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The purpose of this paper is to provide a menu of instruction methods for educators to increase engagement in sustainable practices. The paper also aims to assist those increasing the understanding of education for sustainable development, to the power of two‐EfSD², through research and teaching.

This paper provides a descriptive and analytical approach to the field of education for sustainable development. It includes a review of the relevant literature on stewardship and sustainable practices.

The paper provides a succinct summary of gaps to and remedies for sustainable development. It offers a comprehensive explanation of eight distinct approaches to education for sustainable development.

The application of EfSD² methods described in this paper have been found to increase productive results through enabling learners to grapple with and create solutions for real life sustainability problems. The paper proposes a more thorough testing of the various educational methods to assess their effectiveness in increasing sustainable practices.

As far as the author is aware, this paper is the first to compile this “tool kit” for EfSD². It offers the reader new ways to interpret older techniques along with a plethora of instructional methods not previously consolidated to advance stewardship and sustainable practices.

This article focuses on the lesser-used notion of stewardship and stewardship-ism. Stewardship is a concept that has inspired the activities of several organizations whose mission is to preserve, protect and maintain natural, social and economic assets for the benefit of stakeholders and communities. As observed by Contrafatto and Bebbington (2013), stewardship has some resonance with current policy agendas that attend to the issues related to sustainable development, corporate social responsibility and accountability. Most of the existing works on stewardship provide several perspectives with the focus being either on normative foundations of stewardship or on its organizational and managerial implications. In particular, the stewardship-related literature offers a range of conceptions and approaches ranking from a relatively narrow view of the resources, sources and time frame of stewardship to very broad specification. In this article, the management, organization and accounting literature is analysed to propose a map of current theorizing on stewardship. In particular, drawing on the methodological approach adopted by Lowndes (1996), four theoretical vignettes have been proposed to illustrate different variants and approaches in stewardship framework. Each vignette provides a set of conceptual constructs, ideas and views to understand stewardship and stewardship-inspired behaviour. The variety of approaches/perspectives on stewardship, as illustrated from the analysis undertaken in this article, provides an opportunity for deeper theory-based understanding of social and organizational dynamics. In particular, it is argued that the richness of perspectives, focus and levels of analysis could offer insights to conceptualize, see and make sense of some of the challenges that are posed by a desire for promoting transition towards more sustainable ways of organizing our society.

This paper aims to reflect on recent closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) practices using a natural resource-based view (NRBV) and dynamic capabilities (DC) perspective.

Two empirical case studies of CLSC exemplars are used to discuss the theoretical relevance of these views.

The paper shows how strategic resources help companies in two sectors achieve successful CLSC designs. Strategic supply chain collaboration is an important success factor but also presents a number of challenges. The NRBV is used to explain the importance of new resources in technology, knowledge and relationships and stresses the role of DCs to constantly address changes in the business environment to renew these strategic resources.

This research elaborates on NRBV theory related to CLSCs and reinforces the inclusion of DCs. It specifies the application of NRBV in the context of textiles and carpet manufacture and highlights the inherent conflicts in seeking value while moving towards sustainable development.

Investments in technical and operational resources are required to create CLSCs. Pure closed-loop applications are impractical, requiring relationships with multiple external partners to obtain supply and demand for recycled products.

CLSCs may provide opportunities for social enterprises or third sector organizations collaborating with manufacturers.

This paper provides insights into the constituent resources needed for successful CLSCs. It also helps move CLSC research from a tactical logistics problem to a problem of strategic resources and relational capabilities: what we term “dynamic supply chain execution”. This paper develops a framework for transitioning towards CLSCs, underlining the importance of co-development and forging new relationships through commitment to supply chain redesign, co-evolution with customers and suppliers and control of supply chain activities.

Warehouses are large emitters of greenhouse gases and their impact on climate change is under increasing focus. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the barriers that inhibit the adoption of low-carbon warehousing in Asia-Pacific and their links to carbon abatement performance.

