Search results

Outsourcing architectural and engineering services is a trend for public-sector construction projects. This study aims to examine what tender selection criteria should be considered when assessing the performance outcomes of consultants in relation to sustainable design, construction and management of buildings within the context of property and facilities management of existing building portfolios.

Combined qualitative-quantitative methods are adopted to examine the causal relationship between sustainable performance outcomes and influencing factors, using primary data collected from the estate offices of the UK universities, which form a unique public sector. The performance factors identified form the basis of selection criteria.

The qualitative multiple-case interviews identify economic, environmental, social and functional sustainability measures as the attributes of performance outcome. The quantitative hierarchical regression analysis generalises that sustainable performance outcomes can be significantly influenced by task and contextual performance factors.

The scope of the study is limited to university estates. Further research should be conducted on other property and facilities management and construction-related organisations so that the sustainable procurement approach developed by this research can become more robust and applicable to the wider public sector.

At the tender stage, estate managers should adopt a sustainable procurement approach for selection of construction consultants: focussing on the significant task performance (project staff and execution approach) and contextual performance (collaborative consultant frameworks) influencing factors to optimise the project sustainability outcomes in relation to economic, environmental, social and functional values.

The sustainable procurement approach developed by this research benefits property and facilities management, as well as construction disciplines within the wider public sector, thus contributing to the government construction policy on promoting sustainability to the built environment.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a case of an increasingly popular enterprise education programme in Hong Kong called the Teen Entrepreneurs Competition (TEC) and to examine its sustainability in different dimensions.

Post‐activity evaluation feedback was obtained from the participants and the stakeholders of the activity. Three systematic research studies were also conducted for investigating the impact of entrepreneurial characteristics and social interaction on the participants throughout TEC.

Participants and stakeholders generally provided positive feedback towards TEC. The research findings also showed that TEC was able to draw a positive impact on developing the participants' entrepreneurial characters and in turn made TEC sustainable on the provision of an enterprise education programme in the local community.

It is suggested that the sustainability of TEC is attributed to three dimensions, namely, opportunities for individual comprehensive understanding, context for collaborative learning, and network for institutional support.

Suggestions on how to further strengthen the sustainability of enterprise education programmes through these three dimensions are provided, for example, maximising individuals' practical experience, improving the quality of collaboration and developing a closer working relationship with various stakeholders.

Enterprise education is recognised to have a significant influence on the development of entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and attitudes for youths. In order to widen the impact of enterprise education in society, it is necessary to sustain such enterprise education programmes over an extended period of time.

The University of Saskatchewan (UofS) has indentified five areas of campus life critical to improving the university's sustainability performance: education, research, operations, governance, and community engagement. In recognition of the need to track and assess the university's performance in all of these areas, a study was conducted to identify an effective sustainability‐benchmarking tool for the UofS. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In order to indentify an effective benchmarking tool for assessing sustainability for the context of the UofS, two academic‐focused tools and two tools with a broader scope were reviewed. The academic tools are Sustainability Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) and the Campus Sustainability Assessment Framework (CSAF), while the general tools are the College of Sustainability Report Card (CSRC) and the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS). Each tool was rated on the basis of 27 questions developed to directly relate to indicators of sustainability in the five areas of campus life. The highest rated tool was recommended as the most effective tool for assessing and tracking sustainability for the UofS.

Each benchmarking tool was developed to address specific goals. Accordingly, one tool may have strength in one area but weakness in another area. The study has shown that CSRC is the best tool for addressing governance and operations, although overall CSRC earned the lowest score in terms of its potential application to the UofS as it is not an effective tool for addressing sustainability in the context of education and research. Both academic tools – SAQ and CSAF – do not adequately address issues of sustainability in campus operations. STARS obtained the highest scores in all areas of campus life. Hence, STARS was identified as the most effective tool for assessing and tracking sustainability in all areas of campus life at the UofS.

Extrapolating from the UofS assessment, the STARS would appear to be the most effective benchmarking tool for assessing and tracking sustainability for higher educational institutions that want to assess and track sustainability across the breadth of campus life in education, research, operations, governance, and community engagement.

The purpose of this research is to determine firms' sustainability efforts through triple bottom line reporting on the World Wide Web. Sustainability reporting can assist in brand differentiation to stakeholder groups and ultimately lead to a positive corporate reputation.

