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The aim of this study is to develop a framework that incorporates social aspects of housing refurbishment when evaluating the sustainability of refurbishment projects. The research examined whether the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) certification yields a holistic approach to social sustainability.

A framework for social sustainability was established from values identified through reviews of certification systems, published literature and from interviews. The target is to better assess and value holistic and soft parameters like social sustainability when assessing the overall value creation of projects.

The result was a more transparent and systematic structure, which revealed that the DGNB certification had shortcomings in a holistic approach to social sustainability. Counteractions for these shortcomings are discussed.

Researchers are still discussing how to include more soft aspects like social aspects with the more hard measures like energy consumption and initial cost in the same equation for addressing sustainability in a more holistic framework. This research contributes to this.

Considering the current climate situation and the amount and the state of existing European building stock, sustainable renovation is inevitable. In Europe, the DGNB certification is one of the most applied certification systems of sustainability. It approaches all parts of sustainability. Yet, social sustainability has been criticised for being neglected.

A review of literature concerning the concept suggests that it is a concept in chaos. There have been a number of attempts to impose some order to this; however, the attempts have all been made differently and with limited success.

To understand the context surrounding the sustainable supplier management (SSM) process (i.e. selection, development and evaluation), this paper aims to explore institutional logics existing in the Ecuadorian cocoa supply chain (SC). By considering local characteristics and sustainability practices, this study illustrates how competing logic influences SSM.

This paper uses a multiple-case study method for which the authors interviewed different cocoa SC members in Ecuador and used a ground-up approach to analyse the data and reveal singularities influencing sustainability management.

The analysis uncovered two main logics operating within the Ecuadorian cocoa SC SSM process: a commercial logic (e.g. potential for market access, product traceability) and a sustainability logic (e.g. local development and traditions/cultural issues). These logics address market demand requirements; however, some local producers’ needs that impact SSM remains unexplored such as the existence of a regional ancestral culture that poses sustainability as a dominant logic with meaning beyond the triple bottom line. While the two logics have influenced supplier sustainability performance, this paper finds that, of the three SSM sub-processes (selection, development and evaluation), supplier development was the most relevant sub-process receiving attention from SC managers in the studied context.

By understanding the differences in logic and needs, SC managers can better develop strategies for SSM.

The study highlighted in this paper investigated the underexplored topic of the effects that competing logic may have on SSM. This paper focusses on the supplier’s point of view regarding sustainability requirements, addressing a consistent research gap in the literature.

The adoption of traceability systems (TS) and sustainability programs responds to different objectives among which the companies need to be considered legitimate; hence, this study aims, first, to identify what is the relationship between traceability and sustainability in the food supply chain (SC) and, second, to characterize the legitimacy-seeking purposes, i.e. moral, cogniti60ve or pragmatic-driving companies to implement TS along with sustainability initiatives.

This study analyses the coffee SC, a globally dispersed commodity chain, where traceability initiatives usually respond to mandatory and voluntary quality standards and certifications of origin. The study involves nine cases at different stages of the coffee SC.

This study provides a taxonomy of the TS applied in the coffee SC. In addition, three main approaches to traceability for sustainability are found in the coffee SC: synergistic, complementary or disconnected. Findings also reveal how traceability responds to different legitimacy-seeking objectives while triggering or complementing sustainability practices. Five research propositions and related directions for further investigations are elaborated from the results of our study.

This study explores a rather limited studied area, investigating how companies in a food commodity chain address traceability and sustainability together while seeking legitimacy in the market. Moreover, the study is grounded on legitimacy theory, thus adding robustness to the analysis.

This research aims to contribute to the literature on sustainable hospitality and tourism by applying social network analysis to identify sustainable tourism business networks and untangle the role of cognitive and geographical proximity in their formation.

Data mining and machine learning techniques were applied to data collected from the websites of tourism companies located in northeastern Italy, namely, the Veneto region. Specifically, the authors used Web scraping to extract relevant information from the internet.

The results support the existence of geographical clusters of tourist accommodation providers that are linked by strong cognitive proximity based on sustainability principles that are well communicated via their websites. This does not appear to be greenwashing because companies that have agreed on sustainability principles have also implemented concrete actions and tend to signal these actions through a variety of sustainability certifications.

