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The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors influencing office occupancy and the broader implications for workplace dynamics in Australia in the post-pandemic era.

The authors draw on industry insights, research data and expert opinions on remote work and office attendance to explain post-pandemic trends.

The paper finds that average office occupancy reached 71% of pre-pandemic levels in Q3 2023, indicating a significant rebound from earlier downturns. This can be explained by factors such as improved vaccination rates, clearer return-to-office policies by large corporations and a greater understanding of the virus.

This paper offers valuable insights on the implications of physical, hybrid and remote work highlighting the growing recognition of the importance of physical workspace in fostering collaboration, innovation and organisational culture. It also brings together evidence of the impact of flexible options that may support greater social and environmental sustainability.

This study aims to focus on key approaches to education for sustainability (EfS) leadership development in the context of Malaysian and Japanese universities. The authors identify key indicators of effective EfS leadership development approaches using both descriptive and inferential analyses, identify and compare the preferred leadership learning methods of academics and examine the impact of marital status, country of residence and administrative position on the three EfS leadership development approaches.

The study is quantitative in approach and survey in design. Data were collected from 664 academics and analysed using the efficient partial least squares (PLSe2) methodology. To provide higher education researchers with more analytical insights, the authors re-estimated the models based on the maximum likelihood methodology and compared the results across the two methods.

The inferential results underscored the significance of four EfS leadership learning methods, namely, “Involvement in professional leadership groups or associations, including those concerned with EfS”, “Being involved in a formal mentoring/coaching program”, “Completing formal leadership programs provided by my institution” and “Participating in higher education leadership seminars”. Additionally, the authors noted a significant impact of country of residence on the three approaches to EfS leadership development. Furthermore, although marital status emerged as a predictor for self-managed learning and formal leadership development (with little practical relevance), administrative position did not exhibit any influence on the three approaches.

In addition to the theoretical and methodological implications drawn from the findings, the authors emphasize a number of practical implications, namely, exploring the applicability of the results to other East Asian countries, the adaptation of current higher education leadership development programmes focused on the key challenges faced by successful leaders in similar roles, and the consideration of a range of independent variables including marital status, administrative position and country of residence in the formulation of policies related to EfS leadership development.

This study represents an inaugural international comparative analysis that specifically examines EfS leadership learning methods. The investigation uses the research approach and conceptual framework used in the international Turnaround Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education initiative and uses the PLSe2 methodology to inferentially pinpoint key learning methods and test the formulated hypotheses.

In the past few years, researchers across the world have been attracted to corporate governance (CG) and sustainability studies in the banking space. However, inconsistencies remain, which have created a lack of alignment in existing research. To address this problem, this paper aims to re-examines the CG–bank sustainability relationship using a qualitative design, which has been underused in the field, to generate in-depth, useful and novel analysis and insights that may hide behind the numbers.

A qualitative inquiry was conducted using key informants in Ghana’s banking industry. This study made use of purposive and snowball sampling techniques, an interview guide and the thematic approach to qualitative data analysis.

Firstly, this research finds that while larger boards do not promote bank sustainability, those who are independent and have diversified expertise and experiences do. Secondly, CEO duality can boost bank sustainability only if the CEO is actively engaged and performing. Thirdly, this study finds that foreign-owned and managed banks make more profits only if they have good knowledge of the local market.

This research makes the call that upcoming researchers should replicate this research in other banking settings worldwide to validate the results.

Practical lessons for local and foreign-owned banks and their shareholders are discussed to advance the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 8.

This research shares novel insights that offer clarity to the literature and move the CG and sustainability fields forward.

The integration of sustainability, performance measurement and new product development (NPD) is key for aligning environmental and social objectives with business strategies. While previous research has initiated proposals for integrating sustainability into NPD or incorporating sustainability into corporate measurement systems, there is a notable deficiency in studies that comprehensively integrate these three perspectives. In this sense, this study proposes a performance framework (PF) to integrate sustainability performance indicators (PIs) into the measurement system considering the company’s NPD phases.

The PF was developed through a literature review and action research (AR). This resulting PF was positively evaluated by the practitioners in the company.