An exploratory conceptual model was first developed from a literature review of the general barriers to sustainable supply chain practices and hence potentially in low-carbon warehousing. A large contract logistics services provider in the Asia-Pacific served as the subject of a case study. The perceived barriers to low-carbon warehousing were derived from an internal survey of respondents from the case company and regressed against carbon abatement outcomes at that organization’s operations across the region.

Results show that the case company reduced carbon emissions by 36 percent on a revenue-normalized basis between 2008 and 2014, but with relatively lower success in emerging markets vs mature markets. An Elastic Net regression analysis confirms that technology and government-related factors are the most important barriers in the case company’s efforts to “decarbonize” its local warehousing operations. However, results suggest that the customer-related barrier, which is highly correlated with the government barrier, is in part driven by the latter.

This case study is based on a single multinational company in Asia-Pacific, but nonetheless serves as an impetus for more cross-sectional studies to form an industry-wide view.

An extended stewardship framework based on the natural resource-based view has been proposed, in which logistics services providers take on a proactive boundary-spanning role to lower the external barriers to low-carbon warehousing.

There is broad consensus that the implementation of education for sustainable development (ESD) requires the consideration of geographical and cultural contexts. Despite such an agreement at a theoretical level, there is so far an apparent lack of practical experiences and solid research on approaches that effectively manage to engage professional educators in higher education with ESD in the context of a developing country from the Global South. This paper aims to address this gap and present a case study from a pilot professional development program (PDP) that sought to implement and mainstream ESD among Ethiopian colleges of teacher education (CTEs) and theological seminaries (TSs).

The research presented is based on the methodology of evaluative case study research in ESD. It analyzes the PDP’s specific objectives with regard to capacity and structure building, describes major activities implemented and how these relate to the objectives and explores major outcomes of the PDP.

The paper presents a comprehensive training curriculum aimed at addressing ESD in Ethiopian CTEs and TSs in a whole-institution approach. Results suggest that the PDP’s approach to combine human capacity and institutional structure building was effective in supporting the implementation and mainstreaming of ESD in CTEs and TSs in Ethiopia.

This case study presents original research on a pilot Ethiopian PDP that was implemented in collaboration with two academic institutions from Ethiopia and Germany.

The paper's purpose is to outline the potential competitive advantage firms can create through the creation of a sustainable supply chain, and to describe potential measures for managers to use.

Arguing that firms can increase their competitive advantage as a result of a stronger triple bottom line, propositions are created from a natural‐resource‐based view of the firm perspective that is supported using accounting theory, management strategy, green logistics and supply chain literatures. Secondary data resources that could be used for testing by managers and academicians are identified.

The paper finds that, as sources of competitive advantage for firm become scarcer, potential new areas of advantage must be explored.

This research will serve to help managers in the exploration of these possible outlets.

This paper is the first to explore the impact of a sustainable supply chain on the triple‐bottom line of a firm. Not only does this fill a necessary gap, it also serves to bring together the supply chain, sustainability and triple‐bottom‐line literatures to create a potential advantage for future organizations.

The concept of corporate environmental performance (CEP) is both used in and discussed with respect to international and regional standards, scientific work and business. Yet, there is no concensus on the meaning of the concept itself and on what elements or components it comprises. Moreover, although there is a discussion on interactions between the different levels of CEP, there is a lack of detailed and rigorous analysis. This paper merges the various insights on CEP and its underlying dimensions and addresses existing interactions between strategic and operational CEP. The interactions can be explained by two organizational theories prevailing in empirical studies namely institutional theory (IT) and the natural resource-based view (NRBV). The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the two theories to explain the different interactions.

