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This study aims to investigate the conditional relationships among sustainability implementation, brand awareness, brand attitude and brand loyalty through the lens of transformative service research (TSR). The research also aims to explain how brand loyalty moderates the mediated effect of brand awareness and attitude in the context of social and environmental sustainability initiatives.

Using both primary and secondary data sources from 31 prominent service companies and their 6,891 customers, this paper investigates the impact of sustainability practices and brand awareness on customer attitude. The paper also examines the moderated mediation effect of brand loyalty, explaining how it alters brand attitudes in the context of sustainability implementation. Finally, the study conducts a comparative analysis of how environmental and social shape brand attitudes in loyal customers.

Sustainability implementation has a negative impact on both brand awareness and customer attitude. However, this negative influence is mitigated for highly brand-loyal customers, resulting in a positive brand attitude. Further, the comparative analysis reveals that social implementation positively influences brand attitude in high-loyalty contexts.

This research uses subjective judgments of researchers regarding companies’ sustainability practices, combining them with customer attitudes gathered through survey questionnaires. Additionally, the data set comprises data from 31 large service companies, potentially limiting the generalizability of findings to large service companies. Nevertheless, this paper extends TSR into the realm of sustainability and branding.

The positive outcomes of sustainability implementation practices are most pronounced when customer loyalty toward a brand is strong. Social implementation has a more potent effect on brand attitude, particularly among loyal customers. Companies can tailor their sustainability efforts more effectively.

With the lens of TSR, this research deepens our understanding of how sustainability affects consumer psychology but also offers a methodological advancement by using advanced statistical models and a variety of data sources. The distinctiveness of this research is also highlighted in the examination of how environmental and social sustainability initiatives influence brand attitude, especially among customers who exhibit strong brand loyalty.

This paper aimed to identify the impact that Industry 4.0 can have on the service sector and how its combination can generate benefits for Sustainability 4.0 in the context of the Triple Bottom Line.

A Systematic Literature Review (RSL) was developed using the following combinations of keywords on the Web of Science and Scopus databases: Industry 4.0 And Sustainability, Industry 4.0 And Service, and Industry 4.0 And Sustainable Development, in which 24 papers were selected.

As a result, the authors found 100 benefits for sustainable development, which were further categorized into 54 advantages for the economic area, 25 for the social segment and 21 for environmental aspects. In this way, the results can help private companies understand the use of these technologies aimed at sustainable growth, plus bolstering the government to conduct public policies to encourage these practices in technology organizations.

As a practical implication, this study offers insight into the evolution of sustainable development. It enables the emergence of works that wish to explore the service sector, providing relevant information for decision-making and influencing managers and policymakers on the importance of applying Industry 4.0 toward the sustainability of the service sector and its applications.

The originality of this study lies in expanding the understanding generated by 4.0 technologies, by diverting attention from the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, which have abundant literature on the subject. With this, this work demonstrated that modern technologies have greater possibilities of an action directed at the service sector, in addition to being able to contribute to Sustainability 4.0 from the perspective of the sustainability tripod.

Retail organizations that consider a service ecosystems view of sustainability focused on transformation have the potential to contribute to the wellbeing of individuals, business and society. The purpose of this paper is to explore the transformative nature of sustainable retail fashion organizations and their impact on wellbeing within a sustainable retail service ecosystem.

A qualitative in-depth case study research design was implemented using four sustainable fashion brands. Data were collected from multiple sources including secondary data from company websites and publicly available reports and interviews with founders and/or high-ranking managers within the organization.

Three overarching themes critical to transformation in sustainable retail service ecosystems were identified: (1) embedded core purpose or ethos, (2) relevance of fit and (3) breadth and depth of message. Corresponding wellbeing elements were found within the three themes – community and society wellbeing, environmental wellbeing, business strategy wellbeing, consumer wellbeing, leadership wellbeing, employee wellbeing, stakeholder and value chain wellbeing and brand wellbeing.

Future research offers an important opportunity to further explore the relationships between sustainability, TSR and wellbeing in other service contexts.

The paper contributes to transformative service research literature by conceptualizing a sustainable retail service wellbeing ecosystem framework.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, illustrate, and conceptualize how sustainability service is performed and the role it plays in the promotion of sustainable consumption.

Theoretically, this paper takes a practice theory approach, conceptualizing the provision of sustainability service as a set of complex, socio-material, and performative practices. Methodologically, this paper draws on an ethnographic study of a retail chain – W-Store – and its sustainability service. Interviews with management and focus group interviews with shop assistants and consumers, as well as observations made in-store, make up the material analysed.