Automated web content analysis was used to determine and differentiate 39 oil and gas firms' reporting of economic, social and environmental disclosures across Europe, North America and Asia. Firms were benchmarked for their disclosures against key terms derived from the Global Reporting Initiative.

North American firms disclose the greatest amount of TBL information for both environmental and economic indicators. European firms are the most prevalent reporters of social indicators. Asian firms displayed the most positive bias to their sustainability reporting.

Future research would benefit from linking firms' TBL reporting with firm performance as well as including a greater range of countries and industries for comparative purposes.

Firms should demonstrate a greater completeness of information across the three TBL indicators to effectively manage their relationships with their key stakeholders. Information should be unbiased and honest for firms to successfully legitimacy.

This paper uses automated content analyse to differentiate disclosure levels of TBL indicators across three different geographical regions.

Sustainability within tertiary curriculum is hard to measure and often perceived to be illusive in nature. Existing higher education sustainability assessment tools rarely focus on the curriculum. This paper aims to establish and implement a tool that can measure sustainability integration within curriculum. The Faculty of Engineering and IT (FEIT) at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is used as a case study.

A set of seven sustainability competencies are identified by means of a systematic literature review as the current knowledge of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) competencies. ESD competency integration into the curriculum is assessed by implementing a two-tier scanning mechanism. In the first step, subject outlines (SOs) are used to identify sustainable subject learning outcomes (SLOs) and assessment learning outcomes (ALOs). Step 2 involves analysing ALOs and SLOs for constructive alignment with student experience. SPSS, a statistical software, is then used to statistically reflect the results.

An initial scan of SOs found that stated ESD outcomes made up 22.4 per cent of FEIT undergraduate courses. A more detailed investigation which involved assessing subject material and student experience for the seven ESD outcomes resulted in a 7.7 per cent sustainability integration into the FEIT undergraduate courses. SPSS produced tables showing individual competency distribution over course candidature year. Lifecycle assessment was invisible from the curriculum.

Case study outcomes are limited to UTS, and therefore, specific-study outcomes cannot be generalised. This study attempted to trace sustainability learning outcomes through the curriculum. However, a more detailed study should also assess subject pedagogy and artefacts as these may enable or inhibit sustainability competency.

Study developed several methods to establish and evaluate subject level ESD claims. Academic staff and management are able to replicate methods of this study to map ESD within their courses, schools and/or faculties triggering conversation around ESD’s actual integration within curriculum. Based on ESD distribution, specific intervention recommendations are proposed.

This study aims to examine how integrated thinking principles can be used to assist those charged with governance during and after a crisis.

An autoethnographic approach was used to collect and reflect on information related to the economic, social and environmental impact of COVID-19. This was complemented with a bibliometric analysis of academic articles including “corporate governance”, “integrated thinking” and “crisis” as a keyword. This information was used to produce a data mind map of core themes. This was supplemented with a qualitative exploratory approach based on semi-structured interviews with 16 participants comprising preparers of financial statements, board members and corporate governance specialists to obtain insights into using integrated thinking in corporate governance during a crisis.

The results of the study indicate that those charged with governance can use integrated thinking to repurpose their business model by considering a multi-capital and multi-stakeholder perspective to value creation. The study highlights the importance of implementing a holistic capital integration process to gauge risks, capitalise on opportunities and improve business processes in response to a crisis. This can be leveraged by both the private and public sectors to manage a crisis and deal with the long-term indirect impacts of a crisis.

An integrated thinking approach can be used by both the private and public sectors to bolster confidence, tackle pressing social and environmental challenges and contribute to improved performance relative to the sector.

The expert interviews contribute empirical evidence to the profile of mainstream social and environmental accounting literature and offer a practical contribution by offering insights that can directly be used by organisations’ investors, non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders to manage a crisis. This paper also advances the sustainability agenda by assessing how a crisis can be managed in the context of a developing economy and advancing normative recommendations which will be broadly applicable to an international audience.

This review aims to identify the intellectual structure or key theoretical themes that comprise the emerging field of sustainability leadership in higher education.

The Scopus index was used to identify 180 documents published sustainable leadership in higher education published between 1998 and 2021. Author co-citation analysis in VOSviewer software was used to address the research question driving this inquiry.

