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The present study aims to inform the requirements for developing a sustainable rating tool for small-scale infrastructure projects (SSIPs) through research findings.

A review-based comparative study of existing infrastructure sustainability (IS) rating tools for assessment of SSIPs is presented. Key stakeholder participants of the existing IS rating tools, are interviewed to identify existing barriers and requirements for sustainability rating. The study further presents possible rating tool options to optimise the sustainable performance evaluation of SSIPs.

Findings of this study indicated that prevalent IS rating tools are majorly applied to large-scale infrastructure projects and sustainability of SSIPs are seldom assessed. Based on a literature review and series of interviews, it was found that user friendliness, efficient structure, training and technical support, cost effectiveness and stakeholder recognition are the five key requirements of a sustainability rating tool for SSIPs. Additionally, six sustainability assessment options were proposed for SSIPs which range from pathways for existing tools through to new, customisable tools. Upon comparison, a new modified tool with verification process and revised tool with defined grouping of sustainable criteria was more effective for evaluation of SSIPs.

Use of case specific information for validation and framework development may lack generalisation. However, methodology can be used for future decision-making by making necessary adjustments to suit different local regional requirements.

Despite lack of generalisation, the findings can lead to future general studies on sustainability of SSIPs. Findings of the study provide foundation knowledge and awareness for sustainability evaluation of SSIPs.

This research paper aims to address the scarcity of social sustainability (SS) in construction by developing a Social Sustainability Assessment Tool (SocSAT), further demonstrating the tool's applicability in measuring SS practices across the construction project life cycle.

Various research methods were used to establish the assessment criteria, including literature review, focused group discussions and structured interviews. Subsequently, the SocSAT was developed using proprietary spreadsheet software, which was further demonstrated its applicability and validity using ten project case studies.

The SocSAT was built on 19 indicators for pre-construction, 25 indicators for construction, and 4 indicators for post-construction phases. The SocSAT offers a comprehensive means for practitioners to assess and monitor SS practices across project phases. The findings indicate that the SocSAT is a straightforward and user-friendly assessment tool that enables practitioners to self-diagnose and better comprehend the present SS practices across the project life cycle.

Limitations include the context-specific nature of validating the SocSAT.

SocSAT enables construction practitioners to monitor and improve their SS practices effectively, facilitating informed decision-making and promoting sustainable construction. The tool is a valuable guide for stakeholders to incorporate SS considerations, ensuring transparent communication and project success.

This research fills a gap in SS research within the construction industry. The SocSAT offers theoretical advancements with practical value, providing a standardized approach to objectively measure the SS dimension across construction project life cycles.

This work conducts a comprehensive analysis of how to incorporate resilience and sustainability into capacity expansion strategies for business-to-business (B2B) chemical supply chains. This study aims to guide both researchers and managers on ensuring profitability in B2B chemical supply chains while minimizing environmental impacts, complying with regulations and mitigating disruptions and risks.

A systematic literature review is conducted to analyze the interplay between sustainability and resilience in chemical B2B supply chains, specify the quantitative and qualitative methods used to tackle this challenge and identify the drivers and barriers concerning capacity expansion. In addition, a comprehensive conceptual framework is suggested to outline a compelling research agenda.

The findings emphasize the increasing importance of modeling and resolving decision-making challenges related to sustainable and resilient supply chains, particularly in capital-intensive chemical industries. Yet, there is no standardized strategy for addressing these challenges. The predominant solution methods are heuristic and metaheuristic, and the selection of performance metrics tends to be empirical and tailored to specific cases. The main barriers to achieving sustainability and resilience arise from resource limitations within the supply chain. Conversely, the key drivers of performance focus on enhancing efficiency, competitiveness, cost effectiveness and risk management.

This work offers practitioners a conceptual framework that synthesizes the knowledge and tackles the challenges of designing sustainable and resilient supply chains as well as managing their operations in the context of B2B chemical supply chains. Results provide a practical guide for navigating the complex interplay of sustainability, resilience and chemical supply chain expansion.

The key concepts and dimensions associated with capacity expansion planning for a resilient and sustainable chemical supply chain are identified through structured and comprehensive analyses of existing literature. A conceptual framework is proposed for delineating the intersections among sustainability, resilience and chemical supply chain expansions. This mapping endeavor aims to facilitate a future characterized by the deployment of a nexus of resilience and sustainability in chemical supply chains. To this end, a promising future research agenda is accordingly outlined.

Studies in corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure were initially focused more on disclosure “Quantity” than “Quality” and while they have started to explore “Disclosure Quality”, their assessment mechanisms are found to be immature. Thus, while a number of papers have sought to assess the quality of CSR disclosure, this paper aims to suggest an approach tied closely to both expectations in assessing “quality” derived from the Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting (revised 2018) and the global reporting initiative. The outcome is to offer a best practice approach to assessing CSR disclosure quality.