The results may guide tourism managers and policymakers in developing tourism initiatives directed at the creation of fruitful collaborations between similarly oriented organizations and methods to support clusters of sustainable tourism accommodation. Identifying sustainable tourism networks may assist in the identification of potential actors of change, fueling a widespread transition toward sustainability.

In this study, the authors adopted an innovative methodology to detect sustainability-oriented tourism business networks. Additionally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to simultaneously explore the cognitive and geographical connections between tourism businesses.

Environmentally-friendly certifications have increased over the past decade within food supply chains. Although a large body of literature has explored the drivers leading firms to adopt such certifications, it has not closely examined the strategic motivations associated with their adoption. This paper aims to investigate an environmentally-friendly certification, VIVA, examining its role as an alternative form of supply chain governance. The aim is to investigate the drivers affecting the adoption of VIVA and to assess managerial perceptions related to transaction-related characteristics and the firm’s internal resources and capabilities.

This study draws upon both an extended transaction cost economics perspective, which is based on transaction risks and the resource-based view, which examines a firm’s internal resources. A survey was conducted via a structured questionnaire sent to all of the wine producers in charge of the decision regarding whether to adopt VIVA certification. A Hierarchal Bayesian Model was applied to analyse questionnaire responses. Such a model allows us to specify the probabilistic relationship between questions and latent constructs and to carry over uncertainty across modelling levels.

The adoption of this environmentally-friendly certification is envisioned as a tool to curb internal risks, and thus to manage behavioural uncertainty within the supply chain. A high level of exposure to exogenous transaction risks discourages firms from adopting VIVA certification. The certification system is not perceived as a promoter of operational capabilities. Managers are more likely to implement the certification when they expect that its adoption will leverage their potential knowledge of the supply chain or prompt new and better collaborations with the suppliers. Therefore, the certification can become a resource that interacts with the capabilities of the firm, expressing complementarities that stimulate the formation of dynamic capabilities.

The identification of drivers from the two theoretical perspectives offers insights into the attributes that are perceived as important by managers and which, therefore, could be leveraged to foster the adoption of the environmental certification. The external validity of the study could be improved by extending the sample to other certifications and supply chains.

The study offers a different perspective on environmental certification. It demonstrates that considering the certification as an alternative form of supply chain governance opens up a set of efficiency and strategic considerations that could be addressed to promote the effectiveness of an environmental strategy within a supply chain

This paper examines the potential of “biomarkers” to provide immutable identification for food products (chocolate), providing traceability and visibility in the supply chain from retail product back to farm.

This research uses qualitative data collection, including fieldwork at cocoa farms and chocolate manufacturers in Ecuador and the Netherlands and semi-structured interviews with industry professionals to identify challenges and create a supply chain map from cocoa plant to retailer, validated by area experts. A library of biomarkers is created using DNA collected from fieldwork and the International Cocoa Quarantine Centre, holders of cocoa varieties from known locations around the world. Matching sample biomarkers with those in the library enables identification of origins of cocoa used in a product, even when it comes from multiple different sources and has been processed.

Supply chain mapping and interviews identify areas of the cocoa supply chain that lack the visibility required for management to guarantee sustainability and quality. A decoupling point, where smaller farms/traders’ goods are combined to create larger economic units, obscures product origins and limits visibility. These factors underpin a potential boundary condition to institutional theory in the industry’s fatalism to environmental and human abuses in the face of rising institutional pressures. Biomarkers reliably identify product origin, including specific farms and (fermentation) processing locations, providing visibility and facilitating control and trust when purchasing cocoa.

The biomarker “meta-barcoding” of cocoa beans used in chocolate manufacturing accurately identifies the farm, production facility or cooperative, where a cocoa product came from. A controlled data set of biomarkers of registered locations is required for audit to link chocolate products to origin.

Where biomarkers can be produced from organic products, they offer a method for closing visibility gaps, enabling responsible sourcing. Labels (QR codes, barcodes, etc.) can be swapped and products tampered with, but biological markers reduce reliance on physical tags, diminishing the potential for fraud. Biomarkers identify product composition, pinpointing specific farm(s) of origin for cocoa in chocolate, allowing targeted audits of suppliers and identifying if cocoa of unknown origin is present. Labour and environmental abuses exist in many supply chains and enabling upstream visibility may help firms address these challenges.

