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Under what conditions do entrepreneurs make the sustainable decisions they need to develop socially and environmentally responsible new businesses? Explanations of sustainable decision-making have involved various cognitive features; however, it is not yet clear how they play a role in empirical terms and, moreover, how they combine to induce business decisions based on social, environmental and economic considerations. The purpose of this paper is to explore how five cognitive factors combine and causally connect to produce sustainable decision-making in entrepreneurship.

This study uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the decision-making of 37 sustainable entrepreneurs. It focuses on a substantive conception of entrepreneurial behaviour to uncover the cognitive antecedents underlying entrepreneurial decisions that involve the explicit development and implementation of measures, targets and strategies aimed at improving its impact on people and the environment.

The configurational analysis reveals a typology comprising five combinations of cognitive factors constituting a comprehensive cognitive map of sustainable decision-making in entrepreneurship, namely: purpose-driven, determined; value-based, vacillating; value-based, unintended; single motive, single solution; and purpose-driven, hesitant.

This study demonstrates that no single condition is necessary nor sufficient for triggering decision-making involving social and environmental concerns, revealing five mental models leading to sustainable decision-making. In doing so, this paper responds to recent calls that stress the need for studies capable of uncovering the complex constellation of cognitive factors underlying entrepreneurial sustainable behaviour. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This paper provides a systematic characterization of the cognitive underpinnings of sustainable decision-making and offers a basis for organizing the study of sustainable outcomes and configurations of cognitive antecedents. It reconciles prior efforts aimed at characterizing sustainability decisions in the context of SMEs and new enterprises, challenging current models based on awareness, experience and ethical normative frameworks.

The purpose of this paper is to understand both the facts and the values associated with the breadth of issues, and the principles related to sustainable real estate for institutional investors. Sustainable real estate is a growing sector within the commercial real estate industry, and yet, the decision-making practices of institutional investors related to sustainability are still not well understood. In an effort to fill that gap, this research investigates the post-global financial crisis (GFC) motivations driving the implementation of sustainability initiatives, the implementation strategies used, and the predominant eco-indicators and measures used by institutional investors.

This paper presents the results of a three-round modified Delphi study conducted in the USA in 2011-2012 investigating the nature of performance measurements and reporting requirements in sustainable commercial real estate and their impact on the real estate decision-making process used by institutional investors. Two rounds of in-depth interviews were conducted with 14 expert panelists. An e-questionnaire was used in the third round to verify qualitative findings.

The key industry drivers and performance indicators influencing institutional investor decision making were associated with risk management of assets and whether initiatives can improve competitive market advantage. Industry leaders advocate for simple key performance indicators, which is in contrast to the literature which argues for the need to adopt common criteria and metrics. Key barriers to the adoption of sustainability initiatives are discussed and a decision framework is presented.

This research aims to help industry partners understand the drivers motivating institutional investors to uptake sustainability initiatives with the aim of improving decision making, assessment, and management of sustainable commercial office buildings.

Building on the four generations of the sustainability framework presented by Simons et al. (2001), this research argues that the US real estate market has yet again adjusted its relationship with sustainability and revises their framework to include a new, post-GFC generation for decision making, assessment, and management of sustainable real estate.

This paper aims to focus on impact integrity in investment decision-making – an under-researched yet important topic – as a means for optimising investor contributions to sustainable development outcomes, including achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

This conceptual paper adopts a two-step approach. First, this paper reviews existing “responsible” investment strategies and products used in practice and highlight their shortcomings in terms of optimising sustainable development outcomes. Second, drawing from the minimal standards theory, this study explores how emerging impact management practices may strengthen impact integrity in investment decision-making and mitigate shortcomings in existing “responsible” investment approaches to increase their contribution to sustainable development outcomes.

Current “responsible” investment approaches often do not optimise sustainable development outcomes and may facilitate “impact washing”. The theoretically grounded framework demonstrates standardised impact management practices based on a bounded flexibility approach – adaptable to different contexts within limits and assessed by skilled analysts – along with incorporating shared language and conventions supported by appropriate accountability mechanisms that can be used to mitigate shortcomings in current “responsible” investment approaches. The authors further propose accountability mechanisms to systematically involve stakeholders (including rightsholders) in decisions that impact them with effective grievance and reparation mechanisms. Such an approach, the authors argue will strengthen impact integrity and the capacity of investments to optimise contributions to sustainable development outcomes.

The findings have implications for the ability of investment markets to optimise their contributions to sustainable development and the SDGs.

By highlighting shortcomings in current “responsible” investment approaches and focussing on strengthening impact integrity in investment decision-making through standardised impact management practices, the findings enhance the capacity of investment markets to contribute positively to sustainable development and the SDGs.

