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Adopting sustainable construction practices minimizes the overall environmental impact of the built asset throughout its whole life. Currently, there is demand from key stakeholders in the construction industry for organization to deliver sustainable built environment, however, leaders/champions within construction organizations charged with the adoption of sustainable construction practices face many challenges. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of an investigation into the challenges facing intra-organizational leaders charged with the promotion of sustainable construction practices.

Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interview with 15 leaders, followed by an industry-wide survey of 200 intra-organizational leaders in contractor and consultant organizations in the UK construction industry.

The results revealed that increased capital cost is the most significant challenge facing construction organizations in attempt to adopt sustainability practices in the delivery of construction projects.

This study provides the empirical evidence linking leadership within construction organizations and sustainability; filling the gap in literature and serving as a source of reference material for higher education programmes in the built environment.

The goal of this paper is to enhance consideration for the potential for institutions of higher education throughout the world, in different cultures and contexts, to be change agents for sustainability. As society faces unprecedented and increasingly urgent challenges associated with accelerating environmental change, resource scarcity, increasing inequality and injustice, as well as rapid technological change, new opportunities for higher education are emerging.

The paper builds on the emerging literature on transition management and identifies five critical issues to be considered in assessing the potential for higher education as a change agent in any particular region or place. To demonstrate the value of these critical issues, exemplary challenges and opportunities in different contexts are provided.

The five critical issues include regional‐specific dominant sustainability challenges, financing structure and independence, institutional organization, the extent of democratic processes, and communication and interaction with society.

Given that the challenges and opportunities for higher education as a change agent are context‐specific, identifying, synthesizing, and integrating common themes is a valuable and unique contribution.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the sustainability indicators disclosed by ten British Coffee Association corporate members in their sustainability reporting and examine whether the indicators correspond to the sustainability challenges faced by the coffee industry, as identified in the literature.

A normative account of sustainability challenges was developed based on a review of extant literature. A content analysis of the sustainability reports and/or Webpages of the companies was conducted to identify quantitative and qualitative sustainability indicators. Frequency and thematic analysis enabled the subsequent examination.

A total of 94 sustainability indicators (44 environmental, 30 social and 20 economic) were identified in company reporting. The indicators correspond to the sustainability challenges identified in the literature. In addition to broad challenges, indicators are used to communicate specific issues. A significant number (47) of single-use indicators were identified, communicating less frequently reported challenges. Some companies account for sustainability from bean to cup, attributed to crucial differences in organisational characteristics (degree of vertical integration). Furthermore, the findings highlight the discretionary nature of sustainability reporting, finding considerable variance in indicators disclosed.

As this paper relies on self-reported corporate disclosures, it critically examines the reporting practices of organisations, as opposed to verifying the activities associated with their claims. The authors minimised subjectivity by reducing the interpretation of what constituted “an indicator” using a clearly agreed definition and multiple rounds of coding.

This paper examines the reporting practices of organisations, providing a useful insight and a competitor benchmark. By comprehensively examining the sustainability challenges faced by the coffee industry, it offers “sustainability context” that can be used by organisations to improve their accounting and reporting practices.

This paper acknowledges and addresses social initiatives that call for the systematic development of practical and appropriate sustainability indicators that can become embedded in policy and decision-making, affecting the measurement of progress and responses to important sustainability challenges.

This paper presents the first systematic review of sustainability indicator disclosure in an industry that faces significant sustainability challenges.

This chapter aims to identify, analyse, classify and rank the sustainability indices and internationalisation challenges of the footwear industry in the emerging economy of Iran. This would provide deeper decision-making insights into Iranian footwear businesses. First, a list of sustainability indices and internationalisation challenges was obtained by reviewing the literature. Then, a combination of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches was implemented. The initial sustainability indices and internationalisation challenges were screened using the fuzzy Delphi method, keeping a total of 14 criteria. The best–worst method (BWM) was employed to weigh and rank the criteria. The interpretive structural modelling (ISM) technique and cross-impact matrix applied in MICMAC were employed to visualise the conceptual model based on the levels and classification of the important criteria for the internationalisation of the Iranian footwear industry. The 14 criteria were demonstrated to be important in internationalisation. The most critical sustainability indices were reducing hazardous substances in leather tanning and labour education and training. In contrast, exchange rate instability in Iran’s economy and strict chemical regulations for clothing and footwear were found to be the most important internationalisation challenges. Hence, these criteria should be considered in the internationalisation strategies of the Iranian footwear industry. A combined multilayer sustainable decision-making approach was used to analyse the Iranian footwear industry’s essential sustainability indices and internationalisation challenges. Furthermore, implications and insights are offered to footwear businesses for future decision-making.

The current study aims to deliver a consolidated view of environmental sustainability in cold supply chain performance systems (CSCPS), incorporating theoretical and empirical analysis for improving environmental standards. For this purpose, this study firstly aims to explore and analyze the various crucial challenging factors for environmental sustainability in the cold supply chain (CSC). Secondly, it discovers the most effective sustainable strategies for improving the environmental sustainability of CSCPS.