The provision of sustainability service is accomplished in this case via three service practices; arranging green shopping trails, answering sustainability questions, and promoting sustainability to green consumers in-store. The analysis shows that the retailing of sustainable products is not simply a matter of including sustainability products in the range and instructing shop assistants to promote them. Sustainability service – as enacted at W-Store – was dependent on the successful combination and configuration of human competence (service staff) and IT and organizational artefacts. There also needed to be congruence between consumers and their images and between retailers and the version of sustainability they were enacting. Finally, the provision of sustainability service required an investigative and adaptive organization capable of keeping up as well as developing vis-á-vis changing sustainability discourses and issues. However, once the necessary conditions had been met, sustainability service worked towards promoting sustainable consumption by making green shopping possible, educating consumers on sustainability issues, and motivating them via positive feedback and dialogue.

Underscores the importance of investigating sustainability service and offers both a conceptual approach to and an analysis of this particular type of retail service work.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework to assess the sustainability of service supply chains (SC) based on the concept of the balanced scorecard and three dimensions of sustainability, namely economic, social, and environmental performance.

After reviewing the literature and interviewing the experts, the preliminary list of identified general criteria is categorized in the four perspectives. Then, to select the most important factors in hospital SC, 15 experts evaluated the identified criteria by questionnaires of Fuzzy Delphi Method. Then, interpretative structural modeling was applied to identify the interrelations between the perspectives and between the criteria.

The framework includes four perspectives, financial; service SC operations; stakeholders’ satisfaction in the direction of sustainability; and learning, growth, and innovation, to improve the SC for sustainability in the service industry. According to the results, the identified criteria are interrelated.

The paper provides an important reference to assess the sustainability of service SCs. It will be beneficial in strategic and operational decision-making in service industries.

Reviewing the literature shows that the concept of sustainability of service SCs is still immature. The paper is a preliminary effort to identify the general criteria of sustainability and their interrelations in the service sector. The presented general framework links the financial measures with the environmental and social measures. It helps to maintain the balance between the sustainability goals for the service SC managers. It can be modified and applied in different service sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework of sustainable service supply chain management (SCM) processes and practices in the multi-dimensional construct. It tries to provide a template for those sustainability general key practices that can be scheduled and budgeted in different service sectors.

To provide an applicable framework, its adaptability to most service settings should be ensured. In this regard, at first, the related literature on service SCM processes and sustainability practices of SCM are reviewed. To modify and confirm the extracted list, it is distributed to experts. After summarizing experts’ opinions, an initial list of the sustainable service supply chain practices (SSSCPs) is provided. Finally, the Fuzzy Delphi Method is applied to construct the framework for hospital supply chain (SC).

It suggests that the SSSCPs can be constructed in terms of seven major processes: managing the sustainable supplier, sustainable employee, sustainable customer, sustainable service performance, sustainable service operations, sustainable external relations, and sustainable knowledge, information and technology.

The framework can be employed as a template of sustainability practices for individual member firms of service SCs to identify and implement the key practices toward sustainability.

Reviewing the literature indicates that determining what is unique about the sustainable SCM in the service sector is immature. The paper is a preliminary effort to identify the general sustainability practices, in incorporating all sustainability dimensions in service SC processes.

This paper discusses logistics service providers' (LSPs’) energy efficiency initiatives for sustainable development, both from an evolutionary perspective and based on a framework consisting of actions, processes (i.e. at the operations interface) and services (i.e. at the customer interface).

Following a qualitative research design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with sustainability managers at LSPs and the data were analysed via inductive coding. Based on the results and the literature, the authors developed a maturity model for LSPs' transitions to environmental sustainability.

LSPs' sustainable development occurs via operational processes, services at the customer interface, and actions that support those processes and services. Energy efficiency efforts are characterised by process depth that helps LSPs to align with their customers' energy efficiency improvement processes. While services related to energy efficiency connect LSPs and their customers, actions in support vary depending on the logistics activities in which LSPs participate.

Further research is needed to test and verify the maturity model and to clarify the interdependency of its three dimensions.

By categorising energy efficiency initiatives and proposing a maturity model for LSPs' sustainable development via energy efficiency, the authors have developed a tool for logistics actors to assess their progress towards improved sustainability.

The paper contributes to the literature by providing a three-pillar framework to understand the sustainability transitions of LSPs through energy efficiency. Developing a maturity model using this framework also contributes to the literature with an approach to assess sustainability advancement in the logistics industry.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the role played by institutional investors in a firm’s decision to hire sustainability assurance services and to determine the benefits of sustainability assurance for the functioning of the capital market. This analysis is complemented by examining the quality of the sustainability assurance service that institutional investors demand.