Despite its importance, impact integrity in investment decision-making is severely under-researched with little academic attention. This paper fills this void.

The purpose of this paper is to model a process for moving toward sustainable ecosystem service decisions in a Coastal Biodiversity and discuss the directions of the process for decision-makers to apply in ocean ecosystem services.

After the development of theoretical approaches to understand their prospects for the future development of ecosystem services, the authors worked on a process for developing factors for sustainable decision-making. It uses the Delphi method to develop all the factors supported by six dimensions in two specific moments: deductive-inductive and inductive-deductive.

This process of modeling the factors expands the possibility of adaptive governance to make prior and subsequent decisions using factors related to dimensions, stakeholders and benefits, risks, opportunities and costs.

Considering the limitations, future studies could use another database to widen the view in terms of the studies, factors, dimensions and other additional information to maintain the evolution of this process in ocean ecosystem services decision-making. Another limitation arose in the number of projects and experts defining the factors. This may prevent the opportunity to have more impact in terms of future decisions if more sources are used in the market. In addition, time and the access to experts during this modeling process demonstrate a limitation, as does the time for feedback.

This set of factors developed for adaptive governance decision-making can be applied to develop a prior alignment of stakeholder interests with sustainable practices.

This set of factors developed with the intervention of experts reinforces the importance of sustainable collective decisions on ocean ecosystem services. This is a joint approach with participants in the NextOcean project, sponsored by the European Commissions (EC)’s Horizon 2020 program. An Earth Observation-based Consortia aims to create sustainable value for Space, Land and Oceans.

This modeling process generated dimensions and factors to support adaptive governance stakeholders in making sustainable decisions in a coastal biodiversity zone.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how operations decision-making may keep the growing firms within the boundaries of corporate and societal sustainability.

The authors classify operations decisions during growth periods according to the three dimensions of the triple bottom line (economic, social and environmental). By means of a longitudinal case study of a family-owned wood construction firm that is in a process of intense growth, the authors identify, visually represent and analyse the complex sequences of selected managerial operations decisions.

The empirical data suggest that operations decisions made by managers during growth periods follow specific patterns. From the analysis, the authors derive various research propositions that investigate how a well-understood and therefore efficient and effective decision-making process can facilitate sustainable business growth.

The findings offer opportunities for future studies to zoom in on specific parts of the decision-making process during growth periods. Moreover, given the exploratory nature of this study, future research should test hypotheses derived from the research propositions.

This study investigates operations decision-making during growth, which is crucial for guiding companies through this complex transition phase.

This conceptual and empirical analysis explores new theory and contributes to the vastly under-researched subject of sustainable business growth.

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) are gaining significant importance in the current environment. Many businesses are keen to adopt SDGs to get a competitive edge. There are certain challenges in realigning the present working scenario for sustainable development, which is a primary concern for society. Various firms are adopting sustainable engineering (SE) practices to tackle such issues. Artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging technology that can help the ineffective adoption of sustainable practices in an uncertain environment. In this regard, there is a need to review the current research practices in the field of SE in AI. The purpose of the present study is to comprehensive review the research trend in the field of SE in AI.

This work presents a review of AI applications in SE for decision-making in an uncertain environment. SCOPUS database was considered for shortlisting the articles. Specific keywords on AI, SE and decision-making were given, and a total of 127 articles were shortlisted after implying inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Bibliometric study and network analyses were performed to analyse the current research trends and to see the research collaboration between researchers and countries. Emerging research themes were identified by using structural topic modelling (STM) and were discussed further.

Research propositions corresponding to each research theme were presented for future research directions. Finally, the implications of the study were discussed.

This work presents a systematic review of articles in the field of AI applications in SE with the help of bibliometric study, network analyses and STM.

Despite substantial advances in technologies enhancing the energy efficiency of buildings, they remain the largest consumers of energy in the USA compared with other sectors. In addition, the current rating systems for sustainable buildings do not reflect all potential energy savings during the design, construction, and occupancy of the built environment. The purpose of this paper is to examine the application of multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) as a framework for quantifying energy decisions made during the design phase of a building construction project.

The MAUT method was applied to a case study, and the results were compared with subjective results from the decision makers. Analysis of the results suggested that MAUT is a decision analysis tool that could aid decision makers in communicating their decision criteria and expectations.

Findings from this research suggest that using an analysis method provides the decision makers with a systematic way to include their concerns and preferences and specific requirements of the project along with the criteria for sustainable energy and the built environment at the same time. Using a multi-criteria, decision-making method provides the decision makers with quantitative information, which facilitates the comparison of alternatives. MAUT enabled the various stakeholders of the project to collaborate on the inputs of the problems and allowed the decision makers to communicate their priorities and expectations more effectively.