First, the review enabled the synthesis of an initial conceptual PF with 188 sustainability PIs and a five-step procedure. Then, the empirical results of the AR led to a new PF that presents the systematisation of the PIs database and a practice-based seven-stage approach.

This action-oriented research limits the extent to which this study’s findings can be generalised. Future research should apply the PF in different research designs to produce managerially relevant knowledge.

This PF may provide managers with actionable knowledge that best supports the measurement system integration with sustainability PIs considering the NPD phases.

Integrating sustainability, performance measurement and the NPD has been recognised as critical for supporting decision-making concerning the impact of processes and products. Compared with previous frameworks, the proposed PF extends the existing literature by introducing a systematised PIs database and a novel procedure for integrating sustainability measurement throughout the NDP.

This study examines how assurors make sense of sustainability assurance (SA) work and how interactions with assurance team members and clients shape assurors’ sensemaking and their actual SA work.

To obtain detailed accounts of how SA work occurs on the ground, this study explores three SA engagements by interviewing the main actors involved, both at the client firms and at their Big Four assurance providers.

Individual assurors’ (i.e. partners and other team members) sensemaking of SA work results in the crafting of their logics of action (LoAs), that is, their meanings about the objectives of SA work and how to conduct it. Without organizational socialization, team members may not arrive at shared meanings and deviate from the team-wide assurance approach. To fulfill their objectives for SA work, assurors may engage in socialization with clients or assume a temporary role. Yet, the role negotiations taking place in the shadows of the scope negotiations determine their default role during the engagement.

Two options are available to help SA statement users gauge the relevance of SA work: either displaying the SA work performed or making it more uniform.

This study theoretically grounds how assurors make sense of SA work and documents how (the lack of) professional socialization, organizational socialization and socialization of frequent interaction partners at the client shape actual SA work. Thereby, it unravels the SA work concealed behind SA statements.

This paper aims to highlight the expanding link between facility management (FM) and building automation and control systems (BACS) through a review of literature. It examines the opportunities and challenges of BACS for facility managers and proposes solutions for mitigating the risks associated with BACS implementation.

This paper reviews various research papers to explore the positive influences of BACS on FM, such as support with strategic decision-making, predictive maintenance, energy efficiency and comfort improvement. It also discusses the challenges of BACS, including obsolescence, interoperability, vendor lock-in, reliability and security risks and suggests potential solutions based on existing literature.

BACS offers numerous opportunities for facility managers, such as improved decision-making, energy efficiency and comfort levels in office buildings. However, there are also risks associated with BACS implementation, including obsolescence, interoperability, vendor lock-in, reliability and security risks. These risks can be mitigated through measures such as hardware and software obsolescence management plans, functional requirement lists, wireless communication protocols, advanced feedback systems and increased awareness about BACS security.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior academic research has been conducted on the expanding link between FM and BACS. Although some papers have touched upon the opportunities and challenges of BACS for FM, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of these findings by consolidating existing literature.

This study aims to focus on how the design of an organization influences employee sustainability. It also highlights how top management support can mediate this relationship.

In order to examine the role of employee quality of life on performance sustainability, a quantitative survey approach was adopted. A questionnaire was distributed using simple random sampling to the employees working in the hotel sector.

Results suggest that organizations can enhance employee sustainability, including performance, commitment, motivation and retention, by investing in values that align with their employees, providing suitable health and wellness initiatives, and adopting in career growth policies. In that, values, health and wellness and human development are confirmed to be core determinants of employee sustainability, with a negligible role of fair compensation and physical artifacts. Top management support is found to mediate the relationship between employee quality of life and sustainability.

This study contributes to a better understanding of how organizational design for quality of life can assist employee sustainability with the mediation role of top management support. The study recommends that the hotel organizations should consider designing their work environments to promote their employee quality of life, which affects their sustainability within the hotel industry.

This study contributes to a better understanding of how organizational design for quality of life can assist employee sustainability with the mediation role of top management support. The study recommends that the hotel organizations should consider designing their work environments to promote their employees’ quality of life, which affects their sustainability within the hotel industry.

While there is ample research in business and management literature on the economic and environmental factors of sustainability, social sustainability has received less concentration. This study gives more attention to how employee social sustainability can be affected by the managerial and organizational factors of ensuring work life balance and top management support.