The exploration of the crucial challenging factors and the proposed sustainable strategies have been done using a systematic literature review relevant to the sustainable performance of CSC. At the same time, semi-structured brainstorming sessions were conducted with the domain professionals having an industrial and academic background to finalize the strategies. Empirical analysis has been performed using an intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) based hybrid approach of SWARA and COPRAS methods.

The key findings of the study address that “higher energy consumption during refrigerated transportation and storage” is the most crucial challenge for environmental sustainability in CSC. In addition, “managerial refrain to profit decline due to sustainability implementation” is the second most crucial challenge that hinders the adoption of sustainable practices in CSCs. Meanwhile, the governmental attention to motivating organizations for green adoption and implementation of solar energy-driven refrigeration technologies are the two most important discoveries of the study that might help in improving CSC's environmental performance.

From the implications side, the study enriches and extends the current literature content on CSC sustainability. In addition, it offers sound managerial implications by identifying the challenges that create threats among the management for sustainability adoption and suggesting the most suitable sustainable strategies, which may help the management to raise the environmental performance of their CSC. Besides having various important theoretical and managerial implications for the study, contemplation of only environmental sustainability traits as a broader perspective limits the scope of the study.

The study's main contribution is the exploration of the most crucial challenges imparting obstructions in sustainable development and sustainable strategies, which may get the interest of the CSC players, market leaders, and industrial and academic practitioners working in the domain of CSC sustainability. In addition, this study offers structured theoretical and empirical evidence for CSC's environmental sustainability, thus playing a bridging role between theoretical sustainability concepts and its practical implications in CSC industries.

Despite advances in Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) scholarship and practice, ESE has not yet contributed to mitigate the sustainability-related problems it is meant to remedy. As part of an explanation, some scholars have argued that current ESE scholarship and practice overemphasizes intellectual and neglects (intra-)personal competencies as envisaged learning outcomes of ESE learning programs and activities. To date, however, such personal competencies have not been systematically specified in terms of the challenges they are meant to respond to. This paper aims to derive personal competencies from an analysis of inner challenges individuals face when engaging with the cause of sustainable consumption.

The study is conceptual and proceeds in two steps: In the first step, it analyzes existing research on challenges individuals experience when intending to change their consumer behavior and engaging in consumption-related learning activities. In a second step, a set of personal competencies for sustainable consumption are derived from the analysis of challenges. Based on the set of competencies, suggestions for future research empirically corroborating the reflections of this paper are made.

The discussion of challenges indicates that both sustainable consumption and consumption-related learning activities can come along with a series of affective-motivational challenges. In contrast to established competency frameworks, personal competencies emphasize the importance of affective-motivational learning outcomes instead of intellectual ones. They are defined here as abilities, proficiencies or skills related to inner states and processes that can be considered necessary to engage with the cause of sustainability. Personal competencies responding to the inner challenges of engaging with sustainable consumption include ethics, self-awareness, emotional resilience, self-care, access to and cultivation of ethical qualities and mindsets for sustainability.

Given that this paper is conceptual, further research is needed to empirically inquire into the importance of personal competencies for sustainable consumption and corroborate the provided reflections. Furthermore, the study has not responded to some of the concerns a few ESE experts have expressed concerning the concept of (intra-)personal competencies more generally. To address these concerns, future research should be dedicated to empirically validating and operationalizing personal competencies, eventually leading to tools allowing for a systematic assessment of these competencies. Based on such assessment tools, pedagogical formats should be elaborated and evaluated with regard to their potential to stimulate personal sustainability competencies.

The concept of personal competencies explicitly acknowledges that current unsustainability is associated with the experience of inner, affective-motivational challenges. ESE learning programs and activities should prepare learners for these challenges. However, a specification of these inner challenges and corresponding personal competencies has not yet been undertaken. The set of personal competencies outlined in this paper can serve as a first starting point for specifying personal sustainability competencies and makes a case why their consideration is important when it comes to designing and evaluating ESE learning programs and activities.

The purpose of this paper is to present and identify the challenges toward implementing sustainability strategies both strategic and tactical (STs) and performance measures (PMs) facing industrial organizations in newly industrialized countries.

Conducting a comprehensive survey on the published papers focused on the area of sustainability and/or sustainable development (S/SD) in manufacturing enterprises to identify the most common critical challenges. Setting with industrialists to determine which challenges the industrial organizations facing while implementing the S/SD strategies in terms of strategic, tactic and PMs. Using support logic techniques such as interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and interpretive ranking process (IRP) as modeling approaches to examine the contextual relationship among the STs and PMs individually “first phase,” to clarify and identify the most and least dominant factors, and to rank STs with respect to the PMs “second phase.”

