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This study aims to provide a convincing argument behind the mixed findings on the association between sustainability reporting and firm performance by investigating the possibility of a non-linear relationship through a threshold model.

This study used (Hansen’s 1999) threshold framework to investigate the relationship between firm performance and sustainability reporting using a sample of 210 Bombay Stock Exchange-listed firms spanning over 10 years from March 2010 to March 2019. This framework helps to test the threshold effect’s presence, estimate the threshold value and check the authenticity of the estimated threshold value.

Sustainability reporting has a differential threshold impact on the different indicators of firm performance. On the one hand, the authors’ results illustrate that the firms’ operating performance is positively impacted if and only if the sustainability reporting crosses a certain threshold. On the other hand, sustainability reporting positively impacts firms’ market performance only up to a cut-off point.

Managers should strive to balance sustainability reporting to reap its desired benefits on firm performance.

This study explores the possible non-linearity in the association between firm performance and sustainability reporting and explains the relationship’s inconclusive results. Further, this study explores the field in the novel emerging economy with unique institutional settings that mandate spending on sustainability activities.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a sustainability measurement and scoring system for assessing the efforts of organizations at meeting sustainability targets. Using technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) as the basic framework, the proposed method incorporates all three sustainability dimensions – economic, environmental and social – to establish a threshold below which an organization is considered to have failed a sustainability test. In Addition, an introduction of a time-independent threshold enables a clearer comparison of performance of organizations over time. The proposed method includes plots for visualizing the sustainability performance of organizations under review.

The proposed method first assigns target values to a hypothetical organization. TOPSIS is then used to generate composite scores in which the score of the hypothetical organization is set as the threshold below which organizations are deemed to have failed a sustainability test. Using the square of the closeness coefficient of TOPSIS, the final composite score is decomposed into three components to reflect the contribution of the three dimensions of sustainability to serve as a guide to determining which dimension to focus on for improvement. A relative comparison score is then proposed to track the performance of organizations over time.

The proposed method with its ability to set a threshold is able to determine organizations that have passed a sustainability test from those that have failed. The tracking of organizational performance over time also serves to highlight progress being made by organizations to meet an agreed sustainability target. Results from the application of the proposed method for evaluating sustainability of banks under the three dimensions of sustainability highlight its practical applicability. The proposed method can also be applied to a wide range of comparison problems including make-or-by decisions and award selection.

As most industries and organizations become conscious of the pressure to adopt sustainable practices, the proposed measuring system would help identify those that are meeting sustainability targets as well as to track their progress over time.

Most sustainability measurement indicators rarely have thresholds to determine whether an organization has met or failed to meet a sustainability test other than ranking them from top to bottom. The proposed method provides a threshold as well as a procedure for tracking the sustainability performance of organizations over time.

To demonstrate that mainstream current ethical stances of corporate governance and associated strategic and operational management are contributors to global unsustainability, and to discuss issues and approaches for bringing governance and management into alignment with sustainability.

A representative model of a business is used to predict outcomes for financial wealth creation and environmental sustainability under mainstream ethical stances for corporate governance.

Analysis of the model concludes that, given these stances, enhanced management practice and/or technological innovation is unlikely to take such businesses above the threshold of sustainability. This leads to proposal of a model that demonstrates seven alternative pathways to achieving alignment of governance and management with planetary sustainability. One pathway retains current mainstream ethical stances, that must be constrained by government interventions. The other six pathways show alternative influences that cause corporates to shift their ethical stances autonomously and hence to change governance and management strategies and action.

The paper reaches theoretical conclusions that could be further developed as research propositions for empirical testing and raises issues that can be considered directly by corporate directors and managers.

The paper introduces models and analysis that have not appeared elsewhere in the literature.

A work system may be said to exhibit social sustainability if it utilizes its human, social, economic, and ecological resources with responsibility. This entails using these resources in a non-exploitive way, regenerating them, and paying due attention to the needs and ambitions of its stakeholders in the short- and long-term. For most presently existing organizations attaining and maintaining sustainability requires a midcourse correction, a transformation process. This chapter reviews the main concepts regarding sustainability and previous research of organizational development in this context. It presents a four-phase model for this transformation process and illustrates the model's application in four different contexts. The results are discussed and directions for further research are presented.

The study of the link between debt and growth has been full of debates, both in theory and empirics. However, there is a growing consensus that the relationship is sensitive to the level of debt. The purpose of this paper is to address the question of non-linearity in the long-term relationship between public debt and economic growth. Specifically, the author set out to test if there exists an established “laffer curve” type relationship, where debt contributes to economic growth up to a certain point (maximal threshold) and then starts to have a negative effect on growth afterwards.