Due to e-commerce growth, technological advancements and environmental concerns, developing a more nuanced service portfolio has become a critical issue for last-mile logistics service providers. Concurrently, consumers are adopting new modes of consumption. This paper aims to investigate the potential for last-mile logistics service providers to act as intermediaries in access-based consumption and to revitalise their service offerings through product-service systems – a pioneering strategy not executed in the market yet.

This strategic customer foresight study uses a quantitative survey of 1,000 respondents and an online focus group comprising 10 early adopter consumers to investigate emerging last-mile service models. Potential service concepts were identified through the survey, and two distinct concepts were subsequently selected for evaluation and co-development within the focus group. The research was conducted in partnership with an SME logistics company in Finland.

The consumers expressed selective interest in access-based consumption related to the proposed offering of essential household goods. Young adults and consumers in early middle age living in the city centre emerged as the most potential user groups. Economic reasons and short-term needs were the primary motivations for adopting access-based consumption.

The study showed that engaging consumers in a customer foresight process is viable for SMEs innovating their offerings and demonstrates how the process works in practice.

Documented cases of customer integration into foresight processes are rare in earlier research, and this paper extends the knowledge base through a multidisciplinary examination of future consumer behaviour in the last-mile logistics domain. The paper also expands the limited literature on the role of logistics in access-based consumption.

There is a growing need to promote and practice sustainable HRM to foster greener organizations with trained employees who have an attitude and behavior to preserve depleting resources. The purpose of this study is to highlight the importance of sustainable green human resource management (Green HRM) practices along with organizational identification (OI) as a mediating factor and perceived organizational support (POS) as a moderating factor.

Quantitative methodology was used, and the data were collected from 311 employees working in telecommunication organizations located in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan. Results of the study are based on the structural equation modeling technique using Smart-PLS.

Findings revealed that OI proved to be a significant positive mediator between Green HRM and organizational citizenship behaviors for the environment. POS also proved to be a significant moderator on the relationship between Green HRM and OI.

The study is limited to the two cities of Pakistan; future studies can focus on more cities so that the results can be more generalized.

This study will especially be useful for HR practitioners to develop mechanisms to initiate and encourage sustainable HR practices.

Organizations’ positive position is established through the inculcation of green activities among their employees. Thus, a sense of responsibility and attachment among employees toward green behavior makes them good citizens. It also works well for their organization as well as for the environment. Moreover, it preserves environmental resources and helps ensure sustainability.

The research paper was aimed at exploring the importance of sustainable Green HRM practices in a developing country like Pakistan.

The role of women in the architecture and design industry is aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, which aims to increase the participation of women in the Saudi construction sector. Saudi female graduates from architectural and design schools are currently working in most of the mega projects underway in Riyadh; however, they face certain challenges at the beginning of their working lives due to the gap between the skills acquired during an architectural and design education and those needed for employability.

This study evaluates the employability skills of Saudi female cooperative education (COOP) students and graduates from architectural schools in Riyadh. A quantitative approach is taken, and two questionnaires are administered: one for female COOP students and graduates from the college of architecture and design in one of the private universities in Riyadh and the other for employers from different architectural firms and governmental organizations in Riyadh. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the research data.

The research findings suggest that practical experiences and on-site observation activities should be provided, and sustainability solutions and applications should be incorporated into the curriculum to bring architecture education closer to the architectural profession and highlight the role of universities in supporting graduates' skills development.

It is worth mentioning that the results of this study were based on the survey distributed to architecture and interior female students in a private university in Saudi Arabia. The number of students surveyed in this study is not large enough to generalize the survey results to the entire population of architecture and interior design students in the kingdom and in the world. The study will be extended to include more participants from male and female students in other universities in Saudi Arabia to investigate the gaps in employability skills in the field of architecture and interior design in the Kingdom.

The study has practical and policy implications for further development and upcoming challenges as the labor market seems to improve and innovate every day. The study suggests providing practical experiences and onsite observation activities and incorporating sustainability solutions and applications into the curriculum.

The originality of this study is that it focuses on the importance of some employability skills, such as research and budgeting aspects, Sustainability solutions and applications for students that have not been mentioned in the previous studies.