perceived brand ethicality, perceived product quality and purchase interest.

This research includes two lab experiments with the US participants.

When brands have sustainability failures, consumers feel the firm is less ethical, its products are lower in quality and purchase interest suffers – regardless how the failure relates to the triple bottom line (environmental, social or economic). These effects are moderated by brand familiarity and the message source. Brand familiarity seems to protect a firm’s ethicality image as does when the information comes from a corporate source, contrary to the prevalent literature.

Unlike most sustainability research, this study provides comparison effects across all three dimensions of the triple bottom line. In doing so, this study highlights nuances in how consumers connect brands’ sustainability-related activities with perceptions about ethics and brand expectations. This research also contextualizes the findings through brand familiarity and message source and contributes to the growing body of literature on sustainability branding.

The aim of this research is to examine the effect of corporate sustainability performance on financial performance and the role of agency costs and business risk in determining this effect.

This study uses the data of 83 non-financial Turkish firms listed on Istanbul Stock Exchange during the period 2014–2021. Two-step system GMM models are applied to examine the study’s hypotheses.

The results indicate a positive effect of corporate sustainability performance on financial performance, and that this effect is significant only for firms that are more likely to suffer agency costs of equity, firms with R&D expenditures and firms with lower business risk.

The results of this study confirm the importance of regulations introduced by regulators to support the sustainability initiatives for firms that have less ability to access funds required for their investments. In addition, the findings provide important insight into the role of the persistence of corporate sustainability performance in enhancing financial performance through mitigating managers' opportunistic behavior.

To the author’s knowledge, this research is one of few that examine the effect of agency costs and business risk on the corporate sustainability–financial performance relationship in emerging markets.

Previous research has explored the link between sustainability disclosure and reputation but produced contradictory results. This study aims to clarify the sustainability disclosure–reputation relationship through a quantitative analysis of the correlations between these variables reported in empirical research papers. The second objective was to determine how various moderators affect the sustainability disclosure–reputation link.

The meta-analysis was based on a systematic review of the literature covering empirical research on the corporate sustainability disclosure and reputation relationship. A total of 92 articles were meta-analyzed to compile their findings on four extrinsic moderators: company size, ownership, stock listing status and activity sector.

The findings confirm that a significant positive correlation exists between corporate sustainability disclosure and reputation. The moderator analysis also revealed that companies’ different characteristics can explain researchers’ divergent results.

The results have considerable practical relevance for organizational management. First, they can motivate managers to improve and disclose their company’s social and environmental impacts to strengthen their reputation, which in turn will help accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Second, the findings can ensure organizations develop disclosure and reputation management strategies adapted for each firm’s size, ownership, stock listing status and activity sector.

The results have considerable practical relevance for organizational management. First, they can motivate managers to improve and disclose their company’s social and environmental impacts to strengthen their reputation, which in turn will help accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Second, the findings can ensure organizations develop disclosure and reputation management strategies adapted for each firm’s size, ownership, stock listing status and activity sector.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this meta-analysis is the first to clarify the link between disclosure and reputation, which makes a unique contribution to the field of social and environmental accounting. A larger sample of primary research was collected, and key extrinsic moderators were examined to explain prior studies’ contradictory findings.

This study highlights the influence of non-financial sustainability reporting and firm reputation (FR) on the China Stock Exchange. The study is based on the components of sustainability reporting that influence FR.

A simple ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model is initially run to test the hypotheses. Advanced econometric methods are used to detect the presence of heteroskedasticity. The study utilizes fixed-effect, two-stage least squares (2SLS) and two-step generalized method of moments (GMM) regression models to address endogeneity issues.

Findings suggest that NFSR has a negative influence on FR. Conversely, environmental, social and governance (ESG) sustainability reporting exhibited positive associations with a FR in fixed-effect, 2SLS and GMM results.

This study has limitations, and data collection is restricted to the period from January 2018 to June 2023, limiting the scope of findings due to data constraints. Brand equity measurement is considered only one aspect of a company's activities, and other methods can also be considered for measuring brand equity. Another limitation is a standardized method for measuring NFSR. While this study used the Arianpoor and Salehi (2021) model to measure sustainability reporting in the Chinese market, future research could explore different methods.

The findings of this study have important practical implications for corporate management, highlighting reputation challenges and the strategic importance of sustainability. Managers are encouraged to use NFSR strategically to enhance their reputation and corporate strategy.

The social implications highlight ownership and regulatory structures, promoting enhanced sustainability reporting in China's business culture. This insight informs policymakers, businesses and stakeholders regarding the importance of sustainability reporting, guiding decisions on corporate reputation and sustainability regulations.

The research indicates the importance of context-specific sustainability reporting for enhancing reputation. It provides insights into sustainability's impact on a company's reputation, promoting responsible practices for a sustainable global economy. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first research that utilizes the NFSR frameworks and a sample of firms in China to discuss sustainability reporting with different guidelines.

Grounded on resource dependence theory, the authors explored how power and dependence affect sustainability adoption in an artisanal fishing supply chain (AFSC) in Mexico.

An in-depth longitudinal case study was conducted to identify relationships among fishers, a cooperative and intermediaries using a content analysis of data gathered from a combination of interviews, focus groups, observations, participatory workshops and secondary data.

As a result of the existing power imbalance among AFSC members, mediated forces (e.g. rewards for intermediary–fishers relationship) were the most prominent observed. In addition, a close and high dependence on resources affecting supply chain sustainability (SCS) adoption was identified. For example, within intermediary–cooperative relationships, a power imbalance caused mostly by financial resource dependence generated a negative impact on economic sustainability related to unfair prices and unfair trade. The results, thus, showed the detrimental influence of intermediaries among AFSC members on SCS adoption.