First, recent papers that summarized research on the concept of CEP and its existing dimensions are reviewed yielding strategic and operational dimensions of CEP. Second, IT and the NRBV are analyzed in terms of how they are applied to CEP. The results are presented in a matrix which shows the interplay of CEP within its external pressures and strategic capabilities. Third, 37 empirical studies were analyzed by applying the method of an integrative research review. The review synthesized the theoretical approaches of the studies in their specific context, summarized their findings and categorized them into the theoretical arguments on which they are based.

Most studies are conducted on the pollution prevention level with different forms of institutional mechanisms. The studies are diversified and most positive results are found on that level. The studies analyzed differ widely in their methodological approaches, the measures applied and the theory on which they are based on, which may explain why the results were very heterogeneous.

The authors results should help environmental researchers understand how both dimensions are connected to each other and reveal that a combination of theories is essential when empirically investigating interactions within the construct of CEP. Moreover, the authors show that empirical research on CEP is imbalanced as too much studies concentrate on simple compliance measures for CEP. The authors contribute to the literature by summarizing important empirical work on CEP, classifying them into the matrix of IT and NRBV and showing neglected dimensions of CEP, namely higher strategic integration of environmental aspects into CEP measurements.

The present paper should be of particular interest to researchers investigating CEP both in theory and in terms of practical empirical analysis, as the authors show that both external and internal factors must be considered simultaneously in any evaluation. This may lead to far greater efforts in gathering information and data for future empirical research, but it is essential to do so, in order to obtain sufficient and reliable results that account adequately for the complex nature of CEP. Researchers should especially consider the matrix of IT and NRBV before commencing an empirical investigation, by locating their study in one of the fields of the matrix. This can support the choice of appropriate measurement indicators for the specific context and help focus on important external and internal items.

The priority giving to green practices in today's competitive market has made green logistics management practices (GLMPS) a significant driver of organizational performance. The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of GLMPS, logistics ecocentricity and supply chain traceability on sustainability performance.

The study uses structured questionnaires to gather data from 274 managers of manufacturing firms in Ghana. The partial least square structural equation modeling approach is used to analyze the data to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results obtained from the analysis indicate that GLMPS positively influence social sustainability and environmental sustainability. However, GLMPS negatively influence business performance. The results further reveal that logistics ecocentricity and supply chain traceability augment GLMPS to achieve significant improvement in both business performance and environmental sustainability through the mediation effect approach.

The study proposes a conceptual framework that tests the combined effect of GLMPs, logistics ecocentricity and supply chain traceability on environmental sustainability, social sustainability and business performance from the Ghanaian perspective.

The traditional approach of operations management has evaluated an organisation’s performance based on four main areas: cost, quality, time and service. However, the necessity to introduce environmental protection measures in firms so as to achieve sustainable development has forced a redefinition of the operations function. This paper reviews the literature on operations management and environmental issues, in order to determine the role of operations in sustainability. We justify the need to include environmental performance as a new dimension of operations performance. Finally, we analyse environmental performance as an operations objective and present certain aspects that should be taken into account when measuring it.

The purpose of this paper is to make business the centrepiece of its inquiry into responses to the sustainable development challenge.

This paper uses the individual firm as its lens for viewing the sustainability challenge. It explores and synthesises the new strategic capabilities that business will require to meet this challenge and how these can contribute to sustainable competitive advantage. It argues that to focus management attention and understanding, these capabilities must be rooted in existing strategy paradigms. It cites India, a developing economy exemplar, to posit the compelling rationale for making corporate sustainability an integral part of business strategy for the developing world as well. It sounds an important cautionary note that – notwithstanding corporate acceptance of the urgent need – building sustainability, as a strategic business capability will still require significant management attention and efforts.

The prevailing social and environmental challenge that are an intractable negative outcome of development underscore the equal and vital significance of integrating corporate sustainability into business strategy in both developing and developed countries.

Inducting the conclusion that society needs to be a key consideration in a business's strategy, this paper underscores the essential business logic that can make it so – a causative flow from key sustainability‐related resources to strategic capabilities and thence to potential sustainable competitive advantages for the firm.