The authors selected a sample of 1,564 multinational firms from 2002 to 2017. Panel data logit and generalised method of moments (GMM) regressions were estimated to consider decisions about hiring sustainability assurance services or not, and the assurance quality indexes constructed by a checklist based on the academic literature, respectively.

Institutional pressures associated with the environmental and social impacts of a firm’s activities lead to the convergence of institutional investor attitudes towards corporate sustainability, so that, regardless of their investment horizon, they promote the hiring of sustainability assurance services by corporate boards, which favours analyst precision and a reduction in the cost of capital. Long-term (LT) institutional investors exert influence through a selection mechanism, whereas short-term (ST) institutional investors exert influence through their presence on the board. Once the company has decided to provide assurance about its sustainability report, both types of institutional investors promote a higher quality of such service, although this is not well valued by the stock market.

This paper extends research on the monitoring role of institutional investors into the sustainability assurance context. Researchers may benefit from this paper’s findings when they examine the factors that drive the hiring of sustainability assurance services and their characteristics. This paper also shows that sustainability assurance services are a significant weakness due to the lack of standardisation in comparison with financial auditing, which complicates the assessment of their quality by stock market participants, thereby penalising those companies that provide more complete sustainability assurance reports.

Considering this paper’s findings, it seems advisable that regulators establish a normative framework to standardise sustainability assurance processes. The results can also be used as an orientation for both companies, to design their sustainability disclosure policies and regulators, to improve the running of the capital market.

Sustainability assurance services have a positive effect on the running of the capital market and improve external stakeholder decision-making by providing more reliable information, which, in turn, will favour the implementation of more sustainable actions that contribute to the attainment of sustainable development goals.

This is one of the first papers to analyse the effect of institutional ownership on a firm’s decision to hire sustainability assurance services and consider the effect of the institutional investors’ investment horizon – LT versus ST – and the channel – selection methods and/or active engagement – used by them to exert their influence. The authors also propose several measures of sustainability assurance quality to demonstrate the relevance of the contents of the assurance statement for the capital market in general and the institutional investors in particular.

The debate about global integration (standardisation) versus responsiveness (adaptation) has recently been supplemented with perspectives that emphasise regionalisation. And while the discussion has also been extended from manufacturing to services, there are specific sectors and emergent topics that have not yet received much attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore how accounting firms (The Big Four) and particularly their sustainability services fit in the globalisation/regionalisation/localisation spectrum, and appear to standardise or adapt in key countries in various regions around the world.

Examined are the Big Four accounting firms in general, and their sustainability services in 15 countries in five regions and globally, as presented on their respective web sites.

While overall the Big Four are somewhere between globalisation and bi‐regionalisation, the traditional independent member firm structure appears to prevail in service offerings, as sustainability services do not exhibit standardisation and there are hardly signs of regionalisation/globalisation. This seems to result from special characteristics of services, such as inseparability of production and consumption, and local requirements regarding sustainability.

This exploratory study can be a starting point for further in‐depth analyses into sustainability and/or services sector(s), and the way in which they figure in current realities of international business.

The paper gives insight into the variety of sustainability services around the world, as well as the way in which the accounting firms have dealt with global issues that also have local dimensions.

The paper sheds light on a topic in a sector so far unexplored in the globalisation/regionalisation debate, bringing new dimensions and perspectives to it.

Despite increasing attentions to sustainable service supply chain management (SSSCM), a framework for performance evaluation of sustainable service only supply chain management (SSOSCM) is still missing. This paper tries to fill this gap and provides a novel conceptual framework.

The articles related to SSSCM are fetched from the databases of SCOPUS and Web of Science. Analysis of 174 articles identified by the systematic literature review is further carried out.

This research identifies the sustainable practices for service only supply chain (SOSC) as environmental management, social management, economic management, customer management, health, safety and risk management, technical sustainability, institutional sustainability, information and technology management as well as two performance measurement criteria as operational performance and organizational performance. This paper provides a novel conceptual framework for the performance evaluation of SSOSCM. The results call for future exploration in the following three broad directions-(1) customer's perception, involvement and their behaviour towards sustainability in SOSC context; (2) trade-off, incentive mechanism and multilevel evaluation for achieving sustainability in SOSC and (3) sustainability in SOSC from various point of views.

The managers can use the framework to assess the performance of the organization while researchers can explore the discussed research gaps.

This is the first paper that provides a novel conceptual framework for the performance evaluation of SSOSCM as well as potential future research directions.