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An in-depth analysis of how senior managers in a large multinational corporation interpret their social and environmental responsibilities revealed that, notwithstanding formal corporate interpretations, discrepancies persisted in their interpretation of what was expected of them and how to implement it. Two fault lines emerged: (1) an instrumental versus a normative interpretation of corporate societal responsibilities, and (2) a focus on ‘doing less/no harm’ versus ‘doing more good’. This chapter introduces a theoretical framework that combines these fault lines to form four quadrants that each represent a different set of challenges managers face as they commit to improving their organisation’s impact on society. Rather than adjudicate between them, a holistic interpretation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) takes all four types into account. But the four types of challenges differ considerably in nature and thus in the strategic approach that is necessary to deal with them. In this chapter, each quadrant is discussed in detail. What characterises the issues in this quadrant, what mindset, and what strategy are necessary to address them? The chapter concludes with the observation that the framework, and the taxonomy of types of CSR challenges that it brings to the fore, creates greater awareness of how industries are confronted with different sets of challenges and thus need different strategic approaches. A better understanding of these differences may lead to more support, in particular for those managers who work in industries that face a disproportionate share of one particular type of challenges, the ‘nasty trade-offs’.

Introduction: Sustainable human resource management (SHRM) as a practice is nowadays seen as an essential factor contributing to an individual’s and organisation’s growth. At the organisational level, the people concerned face many pressures to inculcate SHRM practices from various authorities and stakeholders.

Purpose: This chapter explains SHRM as a concept through an extensive literature review along with the evolutionary stages and multi-lateral perspectives of SHRM. The factors affecting this concept are Economic, Social, and Environmental; its driving forces like Employees, Government and Market Pressure; Employee Outcomes, namely Employee retention, satisfaction, motivation and Employee Presence; Organisational outcomes – Business level, Workers’ satisfaction, improved environmental outcomes better correlations, etc.; and value created by SHRM in terms of both employee and organisation are thereby explained.

Methodology: A specific procedure has been employed since the chapter has been based on literature review. The process of systematic literature review has been followed, which lays down the process followed by the authors – right from the Scope Formulation to the Illustration of Conceptual Framework.

Findings: A conceptual model is represented as a basis of the literature review, which the organisation can use and apply to develop SHRM practices, and finally, the precise effects of the research findings are suggested alongside ideas for future research.

Anti-racism has been practiced in various ways, with varying degrees of effectiveness. This chapter engages with the body of scholarship that focuses on approaches aimed at promoting anti-racist actions, policies and social change. It discusses some of the main anti-racism strategies that have been deployed across different countries and examines anti-racism practices in interpersonal, intergroup and community settings. These approaches encompass civil rights campaigns, legislative and policy interventions, affirmative action, diversity and inclusion training, prejudice reduction, intergroup contact, organisational development and holistic anti-racism approaches. Some anti-racism practices and policies, such as awareness campaigns, social marketing and diversity training, also extend to digital platforms, with social media and multimedia networks deployed to broaden the reach and impact of anti-racist endeavours. This chapter specifically engages with local anti-racism movements and draws principles for broader implementation of anti-racism policy and practice. It concludes with a brief discussion of the effectiveness of contemporary anti-racism approaches.

The primary objective of this research is to conceptualize the integration of enterprise risk management (ERM) as a mechanism to enhance the connection between corporate sustainability (CS) reporting and financial performance. This study suggests that future researchers should validate the proposed conceptualization by conducting a comprehensive content analysis of sustainability reports of Malaysian oil and gas companies. This analysis will allow for the collection of pertinent data regarding CS reporting and ERM implementation. The present study takes a comprehensive approach by integrating legitimacy, stakeholder, and resource-based view (RBV) theories, proposing a robust conceptual design that emphasizes the role of ERM in the connection between CS reporting and firm performance. Drawing on theoretical foundations, this study proposes that CS reporting will have a direct effect on financial performance. Moreover, the integration of ERM serves to strengthen the nexus between CS reporting and financial performance. This study offers valuable insights for stakeholders in the oil and gas sector by providing strategic guidance to enhance financial performance not only through CS reporting but also by implementing ERM. Moreover, the framework proposed in this study is expected to bring tangible and intangible benefits to corporations, including reducing information asymmetry, improving the quality of disclosure, and creating value within the field of CS. The proposed conceptual framework holds great significance as it enhances the applicability of legitimacy, stakeholder, and RBV theories, while also creating value for stakeholders through CS reporting and the adoption of risk management practices to enhance financial performance.

Introduction: This study investigates the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on the sustainability of the supply chain. It investigates how modern supply networks and procedures were equipped for such a catastrophe, and the pandemic’s effects on the environment, highlighting the significance of studying resilience and sustainability concurrently.

Purpose: The study acknowledges the importance of environmental sustainability for businesses and the need to examine trends in organisational, customer, policy, and distribution networks.

Need for the Study: The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted supply chains. This study aims to provide insight into the long-term repercussions of the crisis and the importance of incorporating environmental considerations.

Methodology: The study uses a mixed-methods approach to evaluate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on supply networks and environmental sustainability indices. Data from industry reports, governmental publications, polls, and qualitative research techniques have been gathered.

Findings: The results of this study advance our understanding of how to preserve supply chains in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights the need for enhanced resilience and sustainability measures, expose the flaws and weaknesses of contemporary supply networks, and uncover developing patterns and tactics in customer behaviour, policy frameworks, distribution networks, and supply chain management.

Practical Implications: The COVID-19 pandemic has provided businesses, decision makers, and researchers with guidance on handling its potential and challenges – increasing the supply chain’s resistance to future interruptions, incorporating environmentally friendly practises, developing policies to support resilient and sustainable supply chains, adapting to changing consumer tastes, increasing effectiveness, and minimising the environmental impact of distribution networks.

