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A conceptual and analytical approach is presented to reconcile weak and strong sustainability. It involves a reconsideration of the conception of total capital from an ecological‐economic system perspective. In particular, natural capital is classified into non‐renewable resources, renewable resources that are harvested, and those that are not used in production. Strong sustainability is defined in terms of constant environmental quality. Weak sustainability is characterised by non‐decreasing value of aggregate income and environmental quality, and formalised in terms of a “preference‐based social value function”. Ecosystem resilience and basic human needs are introduced as minimum sustainability requirements, and a “sustainability‐based social value function” is proposed, which is sensitive to potentially irreversible changes at the boundaries of the restricted opportunity space. It implies higher values associated to the trade‐offs between income and the environment than the preference‐based function, and the fact that sustainable development is only feasible if both minimum criteria are fulfilled.

This study aims to identify the content in introductory business sustainability courses in the USA to determine the most frequently assigned reading material and its sustainability orientation.

In total, 81 introductory sustainable business course syllabi reading lists were analyzed from 51 US colleges and universities. The study utilized frequency counts for authors and readings and R analysis of key words to classify readings along the sustainability spectrum.

The study reveals the most frequently assigned authors and readings in US sustainable business courses (by program type) and places them along the sustainability spectrum from weak to strong. In total, 55 per cent of the top readings assigned in the sample advocate a weak sustainability paradigm, and 29 per cent of the top readings advocate a strong sustainability paradigm.

This study focused on reading lists of introductory courses in the USA; cases, videos and supplemental materials were excluded, and the study does not analyze non-US courses.

The findings of this study can inform instructors of the most commonly assigned authors and readings and identify readings that align with weak sustainability and strong sustainability. Instructors are now able to select sustainable business readings consistent with peers and which advance a weak or strong sustainability orientation.

This is the first research to identify the most commonly assigned authors and readings to aid in course planning. This is also the first research to guide instructors in identifying which readings represent weak versus strong sustainability.

Weak sustainability indicators often suffer from their unrealistic and inadequate assumption of substitutability between natural capital and man‐made capital. Defining sustainable development in these terms is almost trivial; measurement problems as well as methodological and sociological issues may be considered as major flaws of operationalizing weak sustainability indicators. On the other hand, strong sustainability indicators rely on physical measures. This ecological economics approach concedes that the economy is embedded in matter and energy flows ultimately limited by solar energy input and the Earth’s capability to produce renewable resources and to cope with emissions of all kinds. Drawing on the example of regional environmental resources, ground‐water in Austria, some thoughts on strong regional sustainability indicators are presented.

–This paper is the second of a two part series which offers new theoretical and empirical insights investigating the rates structures appropriate for exhaustible resources with a particular emphasis on urban land, based upon the differentiation of strong- and weak-form sustainability concepts constrained by the objectives of the sustainable criterion of Daly and Cobb (1994). The integration of the concepts and objectives allow the theoretical formulation of discount and capitalization rates that can be empirically tested. This empirical application employs data from 12 diverse national economies. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper integrates the concepts of discount rate development for environmental and long-term assets and discounted utility analysis to the policy concerns associated with the valuation of public and sustainable resources. The new approach empirically shows the diverse issues of competing sustainable objectives across nations.

The potential and degree of strong-form or weak-form sustainability application in each nation enabled the identification as to whether alternative capital as defined by the modified Ramsey model used per nation, or the marginal rate of resource return as defined by strong form objective of a constant natural resource endowment, can identify which form of capital becomes the major constraint on the resource valuation and allocation decision appropriate within each nation. The findings showed constraints on nation resource endowments relative to population needs and the culture preferences endemic across nations.

The findings serve as a basis for future research on the optimal levels of sustainable development appropriate for different nations, the impactions of the timing and level of capital re-switching associated with the application of strong- or weak-form sustainability and the develop of rate and risk measures that can assist in the consideration of sustainable resource as a distinct asset class.

The built environment is responsible for around half of total greenhouse gas emissions and the majority of emissions are produced during building lifecycles. As such the property sector has considerable potential to reduce lifecycle emissions and can contribute in mitigating global warming. However our existing conceptual understanding of sustainability is variable to the point of being disjointed and ambiguous and this could imply our efforts to realise reductions may not reach their potential. This paper seeks to address these issues.