The investigation shows that some challenges are more dominant and influential. Literacy and an awareness of sustainability, globalization and international issues and competitive strategies have emerged as the most dominant and key driving factors for STs in the ISM model, while the whole PMs are driven by remanufacturing and recycling factors in the ISM model. In addition, drivers and barriers to implementing S/SD challenges received the highest rank in the IRP model.

Most of the STs and PMs were identified from academicians. Most of the manufacturing companies participated in the discussion; unfortunately, all are not familiar with the S/SD as a whole. They see to the S/SD from very narrow scope like climate change, environmental and energy issues only based on what they heard from media. Most of them are not fully interested to join with academicians to progress the work.

Most of the manufacturing companies are keen to investigate extremely sustainability challenges. Although this paper has a goal to provide a comprehensive framework to analyze, investigate and model sustainability challenges for industrial/manufacturing companies in different industrial sectors, most of the STs and PMs were identified from academicians. Most of the industrial/manufacturing companies participated in the discussion; unfortunately, all are not familiar with the S/SD as a whole. This study will help manufacturing/industrial companies to analyze and investigate the challenges toward implementing S/SD.

The originality of this paper is to identify the most common ST and PM challenges facing industrial organization toward implementing S/SD, modeling them into logical techniques and comparing between STs with respect to PMs.

Using Gibson and Tarrant's (2010) resilience triangle model, this study explores how small northwest Himalayan organisations respond to contextual challenges and opportunities and embed sustainability strategies in the organisations' operational values.

A qualitative exploratory design through individual and group interviews with owner-managers and employees was held in five small northwest Himalayan organisations.

The findings reveal multiple contextual challenges facing small organisations in northwest Himalayas, including ecological conditions, remoteness, underdeveloped infrastructure and human competencies. The investigated organisations respond to these challenges through reactive and innovation-based services like eco-tourism, conservation and educational initiatives. The organisations engage communities through participatory and educational activities. Owner-managers adjust the respective vision and mission statements, train employees on sustainability values and lobby the government on policy changes to embed sustainability strategies. Some organisations invest in resources and capabilities and others in process capabilities.

Small organisations can improve how the organisations predict contextual issues by developing the organisations' process capabilities, specifically by creating practical tools with parameters relevant to ecological conditions. These organisations can set the tools through participatory actions with the broader communities to ensure the (un)intended consequences of environmental issues are considered. Furthermore, improvements in process and human capabilities will provide new approaches to raising business opportunities, especially in post-pandemic business environments.

This study develops a framework that enhances the understanding of how process capabilities, leadership, people and knowledge capabilities are critical to developing and embedding sustainability strategies in small organisations.

This study aims to analyze the challenges startups face in implementing business models for sustainability. In particular, the research question of this study is: How do the challenges faced by startups affect business models for sustainability in the context of an emerging country?

Startups are increasingly incorporating ways to thrive in a competitive environment with innovative sustainable business models, a key factor for competitive advantage and corporate sustainability. This paper analyses startups’ challenges in adopting business models for sustainability through a case study in two startups, using the sustainable value exchange matrix (SVEM) tool through workshops, to carry out the diagnosis of these challenges.

The barriers and challenges of business models for sustainability in startups were found in different categories, where the main barriers are linked to the institutional category, the organizational and the market and sales culture. Thus, the authors concluded that there is a need to reformulate public policies and to have greater participation of the actors involved.

The main limitation of the research is the number of case studies (only two), which makes it difficult to generalize the results.

The research presents two major contributions. First, through the case studies, it is possible to verify that the barriers and challenges in business models for sustainability have relevance for startups. The second contribution is the adaptation of SVEM in conducting the debate by incorporating the barriers and challenges in value creation and delivery system.

This study contributes to the business models for sustainability literature to better understand the challenges startups face in practice and can serve as insights to help overcome them. As this is an empirical study, the information gathered can help create metrics and public policies to achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals.

The present research has as originality the analysis of the challenges in startups in implementing business models for sustainability and their relationships with the value proposition, capture and creation, as well as and delivery (adapted to the challenges found in the literature) applying the SVEM tool proposed by Morioka et al. (2018).

Anyone seeking to influence another is a potential leader. Within higher education, determining what an institution should undertake on sustainability can be daunting. Sustainability leaders face labyrinthine, multifaceted sub-cultures, influencers and viewpoints across staff, students, government, business and alumni all with an opinion on whether, how and in what order of priority sustainability should be taken forward. In this paper we take on this challenge by synthesising and critically evaluating core principles and working models for influencing and leading for sustainability in higher education. We identify a series of eight challenges affecting delivery of sustainability and seek to understand how conceptual models and principles in sustainability decision-making and leadership could address these. We draw on the experience of both authors, in tandem with comments from workshop and leadership training programme participants who attended the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) Leadership Lab training in the UK, as well as reflections arising in a detailed case study from the University of Edinburgh. We bring key insights from theory and practice for the benefits of individuals or teams seeking to influence and persuade key decision-makers to embrace the sustainability agenda.