The findings indicated that MAUT provides stakeholders with a quantitative and holistic approach to decision making in which they can track changes in parameters during the process. The implementation of MAUT as a decision analysis tool in designing construction projects ultimately could lead to better decision making for sustainable building designs.

Strategies to promote more sustainable consumer choices have been gaining interest among tourism and hospitality scholars. In particular, behavioral economic theories of decision-making have gained popularity in the past decade, led by behavioral interventions (BIs) such as the nudge movement. This paper aims to present a critical reflection on this recent trend, with a specific focus on whether these BI approaches are an adequate tool to contribute to long-term behavioral changes, one crucial aim of the promotion of sustainable consumption.

Based on a critical review of recent significant academic works in the field, this paper reflects on how nudge principles are applied in the hospitality and tourism sectors, as well as the usual justifications given for their use. This paper then discusses the potential limitations, both theoretical and practical, of using these short-term focused approaches to decisions that intend to have long-term outcomes and aims.

BIs in hospitality and tourism have the potential to create long-term sustainable changes through a more comprehensive view of behavioral factors influencing decisions; however, such approaches would need to be strongly embedded in theoretical arguments that question “how” and “why” behavior change could be sustainable in the long term. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to address these concerns for future research.

This critical reflection proposes a comprehensive framework that will help guide stronger theoretically motivated identification, design and empirical testing of BIs and nudges. Industry can eventually benefit from theoretically stronger interventions that provide a balance between the short-term and long-term influence of BIs to attain customer loyalty and eventually greater value for business stakeholders.

This reflection paper critically reviews the basis of BIs and recommends a framework to strengthen their theoretical arguments. This reflection focuses on the theoretical critique of BIs and nudges to ensure long-term behavior changes are sustainable. The paper also proposes a comprehensive framework that incorporates well-founded theoretical models to enhance BIs and nudge literature.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an innovative integration method based on decision-theoretic rough set and the extended VlseKriterijuska Optimizacija I Komoromisno Resenje (VIKOR) methods to address the resilient-sustainable supplier selection and order allocation (SS/OA) problem.

Specifically, a two-stage approach is designed in this paper. First, the decision-theoretic rough set is employed to calculate the rough number for coping with the subjective uncertainty of data and assigning the weights for a resilient-sustainable evaluation criterion. On this basis, the supplier resilient-sustainable performance is ranked in combination with the extended VIKOR method. Second, a novel multi-objective optimization model is proposed that applies an improved genetic algorithm to select the resilient-sustainable supplier and allocate the corresponding order quantity under a multi-tier supplier network.

The results reveal that joint consideration of resilience and sustainability is essential in the SS/OA process. The method proposed in this study based on decision-theoretic rough sets and the extended VIKOR method can handle imprecise information flexibly, reduce information loss and obtain acceptable solutions for decision-makers. Numerical cases validate that this integrated approach can combine resilience and sustainability for effective and efficient SS/OA.

This paper provides industry managers with a new perspective on SS/OA from a resilience and sustainability perspective as a basis for best practices for industry resilience and sustainability. The proposed method helps to evaluate the resilient-sustainable performance of potential suppliers, which is applicable to solving real-world SS/OA problems and has important practical implications for the resilient-sustainable development of supply chains.

The two interrelated priorities of resilience and sustainability have emerged as key strategic challenges in SS/OA issues. This paper is the first study of this issue that uses the proposed integrated approach.

This paper aims to introduce a case-based module teaching sustainable engineering, linking the Envision rating system with behavioral decision science. Three complete modules are publicly available in a repository for any instructor to adapt, use and review.

A case study was written about the Tucannon River Wind Farm, a project-certified Gold by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure’s Envision™ rating system. The case was used as the basis for an in-class PowerPoint module to achieve student learning outcomes related to sustainability.

Before and after surveys showed significant (p < 0.05) learning increases. Word clouds show changes in student perceptions of sustainable design. Rubric scoring of writing assignments and concept maps yielded valuable insights and improvements and demonstrated the overall validity of the module approach.

Modules lasting only one or two class days must be well-integrated into courses and curricula to promote greater learning value. Concept mapping may be a useful addition but involves a learning curve for both instructors and students.

By offering instructors access to a set of case-based modules, it becomes more practical for them to teach about sustainable infrastructure and decision-making.

The module exemplifies a project owner and an engineering firm strongly committed to social and environmental sustainability. Envision’s Quality of Life and Leadership categories emphasize community well-being, involvement and collaboration.

This module offers a unique transdisciplinary focus meeting several needs in engineering education on sustainability, complex problems and decision-making.