This review found that the intellectual structure of scholarship on sustainability leadership in higher education is composed of four dominant “schools of thought”. These included sustainability leadership, managing campus greening, managing change and system integration, and education for sustainable development.

The findings suggest a need for more theorizing and empirical studies that explore the nature and effects of sustainability leadership in higher education. Particular attention should be given to how features of universities as organizations shape the requirements for and constraints on leadership. From a practical perspective, the findings highlight key domains of policy and practice that higher education leaders can target in efforts to enhance sustainability in their universities and societies.

The bibliometric review offers empirically-based insights into the evolution and current status of the literature on sustainability leadership in higher education. The findings can be used as a benchmark against which future developments in this knowledge base can be assessed.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the state of sustainability reporting in Canada's higher education sector, while understanding who is reporting on sustainability performance, how is information being reported, and what is being reported.

A framework with ten categories and 56 indicators based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and campus sustainability assessment tools was developed to analyse the contents of a cross‐sectional sample of sustainability reports published by Canada's largest 25 universities (by student enrolment). Each author analysed two to three reports. Evidences were checked for accuracy by a different author and finally discussed in a focus group.

The analysis has shown that sustainability reporting is an uncommon and diverse practice at Canadian universities. Primarily under the coordination of sustainability offices or students, seven universities published sustainability reports in the analyzed period (2006‐2008). While all reports shared a non‐integrated indicators framework, a variety of approaches were used in the selection of indicators. Reports generally had limited scopes emphasizing eco‐efficiency. The potential value of current documents as a tool to inform sustainability‐oriented decisions is limited.

Findings are particularly relevant to university administrators and sustainability offices planning to publish or enhance sustainability reports. The paper also explores the challenges of applying the GRI guidelines to the higher education sector.

Most descriptive studies on sustainability reporting have addressed large multinational corporations. This paper is one of the first to address the incipient practices of higher education institutions.

Achieving sustainability is imperative for all businesses but perhaps even so more in fashion retail. As a vital group of stakeholders, employees interact with all other stakeholders and play a critical role in the sustainability of an organization.

This study is to investigate internal and external factors that influence employees' harmful or useful behaviors based on the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) of morality.

The findings show that employees' perceptions of the moral responsibility of achieving corporate sustainability both as an internal corporate ethical value and as an external factor influenced their organizational citizenship behavior, as well as their propensity toward displaying counterproductive workplace behavior. Higher quality relationships with managers were found to strengthen the relationship between corporate ethical values (CEVs) and organizational citizenship behaviors.

The objective of this study focused exclusively on the US fashion retail employees. Therefore, it is suggested that future research compares the cultural influences on employees as related to the moral responsibility of corporate sustainability.

This study is one of few studies which have explored the level of employees' perceived moral responsibility toward the notion of how corporate sustainability should be accomplished.

The purpose of this study is to segment young millennials in an emerging economy based on their environmental attitudes and purchase intentions. The study also attempts to describe the segments and highlight their differences in terms of happiness, frugality, environmental locus of control, and environmental knowledge.

The study sample consisted of 227 Turkish undergraduate students. A two-step cluster analysis was performed on environmental attitudes and purchase intentions scores. The differences among the clusters were then examined according to happiness, frugality, environmental locus of control, and environmental knowledge variables.

A two-step cluster analysis identified three clusters, namely, “non-greens”, “reluctant greens” and “true greens”, all of whom differed in terms of environmental attitudes and purchase intentions. Non-greens (n = 16) and true greens (n = 121) yielded the lowest and the highest scores for environmental attitudes and purchase intentions, respectively. Three clusters also differed significantly in terms of frugality. Environmental knowledge levels of non-greens differed from those of reluctant greens and true greens. There is no significant difference regarding happiness and environmental locus of control among clusters.

Local and international companies interested in marketing green products to young millennials in emerging economies may enhance their understanding of non-green and green young millennials in the target markets and differentiate their marketing strategies for each segment.

Given the need for a better understanding of young millennials’ environmental behavior in an emerging economy, the current study contributes to the literature by segmenting young Turkish millennials based on their environmental attitudes and purchase intentions, further describing the consumer segments with different variables such as happiness, frugality, environmental locus of control and environmental knowledge.