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Food sustainability is a world-acknowledged issue that requires urgent integrated solutions at multi-levels. This study aims to explore how food firms can improve their sustainability performance through digital traceability practices, considering the mediating effect of sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) and the moderating effect of supply chain learning (SCL) for the food supply chain therein.

Hierarchical regression with a moderated mediation model is used to test the proposed hypotheses with a sample of 359 food firms from four provinces in China.

Digital traceability has a significant positive impact on the three pillars of sustainability performances among food firms. SOI (product innovation, process innovation and organisational innovation) mediates the relationship between digital traceability and sustainability performance. SCL plays moderating roles in the linkage between digital traceability and both product and process innovation, respectively.

This paper contributes as one of the first studies to develop digital traceability practices and their sustainability-related improvements for Chinese food firms; it extends studies on supply chain traceability to a typical emerging market. This finding can support food sustainability practice in terms of where and how to invest in sustainability innovation and how to improve economic, environmental and social performance.

Currently, studies involving innovation capability and sustainability have been gaining prominence. This logic is also permeating the firms, which need to adapt their innovation capabilities to sustainability. Therefore, the objective of this article is to map the field of innovation capability and sustainability to observe how these two areas have evolved over time.

The bibliometric method was used to conduct this study from the Scopus database.

The authors verified in their research that the theme appears in the literature in the mid-2000s, however as of 2013 it has gained strength, opening discussions on different fronts. The results show that theoretical and empirical research does not dissociate the fundamental logic of the firm that is to produce and remain competitive from the new logics of generating innovation capability for sustainability, on the contrary, sustainability is an important component for its economic performance.

No other studies are found in the literature that search for the state of the art of the evolution of the innovation capability and sustainability.

The paper aims to explore the attributes and systemic characteristics of organisational innovativeness types in sustainability oriented firms in India. In dynamic business environment amid sustainability challenges, benchmarking organisational innovativeness of sustainability oriented firms may pave a way for many other firms to develop suitable strategies. The paper also presents the role of innovativeness in risk-management.

A questionnaire-based survey was conducted to gather the responses from 689 managers of 60 firms operating in India and displaying traits of sustainability orientation. Generic organisational innovativeness characteristics of these firms are presented based on result of factor analysis and variances explained by respective factors. Innovativeness characteristics have been discussed in context of sustainability and environmental management.

Study provides the glimpse of variability in steps taken by firms to remain competitive in current and future markets. The paper also offers a new factor of organisational innovativeness as “risk-innovativeness” and presents its role in disruptive and sustainable innovation.

The study adds to existing literature by providing a measure of organisational innovativeness types and proposes a definition of “risk-innovativeness” and opens a new avenue for further exploration.

The study may help organisations operating in emerging economies to benchmark and develop attributes of organisational innovativeness types considering sustainability challenges and uncertain market conditions.

The study may guide other firms to benchmark their current innovativeness standing and may help in developing suitable attributes leading to combat negative impacts of climate change by developing sustainable innovations.

There are no existing studies which offer organisational innovativeness types of sustainability oriented firms, especially in emerging and developing economies context.

Sustainable development is key to firms' competitiveness, survival, growth and profitability, although sustainability emerges as a great challenge. The aim of this study is to analyze the links between organizational creativity (which integrates sustainability orientation), sustainability-oriented innovation and the multidimensionality of firms' sustainability performance.

A total of 417 valid responses from manufacturing SMEs were collected through a questionnaire. PLS-SEM is the statistical technique used in the hypothesis testing.

Organizational creativity (which integrates sustainability orientation) and sustainability-oriented innovation are positively associated with economic sustainability performance, environmental sustainability performance and social sustainability performance; sustainability-oriented innovation has a partial mediation effect on the relationship between organizational creativity and economic, environmental, and social sustainability performance; and organizational creativity (which integrates sustainability orientation) has a positive effect on sustainability-oriented innovation.