Adopting a qualitative paradigm, this study used published information on property company websites regarding sustainability in a content analysis to address the questions: What is the conceptual understanding of sustainability within the ten leading Australian property firms? and What is the implication of this level of conceptual understanding with regards to delivering sustainability?

There are distinct differences between the conceptual understanding of sustainability within the firms, indicating a different worldview exists across these firms. It is probable that this information is published without a conscious decision to represent a technocentric or ecocentric worldview, and as such it reflects the lack of breadth and depth of understanding in the current discourse regarding sustainable development in some property firms. Some elements of the sustainability discourse are omitted from their conceptual understanding. Academics have a responsibility and an opportunity to widen the discourse so that current and future generations are able to make informed decisions in respect of the degree of sustainability it is necessary to adopt.

The limitation of a content analysis approach is that there is no opportunity to explore the underlying reasons for what is found. Thus the researcher is unable to ascertain whether omissions regarding the discourse of sustainability issues are conscious or sub‐conscious.

There is now a growing body of work around property and sustainability. Most of this work is focused on ways in which to implement sustainability or how sustainability is being integrated in the built environment. Little work is centred on the fundamentals of sustainability and understanding of the principles and how this impacts on the degree of sustainability practiced by those firms. The underlying hypothesis is that a weak conceptual understanding will only ever deliver weak sustainability at best. Weak sustainability is insufficient to avert the project climate change outcomes forecast by the United Nations.

In the UK, Masters level discipline-specific courses in sustainability integrate modules on the social, economic, and environmental issues of sustainable development. The postgraduate faculty teaching on these courses and the student cohorts enrolling in such courses bring varying attitudes, experiences, and beliefs to the ecological and anthropological discourses and practices about sustainable development. Existing studies of education for sustainable development (ESD) have identified strengths and weaknesses in the knowledge and attitudes of students and faculty although few studies have focused on postgraduate cohorts and fewer still have attempted to compare and contrast students and lecturers. This mixed method case study analyses findings from data collected (2016–2017) from student surveys (n = 121) and semi-structured interviews with faculty (n = 21) recruited from multiple university departments, centers, and programs (n = 12) to identify prevailing anthropocentric and eco-centric ideas and rationales about sustainable development and ESD. Findings suggest a strong orientation to mainstream sustainable development in both groups but analysis identifies reasons for resisting a focus on extremes of “deep green” or “green wash” approaches. In addition, prevailing belief in academic neutrality, institutional and disciplinary factors, student pragmatism, and other drivers are highlighted. The study concludes by identifying potential paths from prevailing (experiential) education in sustainable development to more transformational approaches.

After over 30 years’ reform and opening-up, China as the second largest economy is now facing the most essential transformation of management philosophy and the biggest challenging issue of business sustainable development, with people’s increasing worry of the deterioration of environmental pollution, food security and human health. It can be said that what China needs urgently today is business ethical value and long-term sustainable development concept, rather than rapidly growing GDP. The purpose of this paper is to assess how the term “sustainable development” is constructed and valued in the sustainability reports or corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of Chinese corporations, so as to interpret these Chinese firms’ conception of sustainable development in their real business practices.

A corpus of sustainability reports collected from 30 Chinese corporations totaling 247,311 tokens is first of all compiled to realize the objective of study. Then the authors use the AntConc, a corpus analysis toolkit, to generate word lists, key-word-in-context concordances and collocation lists, as well as calculating statistical significance measures for collocates, of which the mutual information (MI) score 3 is most relevant to the paper’s purposes. Based on the key-word-in-context concordance and collocation list, the authors can find what context “sustainable development” usually appears in sustainability reports, thus inferring Chinese corporations’ conception of sustainable development.

The result indicates that Chinese corporations use the rhetoric of weak sustainability, indicating that sustainable development is compatible with further economic growth, which means that Chinese corporations in current China, strongly promoting the concept of new normal economy, still put economic growth as a dominant goal, on which other dimensions of sustainability like environmental protection depend.

The data gleaned in current corpus are limited to the sustainability reports in 2014 thus the study provides no hints as to diachronic trends. However, this study increases our understanding of how Chinese corporations attach value to sustainable development from the view of corpus analysis.