In this paper, prior literature is reviewed, qualitative characteristics from the Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting (revised 2018) and globally recognised guidelines such as the GRI are reviewed. The framework for a “CSR disclosure quality index” as an assessment tool to assess CSR disclosure quality is developed from qualitative characteristics and criteria identified.

The proposed CSR disclosure quality index is developed in stages from the qualitative characteristics identified in the Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting (revised 2018) and criteria identified from the guidelines discussed. A table was then developed linking the qualitative characteristics to criteria providing a Likert scale approach to assessing the disclosures made by companies to make an assessment of the quality of the companies’ reports. It is argued this provides a robust assessment, being a direct and comprehensive measure of disclosure quality.

As with most qualitative work, there are alternative approaches to establishing an index, but the authors believe this is an approach offering links (and, therefore, credibility) to globally recognised guidelines in the assessment of CSR disclosure quality. Future work could enhance the alignment of this index with the sustainable development goals (SDGs), building on the preliminary connections established in this study.

At a practical level this index offers an approach to reviewing the quality of CSR disclosures which could prove useful to policymakers and in the future development and expansion of this framework offering greater objectivity to assessments and justification for proposed improvement in reporting practice. Also, this index serves as a benchmarking tool for companies to meet the disclosure expectations of stakeholders.

This approach has the potential to substantially fulfil stakeholder expectations by addressing the growing demand for transparency in this area, while avoiding practices that could be perceived as superficial or misleading (greenwashing). Focusing on social issues enables stronger connections between companies and their stakeholders. Furthermore, the index helps companies link their CSR efforts with SDGs and show their commitment to long-term social value building in discussion of governance factors to show accountability expectations are being met.

This paper contributes to CSR disclosure quality literature and provides a reliable method of assessing the quality of CSR disclosures. Opportunities for further and broader developments can be envisaged while offering a credible and reliable approach.

India’s manufacturing sector employs about 12% of the labour force and contributes to about 17% of the nation’s GDP. The Indian government intends to implement several initiatives under the “Make in India” and Atma Nirbhar Bharat banners to increase the manufacturing sector’s share of the nation’s GDP to 25% by 2025. Applying lean manufacturing, green manufacturing and Six Sigma is crucial to ensure that India’s manufacturing sectors grow sustainably in international markets. This study aims to identify sustainability indicators and ascertain their respective weights to evaluate the sustainability performance of the Indian manufacturing industry.

This research identifies 25 sustainability indicators and classifies them into the triple bottom line of sustainability based on an evaluative literature review and expert opinion. The Best Worst Method was utilised to determine the weights of the sustainability indicators. The sustainability index was developed to evaluate economic, social and environmental sustainability.

The sustainability performance of a foundry in a significant Western Indian State city was assessed by applying the developed sustainability index. After the adoption of integrated lean, green and Six Sigma (LG&SS) strategies and related practices in the foundry, there has been a notable improvement of 68.03% in the economic index, 61.62% in the social index and 13.24% in the environmental index.

The proposed sustainability index is applied and evaluated specifically for assessing the sustainability performance of Indian manufacturing SMEs. It can be used to substantiate firm’s sustainability performance and also to assess the improvement in firm’s performance in economic, environmental and social dimensions after implementing various operational excellence practices. However, it cannot serve as a benchmark tool across similar companies or organisations.

The developed sustainable index can be used to analyse the company or organisation’s sustainability performance and see how various strategies have improved things. Practitioners can use this index to assess social, economic and environmental performance and focus on areas that need improvement.

The proposed sustainability index serves as a vital tool for monitoring a firm’s progress in triple bottom line (TBL) dimensions of sustainability, tracking a diverse range of indicators and encouraging sustainable organisational practices.

This study attempts to assess the economic, social and environmental performance of Indian Manufacturing SMEs by proposing a sustainability index.

This research paper aims to evaluate the sustainability knowledge and background of students, staff and faculty regarding current university sustainability practices and individual behaviors at Central Michigan University (CMU); to compare sustainability background and knowledge based on academic discipline of enrollment or employment; and to assess sustainability awareness and interest of the campus community to guide future sustainability initiatives and resources at CMU.

An electronic cross-sectional survey was used to collect anonymous responses through Qualtrics, and then results were analyzed through SPSS. Analyses were performed based on the academic structures at CMU.

This research has found that students in STEM fields are more inclined to have pro-sustainability attitudes, knowledge and behaviors, compared to those studying the arts and business. Additionally, results indicate that there is a significant difference in knowledge between the students, and the staff and faculty respondents regarding sustainability knowledge and application, with the staff and faculty consistently demonstrating more pro-sustainability knowledge and behavior.

While research has previously been conducted on sustainability attitudes and behaviors, this research is unique because it ties sustainability knowledge to academic discipline. Additionally, it serves to gauge which sustainability programs and topics members of the campus community are most interested in, and which areas they are most willing to support.