Sustainability orientation is integrated into organizational creativity without limiting it, sustainability-oriented innovation encompasses innovation and sustainability in all its breadth without forgetting the innovation process openness, and firm's sustainability performance has a multidimensional approach. Such innovation and creativity contribute – in an interconnected way – to sustainable development, as well as overcoming sustainability challenges and firms' barriers to sustainability. Likewise, the aforementioned creativity must be implemented throughout the company, even beyond its contribution to the innovation process. Thus, the implementation of new ideas, thoughts, perspectives, views, and mental models – fruit of the described creative process – will generate new models and paths in which firms' profitability, growth and survival are related with overcoming environmental and social problems.

Influenced by factors such as fluctuations in market supply and demand and the rapid development of new technologies, manufacturing companies are facing greater challenges to transform and upgrade. The existing relevant studies about sustainable innovation capabilities mostly focus on classification of innovation or from a static resource-based view and less on quantitative measurement from a dynamic perspective and inter-organizational relationships. This paper takes a dynamic capabilities and social capital theory, explore the concept and dimensions of sustainable innovation capabilities and then makes development of a new scale.

This paper uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to develop a measure of sustainable innovation capabilities in two studies. Grounded theory methodology is used to explore the concept definition and dimensions of sustainable innovation capabilities. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis are conducted to refine and validate the factor structure, and then the authors developed the sustainable innovation capabilities scale.

The results show that sustainable innovation capabilities composed of ideation capabilities, opportunity capture capabilities, agile learning, creative inheritance and networking capabilities. The sustainable innovation capabilities that firms should possess are reflected at the firm level and inter-organizational relationship level, and the culture-specific dimension of creative inheritance reflects the influence of national and organizational culture.

The research reveals the internal driving force of the manufacturer's sustainable innovation capabilities, as well as the role and uniqueness embodied in the specific culture, providing a new perspective for improving the manufacturer's sustainable innovation capabilities.

This paper aims to discuss how educators can teach sustainability-oriented capabilities (SOCs) using an active learning approach.

Using a case study methodology centered on a Brazilian business school, this research combines qualitative analysis of content, such as teacher notes and student work, with quantitative analysis of student grades. The authors used variance analysis and Bonferroni tests to establish whether the means of three test groups were significantly different. The authors also tested for normality, using the Skewness Kurtosis test, and for homoscedasticity, using Levene.

The authors’ findings suggest that the active learning (AL) method may be useful in developing SOCs related to the capabilities of “to know,” “to do,” “to interact” and “to be” because it improved student engagement in the program. In addition, this improved engagement was shown to have a positive influence on grades.

Using convenience sampling, the authors studied a limited number of the mandatory management courses offered by Insper. There is a need to check for nonlinear positive effects over a more extended period of time and considering more courses.

This paper offers a practical and replicable technique for teaching SOCs in a business school context using AL.

The existing literature on education and sustainability discusses the role of business schools in the development of SOCs, especially with respect to curricular changes that integrate content and frameworks related to the conceptualization of sustainable development for business (Cebrián and Junyent, 2015; Cortese, 2003; Fairfield, 2018; Aleixo et al., 2020; Leal Filho, 2020; Arruda Filho et al., 2019). However, some studies suggest that the learning process at many business schools fails to explore the complexity of real life by not using a teaching approach that favors the development of SOCs (Leal Filho et al., 2015). Thus, prior studies have pointed to the need for further research on the impact of the active learning approach in teaching about sustainability (Leal Filho et al., 2015; Fisher and Bonn, 2011; Hesselbarth and Schaltegger, 2014). The aim of this research is to contribute to this discussion.

The paper aims to explore the attributes and systemic characteristics of absorptive capacity in sustainability oriented firms in India. Such understanding shall pave a way to integrate knowledge about societal stakeholders with technological and market knowledge. The study may help other firms to benchmark their business process considering sustainability aspects to integrate a broader set of stakeholders in decision making.

A questionnaire-based survey was conducted to gather responses from 689 managers of 60 firms belonging to various industry sectors. Absorptive capacity of firms based on result of factorial analysis, variances explained by factors and rank of attributes is presented.

The study provides a glimpse of variability in steps taken by firms to remain competitive in current and future markets. This study highlights the importance of benefits sharing among alliance partners, knowledge-management processes, social integration for tacit knowledge and exploration of new knowledge sources. Surveyed firms require improvements in employee's skill set up-gradation, exploitation of knowledge spread across different departments and suitable training systems to promote knowledge sharing behaviour.