Different from traditional discourse analysis, which usually carries out qualitative analysis to analyze how a word or phrase is constructed in a small number of texts, the authors’ study innovatively introduces the method of corpus analysis to explore how Chinese corporations construct “sustainable development” in their sustainability reports. Thus, the number of texts analyzed is larger in the authors’ study and their findings are more representative and convincing. The authors create a more qualitative understanding of what the reports are actually saying on their reports and prove that corpus methods can bring new application to the discourse analysis of the biggest challenging issue of China’s future economic growth, suggesting a potential novel way to work out the meaning and implication of sustainable development in Chinese real business world.

This paper aims to examine the embedding of sustainability courses in the accounting curriculum by using the Delta Business School in New Zealand as an example. The focus of this paper is an effective learning strategy on sustainability education, which other business schools could follow using this approach.

Each course’s published outline was subjected to an in-depth analysis. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather information from the course controllers and students.

The findings revealed that while some courses are considered stand-alone sustainability courses, others incorporate a technical focus on accounting as required by the professional accounting bodies: Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, certified public accountant (Australia) and Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.

The research is limited to sustainability education content at a single university.

Students at tertiary education institutions, who will be future managers, are dependent on business schools to teach them the importance of sustainability.

Sustainability education in accounting could be instrumental in transforming the nature and role of the accountant in society.

This paper contributes to the discussion required to understand how sustainability education is embedded within the accounting curriculum and the perceptions of lecturers and students with regard to sustainability education.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a composite index (CI) to evaluate the sustainability performance of an aircraft manufacturing firm using Fuzzy Best Worst Multi Criteria (FBWM) decision-making approach. It identifies a wide range of sub-dimensions and their attributes to measure sustainability in a multi-echelon supply chain.

FBWM, a hybrid multi-criteria decision making method, relies on multiple sub-dimensions and attributes for assessment of sustainability. Sub-dimensions and attributes are identified from a detailed literature review and inputs from 17 experts. The weights are evaluated using best worst method (BWM). Quantitative measurements are very difficult for attributes like living conditions, noise emission, etc., so the performance of attributes are assessed using Fuzzy logic. The proposed methodology is validated with the case study of a single unit of an Indian aircraft manufacturing firm.

Economic concerns emerge as the most influential dimension of sustainability in the aerospace sector. The results reveal that the firm considered in the case study is “Very Sustainable.” Firm’s performance ratings are excellent in three out of 79 attributes considered for the study. Further, 24 weaker (least performing) attributes are identified with the help of fuzzy performance index. These require managerial action for improvements.

The present study is based on inputs from a small group of managers in a single firm in India. It can be extended to a large group of executives in other firms like Boeing, Airbus, etc. for testing the validity of the proposed methodology and generalization of the findings.

Managers, consultants and audit agencies can use the proposed CI developed in this paper for evaluating the sustainability performance of a firm. It assists managers to identify weaker attributes for which they may plan and prioritize their activities for improvements.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to measure sustainability in an aircraft manufacturing firm. The paper proposes a novel framework based on fuzzy BWM, for assessing sustainability performance.

Since the Brundtland report’s call for sustainability, planetary conditions have deteriorated. This paper suggests that corporate hypocrisy is a major barrier toward the adoption of sustainability and offers a typology of business behavior that can move closer toward the adoption of true and strong sustainability.

This article uses a normative lens to build upon prior literature and anecdotal evidence from the field to present a typology of business archetypes that represent a variety of responses toward sustainability.

The authors propose five typologies of business behavior that represent responses toward sustainability: business-as-usual, hypocritical pretender, hypocritical co-opter, responsible enterprise and purposeful enterprise. The first three typologies represent existing hypocritical approaches using weak sustainability. The last two typologies decrease corporate hypocrisy; improve alignment of talk, decisions and action; and help an organization adopt true and strong sustainability.

This is a normative paper that critiques existing literature and practices in corporate sustainability and proposes new directions. It necessitates further research in the form of case studies and empirical cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis. It implies assessing firm impact in non-traditional ways and will call for the development of new measures and indicators of firm performance from a social and environmental perspective.

The typology can provide practitioners and researchers with one possible solution to eliminate or decrease corporate hypocrisy in relation to sustainability, reporting and communications.

Planetary conditions have worsened, and business activity continues to contribute to deteriorating conditions. This research attempts to help businesses move away from hypocritical and destructive practices and to adopt true and strong sustainability practices for a flourishing planet. Furthermore, the authors articulate policy and practice recommendations in this context.

After decades of failure to make progress in achieving planetary sustainability, this research offers a model for practitioners and researchers to use in defining the actions necessary to achieve the elusive concept of sustainability.