The purpose of this study is to investigate what sustainability initiatives are being implemented by Canadian independent restaurants and to determine if the initiatives represent all 10 categories of a sustainable restaurant as established by a sustainability initiative framework.

The study uses a qualitative approach of semi-structured interviews with 15 small to medium enterprise (SME), independent restaurant owners and operators across Canada. The data was digitally transcribed and thematic analysis was performed.

Results indicated that most initiatives aligned with the categories of “sustainable food/menu” and “waste reduction and disposables” which shows that the operators were inclined to pursue initiatives in customer view. Restaurants put limited focus on water supply, chemicals and pollution reduction, furniture and construction materials. Some of the barriers to implementing, measuring and learning about initiatives were: cost, lack of access to programs, supply chain complications, not having buy-in from owners and lack of time to implement.

The study recommends that governments provide incentives to implement sustainability initiatives that are out of sight to the customer. For example, implementing composting, energy efficient equipment and water saving processes. It is also recommended that third-party restaurant organizations provide more accurate, evidence-based guidance and education on implementing a wide-range of sustainability initiatives.

This research contributes to the literature on sustainability in restaurants and applies a sustainability initiative framework in a practical context. The study provides a unique assessment of the current state of restaurant sustainability and states where restaurants need to improve their efforts.

Integrating sustainability into university curricula brings diverse challenges and conflicts as separate units vie for ownership of courses and topics. This case study presents a six dimensions sustainability framework developed at The Ohio State University to organize curricula under an inclusive strategy.

An interdisciplinary group of faculty focused on sustainability education engaged in a three-phased process including review of sustainability definitions from diverse disciplines; analysis of key aspects of the definitions in conjunction with course descriptions and learning outcomes; and identification of commonalities across the key aspects. This yielded six foundational dimensions of sustainability which serve as a means to assess curricular contributions across University units and topics. The six dimensions framework has been used in practice in multiple contexts.

The six dimensions framework provides a way to identify and foster diverse sustainability curricula efforts. It has enabled academic units to describe their disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives on diverse sustainability topics and the University to advance a broad sustainability vision.

The six dimensions framework provides a novel “big tent” approach to integration of sustainability into higher education curricula. The framework provides guidance about what counts as sustainability while maintaining the breadth that widens participation.

This bibliometric analysis underscores the increasing importance of corporate sustainability in the post-COVID-19 era. Despite existing confusion and a dearth of studies on measuring corporate sustainability, the study identifies a significant methodological gap and endeavors to address it by proposing a comprehensive measure. The primary goal is to bridge this gap by conducting a bibliometric analysis on the scale of corporate sustainability, examining 126 documents spanning from 2001 to 2022. The study employs an expert opinion survey to identify and finalize dimensions and sub-dimensions of corporate sustainability, followed by a literature mapping process to formulate questionnaire items. A pilot survey is then conducted to ensure the reliability of the questionnaire. The study proposes utilizing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) index construction methodology to establish the Corporate Sustainability Index (CSI). The key findings reveal that corporate sustainability comprises economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Environmental sustainability encompasses aspects such as air, water, land, biodiversity, ocean preservation, waste prevention, and environmental management. Social sustainability involves the satisfaction of various stakeholders, including employees, shareholders, customers, community, government, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and suppliers. Economic sustainability is characterized by long-term profits, cost efficiency, trade-offs, sustainable investments, and spin-offs. Rooted in stakeholder theory, the proposed scale holds theoretical significance for researchers and is pertinent to policymakers striving to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030. Additionally, it serves as a crucial tool for practitioners and companies to assess their level of corporate sustainability.

The case was devised using secondary sources of data collection from annual reports, sustainability reports and the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) website. These documents provided insights into the HPCL’s sustainability initiatives, financial performance and disclosure practices. Other data were obtained through the websites of the relevant businesses/sectors.

In March 2022, Pushp Kumar Joshi, chairman and managing director of HPCL, contemplates the oil giant’s sustainability strategy amid challenges. Despite a 38% revenue increase in financial year 2021–2022, profits dropped because of reduced refinery capacity. HPCL, a major player in India’s oil and gas industry, recognized the need to align with climate goals and changing consumer expectations. Joshi emphasized stakeholder engagement, carbon mitigation, technology adoption and transparent environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting. A materiality assessment highlighted key issues like gender diversity, air quality and the low-carbon transition. Joshi grapples with balancing profitability and sustainability amid stakeholder pressure and market fluctuations, seeking advice from the sustainability team for the future.

This can potentially be a case study for a business management course, particularly focusing on sustainability, corporate social responsibility and strategic decision-making. It could be used at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in courses related to business administration, sustainability management, corporate strategy, environmental management or stakeholder engagement. The case could be analyzed to discuss the challenges and opportunities faced by a company like HPCL in balancing profitability and sustainability, developing effective sustainability strategies, integrating ESG considerations and managing stakeholder expectations.

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