A greater understanding of power imbalance and dependence can help AFSC members to identify their weaknesses and develop actions to adopt sustainability.

Unlike previous research, the authors go beyond the often positive research focus of SCS studies and provide, through the resource dependence theory, a longitudinal view on how power imbalance negatively affects SCS adoption.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether a company’s sustainability practices affect job seekers’ perceptions of the attractiveness of the company as a potential employer.

A survey completed by 259 university students assessed the respondents’ attitudes toward sustainability. Participants were then presented a series of scenarios describing the sustainable practices of hypothetical companies using the triple bottom line factors of sustainability (economic, environmental and social) and were asked how attractive they found the company to be and the likelihood that they would accept a job offer from the company.

The findings indicate that sustainability as a single concept and each sustainability factor individually influenced the attractiveness of a company to potential employees.

The results of the study add to the body of job choice research, specifically as related to sustainability practices of companies. It furthers the body of work related to signaling theory and job attractiveness.

The results of this study indicate that sustainability performance is an important factor in determining the attractiveness of a company to potential applicants.

The research highlights the importance of sustainability to potential job applicants. Companies should be aware that positive sustainability performance can make it more attractive to these applicants. The results reported from this research provides additional motivation for companies to pursue efforts in sustainability.

The research builds upon existing research in the fields of sustainability and job choice. While previous research has looked at many factors regarding applicants and job choice including, no other research was found which explicitly considered the triple bottom line factors of sustainability.

The role of entrepreneurship has changed to include issues beyond economic growth. This has turned attention toward the drivers of entrepreneurial intentions across entrepreneurship types, particularly in sustainable entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to examine the drivers of entrepreneurial intentions in sustainable entrepreneurship. In particular, the paper aims to extend the existing intention models to include work values and attitudes toward sustainability, thereby bringing the model into the context of sustainable entrepreneurship.

Using a quantitative research design, data were collected in three European countries through anonymous questionnaires. The data consist of responses from 393 university students.

The results show that attitude toward sustainability and perceived entrepreneurial desirability enhance sustainability-oriented entrepreneurial intentions. Moreover, adding sustainability into the regression equation adds explanation power, hence suggesting that the theory of planned behavior needs to be adapted when applied to sustainable entrepreneurship. Attitudes toward sustainability are positively impacted by altruism, while perceived entrepreneurial desirability is driven by intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

The study focuses on one particular type of entrepreneurship and one particular age group.

The paper contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by applying the entrepreneurial intention model to sustainable entrepreneurship. The results imply that it may be the time to consider the variance in entrepreneurial opportunities in intention models as well as the need to address the conflict between work values. The results show that sustainability-oriented entrepreneurial intentions are driven by attitudes toward sustainability and perceived entrepreneurial desirability. These two attitudes are driven by altruism and extrinsic rewards, and, especially, extrinsic reward plays an opposite role in both drivers of sustainability-oriented entrepreneurial intentions.

Today, the sustainability and outreach of microfinance institutions (MFIs) are crucial to the success of microfinance and the sector’s potential to make a lasting impact. The ability of MFIs to operate financially well without sacrificing their social goals has come under scrutiny. This study aims to identify the kind of relationships between the two objectives of MFIs in Ethiopia.

This study investigated the association between the outreach and financial sustainability of Ethiopian MFIs from the years 2012 to 2021 using a balanced set of panel data. The study used secondary data and employed a descriptive research design and a quantitative research approach. To this end, random and fixed effects estimation models, as well as three-stage least squares, with the model of seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) are used.

According to the study, outreach performance enables MFIs to achieve sustainability/financial performance. On the other side, MFI that are financially sound improve social performance. There was therefore no trade-off between the two objectives.

As Ethiopia’s microfinance sector shifts away from government and non-government backing and toward commercialization, such research is crucial. This aspect of the Ethiopian microfinance industry has gotten little consideration in research. The SUR model was used in the study together with random and fixed effect estimators, and the most reliable estimation result was chosen based on the necessary tests.

Associated with status, excess and wastefulness, the consumption of luxury is perceived as the antithesis to sustainable development. Entrepreneurs create business cases to mediate positive sustainability changes, which transform markets and institutional arrangements. The purpose of this paper is to propose the concept of value-in-impact as an interface concept to integrate perspectives from entrepreneurship, marketing and ecological economics. It provides interdisciplinarily applicable, generalizable concepts to describe social entrepreneurs’ personal motivations to reconfigure market structures to produce sustainability change.

The case of Ecuadorian luxury chocolate manufactory To’ak is described in the context of the three pillars of sustainability, chocolate producers and cacao suppliers. Thematic analysis of the founders’ personal narratives provides insight regarding their motivation to use ostensibly antithetical luxury marketing for rainforest preservation and to foster self-reliant communities.

To’ak pays premium prices to create incentives to community farmers to propagate the rare, DNA-certified cacao exclusive to their products, thereby marginalizing oppressive suppliers. The company’s founders are motivated to excellence in the chocolate industry, having witnessed the loss of the cultural meaning of cacao, rainforest degradation and the dissipation of associated communities. The case study findings illustrate how value-in-impact is interpreted as purposeful configuration of value-in-use and value-in-exchange on luxury markets to produce positive sustainability change.

The notion of value-in-impact describes higher order conceptualizations in business research. It encompasses a holistic understanding of the dynamics within and between societal and natural ecosystems. Its application at the marketing/entrepreneurship interface can lead to improved management and policy decisions.