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Sustainability-oriented strategies involve considering all possible environmental, social and economic factors that impact stakeholders and sustainable development. They could be a crucial contribution of the private sector to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study’s objective is twofolded. First, the authors want to discover if enterprises doing business in Brazil are contemplating the SDGs in their strategies. Second, the authors want to identify the external and internal factors that motivate them.

The authors collected data through an online survey with employees from Global Compact signatories in Brazil. From a list of 335 for-profit enterprises, the authors got back 132 answers. The sample comprises Brazilian enterprises that only operate in the Brazilian market, Brazilian multinational enterprises (MNEs) and foreign multinationals operating in Brazilian and international markets. For this study, the MNEs’ group comprises Brazilian multinationals and foreign multinationals (MNEs). To characterize the sample and identify the motivating factors, the authors conducted a descriptive analysis. To compare the domestic and MNEs’ mean differences regarding the factors that influenced their strategies and the SDGs, the authors performed Mann–Whitney's U-test.

The results of the study show that enterprises are addressing the SDGs in their strategies. All internal and external driving factors are similar for domestic and MNEs, except for the value chain's negative externalities. MNEs are more prone to consider their negative externalities, which is a positive trend. Finally, results suggest that both groups of enterprises consider the 17 goals in their strategies, contrary to the theoretical argument that multinationals suffer more pressure because of their broad geographic scope.

The database of the study involves data collected through a self-response survey. Thus, the authors cannot discuss the effectiveness of real SDGs' strategies once enterprises' discourse on sustainability does not always correspond with practices. Therefore, the authors suggest that researchers address the results of implemented strategies on the SDGs over time to check for improvements and new developments.

The authors suggest frequent materiality assessment of domestic enterprises' supply chain and articulation of explicit purposes around the selected SDGs, including setting key performance indicators (KPIs) and monitoring progress.

The authors believe that enterprises and decision makers should recognize their essential role to bend the curve on SDGs and shift their behavior toward strategic choices that could contribute to their positive performance over time, without contributing to environmental degradation and socioeconomic chaos.

Publication on how enterprises address the SDGs in Brazil is relatively scarce. This study provides some answers to that by focusing on the factors influencing sustainability-oriented strategies on the SDGs. Besides, most previous studies consider a small sample of enterprises and are industry specific or focus on the effects of the SDGs in public policy. The sample of this study is diverse and represents 42% of the for-profit signatories of the Global Compact in Brazil.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate “best practice” building strategies and sustainability‐oriented techniques and tools used to assess the energy performance of housing developments. The objective is to propose guidelines that can integrate futures thinking into the selection of energy‐related design responses, such as materials, building components and energy systems, from the early project stages.

An interdisciplinary approach is adopted with the inclusion of social, economic and environmental aspects of the energy supply and demand. A multiple case study approach is employed, which focuses on the residential sector of European mixed‐use developments that represent sustainable communities of “best practice”.

The investigation of “best practice” housing developments reveals that the majority of design responses cover mainstream environmental design strategies. Energy efficiency measures are still the “low hanging fruit” towards meeting the sustainability objectives. In addition, established sustainability‐oriented techniques and tools used focus mostly on projections of almost certain facts rather than explorations of a portfolio of plausible futures.

The paper represents a shift away from the short‐term mindset that still dominates design and construction practices. It provides an overview of building strategies and decision‐support techniques and tools for improving and incentivising sustainable energy solutions over the long term.

The identification of a successful mix of strategic orientations is a big challenge for corporate sustainability and management research. To this end, the purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze the interrelationships among multiple variants of strategic orientations (i.e. entrepreneurial orientation (EO), market orientation (MO), technology orientation (TO) and sustainability orientation (SO)) that lead to the superior performance of sustainability-oriented small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in a developing country context.

This study utilized the case-study method to explore a detailed and comprehensive understanding of the interplay among multiple strategic orientations. The data were collected from the top management of SMEs working in Pakistan through semi-structured interviews, complemented with the data obtained through a structured survey and the firms’ documentary evidence. Interviews were content analyzed to reveal more rigorous and comprehensive results.

The findings of this study suggest that the strategic framework of successful firms utilizes the aspects from multiple orientations (EO, MO and SO) to create an appropriate alignment that ensures superior performance in a highly dynamic environment.

The key finding of this study is the identification of a configurational framework, Entrepreneurial Responsible Orientation, if successfully implemented, it has the potential to drive sustainable performance of the small firms particularly, and sustainable development of the country, generally.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and further explain the phenomena of supplier participation in addressing the sustainability-oriented objectives of a supply chain. Specifically, the paper explains how a buyer can integrate sustainability concerns among its suppliers. The study is based in the context of the Indian school feeding (mid-day meal) program and approaches the issue from the perspective of a mid-day meal provider.

This paper first explains how the mid-day meal providers in India explicitly address the social and economic dimensions of sustainability. Thereby, it conducts an exploratory case study on a renowned meal provider with the objective to understand the nature of its efforts toward supplier participation through in-depth interviews.

As evident in the case, from the buyer’s perspective, the key to success in winning supplier participation in addressing the sustainability-oriented supply chain objectives largely revolves around efforts along the critical aspects of policy development, policy implementation, and intent building with suppliers.

This paper propagates a threefold value by outlining the central importance of the focus on efforts and challenges for understanding supplier participation in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). First, the paper is among the initial studies to focus on ground-level efforts and challenges for a mid-day meal provider, and outlines best practices. Second, the case presents revelatory insights on SSCM from the perspective of supplier participation. For example, it demonstrates the relevance of supply-chain-based social identification in governing supplier willingness to participate in a buyer’s SSCM. Third, the findings also extend critical implications toward SSCM theory and practice.