The sample of study covers respondents mainly from Health, Safety and Environment/Sustainability/Clean Development Mechanism departments so leading to certain biasness in their perception.

The study may lead organizations to transform business processes to integrate stakeholder's concerns and expectations.

The study may help organisations to develop important attributes of absorptive capacity for effective integration of stakeholders considering sustainability challenges.

This research article enhances understanding on common aspects of absorptive capacity, dynamic capability and sustainability strategies.

This paper aims to present an empirical test to analyze a structural process model based on constructs of organizational innovativeness types considering sustainability aspects. It explores interdependency among constructs of organizational innovativeness identified as product, process, behavioral, market, strategic and risk innovativeness. It integrates a dynamic capability perspective to strengthen the existing literature.

Sample for data analysis covers 389 managers of firms demonstrating some traits of sustainability orientation and operating in a developing economy like India. Structural equation modeling is applied to test the causal model.

Study reveals that risk innovativeness along with strategic innovativeness leads to behavioral innovativeness which further causes product innovativeness and business process innovativeness. Business process innovativeness supports product innovativeness leading to market innovativeness of a firm. Characteristics of organizational innovativeness linked with the risk-taking ability of top management can be a critical differentiating factor between conventional and sustainability-oriented firms.

The factor of risk innovativeness was applied as per the existing measurement scale and has a scope for further exploration. It also offers an opportunity to reassess organizational innovativeness processes considering sustainability aspects.

The study may help organizations to develop a systemic approach to evolve and develop business processes linked to organizational innovativeness considering sustainability challenges and uncertain market conditions.

Development of organizational innovativeness considering sustainability aspects may lead to innovative and disruptive products/services leading to mitigate climate change issues, thus helping global societies in long run.

The study offers common ground linked to the bodies of research related to dynamic capabilities, micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities, innovative capability and sustainability.

The purpose of this study is to identify groups of manufacturing firms having different combinations of strategic orientation (market and technology orientations) and compare the viable groups for differences in their sustainable innovation (SI) performance.

A sample of 373 Italian manufacturing firms is clustered (using non-hierarchical cluster analysis) based on their combinations of market orientation (MO) and technology orientation (TO). Subsequently, the one-way between-groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) with post-hoc tests is conducted to detect how the resulting groups differ in their SI performance.

The synergistic co-alignment of TO with both dimensions of MO (i.e. responsive and proactive) can help firms enhance their performance regarding SI. Amongst the groups of manufacturing firms identified in the context of this research, ‘future-oriented entrepreneurs’ appear to represent the strongest combination of MO with TO, leading them to achieve higher levels of SI performance.

This study, by referring to a survey-based empirical study of manufacturing firms in Italy, extends the literature by arguing that higher levels of balanced TO–MO results in greater SI performance. To confirm and extend the results of this work, future research should assess the examined combinations of orientations in other contexts, and with respect to other performance variables (e.g. sustainable entrepreneurship).

By recognizing the real value of foresight practices, manufacturing firms should be equipped with organizational capabilities that enable them to systematically predict potential discontinuities, explore the future and simultaneously maximize their innovation and technology capacity. The findings of this research provide insights to managers on how to invest in resources linked to different configurations of MO and TO so that they can lead to the improvement of sustainability-oriented innovation performance.

This work represents a first attempt to explore the viable combinations of MO (including responsive and proactive dimensions) with TO in the manufacturing context, and to investigate how these combinations contribute to different levels of SI performance.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the extant literature on green innovation (GI), and more importantly, to provide future directions for GI research from the innovation ecosystem (IE) perspective.

A systematic literature review is conducted to summarize the status of current GI research, followed by content analysis to identify connectivity and crossovers between key concepts in the bodies of GI and IE literature. Then, the authors propose a green innovation ecosystem (GIE) framework and offer recommendations for future research on GI.

It is evident that the bodies of GI and IE literature overlap on the roles of external actors, and yet, there is scant research investigating GI activities from the IE perspective. Moreover, there are multiple directions worthy of future research applying the proposed GIE framework.

Though the concept of ecosystem has become pervasive in innovation management research, this study is one of the first works to introduce IE concepts and propositions in the GI research context. This paper provides new knowledge on GIEs and sets the basis for further investigation.