Introduction: In today’s world of increasing competition, diminishing product differentiation, higher customer expectations, easy product replacements and lowering brand loyalty, organisations are evolving new marketing strategies for economic, societal and sustainability. Cause-related marketing (hereafter referred to as CRM), a strategic sustainable philanthropic practice, is the upcoming form of CSR. CRM plays an instrumental role in achieving self-brand connection and brand loyalty.

Purpose: To explore, integrate and interconnect concepts of CRM and self-brand connection to get more insights into the imperative role of CRM strategy in developing self-brand connections that can lead to brand loyalty in the most sustainable way. For this, CRM and self-brand connection, as proposed by societal marketing and branding literature, were explored. This chapter is a propositional inventory where the researcher has explored the antecedents of CRM strategy and its role in developing brand loyalty through self-brand connection.

Methodology: This chapter is centred upon the existing literature on sustainability, CRM and branding to understand better the relationships between dimensions and consequences of CRM and its interlinkage with brand loyalty.

Findings: The literature recommends that selected dimensions: Cause-brand fit, product type, altruistic motivation and brand credibility determine the effectiveness of CRM strategy. It also establishes the profound impact of attitude towards brand, brand perception and brand distinctiveness on self-brand connection. A theoretical framework based on the existing literature represents an amalgamated groundwork for developing effective, sustainable CRM strategies in conjunction with the self-brand connection. The proposed framework is distinct as no study conjoins the abovementioned concepts and aims to comprehend whether this integration is brand loyalty.

Purpose: Twenty-first-century leaders operate in an unpredictable and complex business environment. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) nature of the business milieu and proved to be a real-life test for organisations and their leaders. It brought challenges and losses at personal, organisational, societal, national, and global levels. Nevertheless, some leaders and organisations thrived during and after the pandemic. This research assimilates leadership lessons from extant literature and real-life cases of leadership successes and failures. The authors aim to consolidate leadership strategies valuable in unpredictable, demanding, and complex times like COVID-19.

Methodology: The research relies on an extant literature review and opinions of four c-suite leaders captured through semi-structured interviews. The study uses content analysis to analyse the primary data collected.

Findings: The present research presents its results as a VUCA Leader Toolkit. It consolidates learnings from real-life case studies, extant literature, business reports, and experts’ opinions. It addresses the gap in existing research on VUCA-suited leadership strategies. The outcome of the present study is a clear, adequate, explicit, and well-defined list of VUCA-necessitated leadership strategies.

Originality/value: The research proves its utility in providing the VUCA Leader Toolkit. The outcomes carry usefulness for both present and future business leaders. The business environment today is ever-changing, complex, and uncertain. This unpredictability, uncertainty, complexity, and fuzziness would proliferate in the coming times. Hence, it is imperative to have a list of leadership strategies that may serve as a ready reckoner for leaders.

Worldwide academia is going through a major transformation because of Open Science and Recognition and Rewards movements that are linked to big societal challenges such as climate change, digitalization, growing inequality, migration, political instability, democracies under threat and combinations of these challenges. The transformations affect the human resource management (HRM) and talent management of universities. The main focus of this chapter is on collaborative innovation and the way universities participate in coalitions and strategic alliances on national and international levels. These platforms not only discuss the transformations and support the academic changes but also act as talent pools and talent exchange. This chapter provides an overview of the current state of affairs with respect to Open Science and Recognition and Rewards in academia. Next, a theoretical foundation is presented on the concepts of collaborative innovation, coopetition and HRM innovation in general. The leaders or leading organizations in the HRM innovation models often can’t make it happen on their own, in particular in highly institutionalized contexts such as academia. The legitimacy of transformations requires coalitions of the willing and therefore strategic alliances on different levels. The coalitions in academia can also contribute to academic talent management through sectoral transformations (see Recognition and Rewards) and through the way these coalitions operate.

Research excellency has long been the dominant paradigm in assessing academic quality and hence a prime determinant of academic careers. Lately, this approach to academic performance has come under higher scrutiny for its narrow focus on the individual, promoted an exclusive, performance-oriented talent management and inhibiting collaboration, transparency and societal involvement.

As a response to the limitations of the excellency policy, this chapter examines the emergence of open science as a transformative force in the academic world. Open science represents a paradigm shift, emphasizing the importance of transparency, and increased societal engagement in the academic process. It opens up the possibility to include the context dimension, multiple stakeholders and a more diverse set of development and performance indicators.

This chapter stresses the urgent need to realign our system of recognition and rewards with the premise of open science and with talent management. By highlighting the disconnect between current recognition mechanisms and the values of universities, this chapter emphasizes the necessity of transformative changes at institutional and systemic levels.

To provide concrete insights into the implementation of these changes, this chapter explores a case study of Utrecht University. This specific example showcases how strategic decisions at an institute level allow navigation of the complexities of recognizing and rewarding open science practices. The Utrecht University case study serves as an inspiration for other institutions seeking to embrace open science and adapt their policies and practices accordingly.

Talent management in higher education institutes is an underexplored topic. Only a small portion of talent management publications is focussed on describing talent management in higher education institutes. In this chapter, we give an overview of the most important topics in the talent management literature in general and link it to what is known about these issues in higher education. It discusses the definition of talent and talent management, the talent management process and the multilevel outcomes of talent management, the fairness and justice issues related to talent management and the importance of embedding the analysis of talent management in its broader organizational and institutional context. In the final part of this introduction chapter, we will explain how the talent management topics are discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.