The purpose of this article is to present a framework that allows an ampler understanding of the evolution process tracked by companies in the pursuit of strategies for sustainable development, taking into account the increasing awareness of the social and environmental pressures facing business.

The article adopts an interdisciplinary approach, using the complexity standpoint, allowing the articulation of the main axis of this study: sustainable development, organizational strategies and organizational learning.

Consideration of the type of learning undertaken by companies to advance in the direction of strategies oriented to sustainability. This is analyzed in light of the complexity theory, showing the need of transformations in the individual values, a transformation that will reflect itself in the organization and in society.

No empirical research is conducted to analyze the importance of the learning type for the orientation to sustainability in companies. Future research may verify this importance.

The article points to the need for sustainable business actions that are oriented to people and society in general. Some propositions can help managers to manage the considerable difficulties dealing with sustainable development pressures.

The text deepens the understanding about the evolution towards sustainability oriented strategies, considering the learning type as a key concept. It operationalizes the contributions of the complexity theory, according to the view of Edgar Morin (a French perspective). This allows a different comprehension of the non linear behavior patterns that are common in the organizations.

This paper aims to explore if and how management control sysems (MCS) have a role in implementing sustainable strategies. In particular, the paper aims to investigate how MCS work in order to translate these strategies into action and how they should be modified when a strategic change in a sustainable direction occurs.

The research relies upon a deeply conducted case study, drawing evidence from documentary research and field research.

Relying upon the case of Procter & Gamble (P&G), the paper finds that integration with the traditional planning and monitoring systems, combination of both formal and informal controls, coordination across business units and decentralized structures are key‐factors for successful implementation of sustainability‐oriented strategies.

From a theoretical point of view, it has been observed that research in the field of social and environmental accounting has been mainly focused on social and environmental reporting, disclosure initiatives and their linkages to other attributes of performance, such as economic or financial outcomes. The paper contributes to developing a debate on the potential of MCS in embracing social and environmental issues as well as in producing social and environmental information useful for internal users in decision‐making processes.

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.

Based on the social exchange theory, the aim of the present study is to examine the effects, both direct and indirect (through sustainability-oriented innovative behaviors [SIBs]), of sustainable project leadership (SPL) on sustainable project performance (SPP). Project management approaches (PMAs) (traditional, hybrid and agile) were examined as conditional factors in the “SPL–SIBs” relationship.

The study employs structural equation modeling based on data collected from 197 software engineering project team members working in the financial industry in Poland.

The study revealed that SPL significantly, positively affected SPP. It also provided evidence for the significant mediating impact of SIBs in the relationship between SPL and SPP and the conditional effect of agile and hybrid PMAs on the “SPL–SIBs” relationship.

The novelty of this work lies in introducing sustainable leadership into project management research, proposing and testing a unique and complex research framework, designing valid scales for measuring SPL and SPP, and suggesting many theoretical and empirical implications.

The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between (dual) organizational identity and individual heuristics – simple rules and biases – in the process of strategy change. This paper offers a theory on identity reflexivity as a cognitive mechanism of strategy change in the context of organizational hybridity.

The authors draw on a 2-year ethnographic study at a Dutch social housing association dealing with the process of strategy change. The empirical data comprises of in-depth semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations as well as secondary sources.

Conflicting identities at the organizational level influence heuristics at the individual level, since members tend to identify with their department's identity. Despite conflicting interpretations, paths of cognitive shortcuts – that the authors define as internal and external identity reflexivity – are shared by the conflicting identities.

The findings of this research are subject to limitations typical of a qualitative case-study, such as possibly being context dependent. The authors argue that this research contributes to the understanding of how individual heuristics relate to organizational heuristics, and suggest that the process of identity reflexivity can contribute to the alignment of conflicting identities enabling strategy formation in the context of a dual-identity organization.

Understanding how managers with conflicting identities achieve agreements is important to help organizational leaders to pursue sustainability-oriented strategy change.

Given the pressure experienced by mission-driven organizations to integrate multiple sustainability demands in their mission, understanding managers' decision-making mechanism when adapting to new, often conflicting, sustainability demands is important to accelerate societal sustainability transitions.

This paper addresses the process of new strategy design in the context of a socially driven business. This context fundamentally differs from the one addressed by the existing heuristics literature with respect to organizational environment and role, and specific competing demands.

This study comprehensively depicts the state of the art on sustainability research in the meat supply chain to advance the debate on challenges and issues associated with developing sustainable supply chain management practices.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review of 333 articles published in peer-reviewed journals and organized the extant literature into five areas of supply chain management practices: strategic orientation, continuity, collaboration, risk management, and proactivity.

Since 2016, the meat supply chain has received increasing scholarly attention. The literature shows the diffusion of highly heterogeneous sustainability practices related to multiple management areas and levels of analysis (institutional, industry, firm). The need for integrated, multilevel initiatives involving different stakeholders becomes increasingly crucial to the transition towards more sustainable meat supply chains.

This study highlights the importance of regulatory and stakeholder pressures in the sustainability transition. Beyond setting regulatory requirements, policymakers may facilitate the establishment of collaborations within the meat supply chain and foster the development of support services that help firms to integrate sustainability in their business models. The review also alerts entrepreneurs and managers to the benefits from cooperating with their supply chain partners to navigate the industry transition and thus more effectively respond to the demands of stakeholders and to the increasing customers’ awareness of sustainability issues.

This study is the first to systematize the corpus of knowledge on the sustainability of the meat supply chain by adopting a comprehensive approach to analyze relevant management and agriculture literature.