To carry out the tests, the author has used a methodology that delivers a superior test of inverse U-shapes (Lind and Mehlum, 2010), in addition to the traditional test based on a regression with a quadratic specification.

The results in the paper present evidence of a bell-shaped relationship between economic growth and total public debt in a panel of low-income Sub-Saharan African economies. This supports the hypothesis that debt has some positive contribution to economic growth in low-income countries, albeit up to a point.

The overall result supports the claim that public debt may start to be a drag on economic growth if it goes on increasing beyond the level where it would be sustainable.

This paper leads the way by implementing a robust test of non-linearity (“inverse-U” test) to the analyses the debt-growth nexus and the laffer curve in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of this study is to examine the fiscal sustainability issue by dividing the fiscal deficit into high and low regimes using the quarterly data from 1997: Q1 to 2013: Q3. Further, we obtain the optimum level of public debt at which fiscal sustainability can be achieved.

This study uses the Markov Switching-Vector Error Correction Model (MS-VECM) for examining fiscal sustainability and threshold regression model to obtain the optimum level of debt.

The results derived from MS-VECM reveal the evidence in favor of fiscal sustainability during low fiscal deficit periods. Similarly, using a threshold regression model, the optimum public debt as a percentage to GDP seems to be around 21 per cent on a quarterly basis, beyond this level, public debt hurts economic growth.

From the policy front, the government of India should cut down the fiscal deficit only if debt reaches beyond a threshold level.

Noting that the vast literature has focused on examining the fiscal sustainability in India, the novelty of this study is to examine the fiscal sustainability by considering high and low deficits regimes using a non-linear approach.

Sustainability is an emotional issue. It is also an issue that is gaining prominence in organizational agendas. In this chapter, we outline a model to explain how employees perceive change agents working to implement sustainability initiatives in organizations. Using this model, we argue that organizational support for sustainability can influence how employees respond to sustainability messages. We further argue that the intensity of emotions that change agents display, and how appropriate those emotions are within the organizational context, will influence how employees perceive those individuals and the success of their efforts to influence green outcomes.

We extend the Dual Threshold Model of emotions (DTM: Geddes & Callister, 2007) to assess the impact of displays of emotional intensity on achieving sustainability goals. Our model links emotional propriety to change agent success. By exploring variations of the DTM in terms of contextual factors and emotional intensity, our model elaborates on the dynamic nature of emotional thresholds.

Using our framework, change agents may be able to improve their influence by matching the emotional intensity of their messages to the relevant display rules for that organization. That is, change agents who are perceived to express emotion within the thresholds of propriety can enhance their success in implementing green outcomes.

This chapter examines sustainability initiatives at the interpersonal behavior level. We combine aspects of organizational behavior, emotion in organizations, and organizations and the natural environment to create a new model for understanding change agent success in corporate sustainability.

When it comes to measuring and managing corporate impacts on the multiple capitals (financial, natural, social, human and built), Impact Management and Impact Valuation have emerged as best practices in the interrelated fields of corporate social responsibility and Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) investing. These practices have two significant shortcomings that are largely unacknowledged: they don't attend to ecological and social thresholds (or the carrying capacities of capitals); and they assume impacts on the various capitals are fungible, and therefore impacts on one capital can substitute for impacts on another capital, which clearly does not reflect reality.

This chapter proposes solutions to both gaps: respect ‘critical capital’ thresholds to retain vital capital stocks necessary to fuel continuing flows of value (and avoid systemic collapses of capital resources), and aggregate impacts across capitals via the common factor of ‘progress towards sustainability’. These steps will mature the fields towards the creation of System Value, where capitals are continually regenerated sustainably in ways that support healthy living systems.

This paper aims to offer an overview of key aspects of the journey to develop the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Framework and Guidelines, focusing on the Materiality construct. It provides a practitioner’s perspective of several issues related to this construct.

This commentary is mainly based on publicly available technical documents, the analysis of papers related to the Materiality construct and a contextual review of the evolution of the main features of the GRI Guidelines and Standards.

This paper discusses the conundrum currently surrounding the Materiality construct and offers some reflections and suggestions about the challenges facing GRI.

Clarification of the Materiality construct could reduce confusion and eventually allow for clear identification and differentiation of the financial and sustainability accounting fields at their interface.

Language creates reality; an opportunity has arisen to bring appropriate and distinctive terminology to the sustainability reporting field, bridging the gap between competing logics.

This viewpoint is timely. It contributes a practitioner’s perspective to the current debate on the development of the Materiality construct.