By describing a method for firms in cocoa supply chains to scientifically track their cocoa back to the farm level, the research shows that organizations can conduct social audits for child labour and environmental abuses at specific farms proven to be in their supply chains. This provides a method for delivering supply chain visibility (SCV) for firms serious about tackling such problems.

This paper provides one of the very first examples of biomarkers for agricultural SCV. An in-depth study of stakeholders from the cocoa and chocolate industry elucidates problematic areas in cocoa supply chains. Biomarkers provide a unique biological product identifier. Biomarkers can support efforts to address environmental and social sustainability issues such as child labour, modern slavery and deforestation by providing visibility into previously hidden areas of the supply chain.

This paper aims to explore why a company voluntarily engages in the sustainability reporting process, how this process becomes institutionalised and the resulting effects.

The research focusses on a single case study, conducted following an action research approach and interpreted through the lens of institutional work. According to the institutional work theoretical perspective, the individual or organisation is responsible for creating, maintaining or disrupting institutions.

The case company, Deco S.p.A., undertook sustainability reporting to clarify the values that the company was founded upon and how those values translate into management practice. By institutionalising the sustainability reporting process, Deco S.p.A. found its corporate climate improved, various aspects of its operations could be rationalised and the information gathered to produce the report was valuable for decision support.

This research project contributes to understanding why and how a company institutionalises its sustainability reporting. It also provides a better understanding of the internal forces that drive the voluntary reporting of sustainability issues and sheds light on the stages of the institutionalisation process.

The authors find that universities have a role to play in promoting the sustainability of companies, as they can transform the knowledge produced from research into useful knowledge for managing and reporting sustainability issues.

This four-year action research project contributes to the literature on both engagement research and the institutionalisation of sustainability reporting practices. The authors also expose some of the drivers affecting a company’s approach to sustainability reporting.

The purpose of the paper is to critically evaluate the applicability of bio certification in farmers' activity to reduce unfair trading practices in the food supply chain. The secondary purposes are describing the economic reasons of using bio certification and perspectives of using web trading platforms among food producers.

Data collection included face-to-face interviews with 15 Austrian and German farmers who operate on bio food markets as well as a quantitative survey regarding their assessment of unfair trading practices. This study presents both quantitative and qualitative analyses.

Bio certification is more likely unable to eliminate or mitigate unfair trading practices in the food supply chain, however bio certification is able to increase efficiency of farmers together with other web tools.

The study is the first to empirically investigate the applicability of bio certifications, its advantages and impact on unfair trading practices in the food supply chain. It focuses on small and medium-sized food producers and farmers. The research also reveals the perspectives of using web trading platforms in farming activity.

This study explores the scope, materiality and extent of environmental and social sustainability disclosure – as benchmarked against the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI-G4) – of the top 10 logistics firms operating in Australia. It also investigates the relationships between the extent of environmental and social sustainability disclosure of these firms and their actual financial performance.

The authors adopted an inductive case study approach for an in-depth investigation of the relationships among concepts. A content analysis of the firms' sustainability reports was performed to determine their pattern and extent of sustainability disclosure against the GRI framework. A disclosure–performance analysis (DPA) matrix was employed to relate the extent of environmental and social sustainability disclosure of these 10 firms with their actual financial performance (i.e. return on assets [ROA] and total revenue growth).

This study found that the extent of sustainability reporting was relatively high on the labour practices and decent work subgroup, followed by the environmental dimension of the GRI-G4 framework. However, it was relatively low on the society, human rights and product responsibility subgroups of the GRI framework. The DPA revealed that “Leaders” (firms with higher sustainability disclosure levels) achieved significantly higher ROA. However, “Opportunists” (firms with lower sustainability disclosure levels) achieved higher levels of financial returns (i.e. ROA and total revenue growth) with less attention to sustainability issues, which contradicts the win-win view of the sustainability disclosure–financial performance relationship.

First, this study contributes an in-depth review of sustainability disclosure practices of top logistics firms operating in Australia. Second, using DPA, it identifies the novel effects of environmental and social sustainability disclosure levels on these firms' financial performance. It also sheds further light on the potential effect of investments beyond substantial profitability for sustainability growth and corporate governance on the sustainability disclosure–financial performance relationship.