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While the literature on multitier supply chain management traditionally assumes that first-tier suppliers belong to the visible proportion of the supply base, intermediaries might limit focal firms' visible horizon already at this stage. High power asymmetries promoting centrality and complexity in the supply network are seen as a particular root cause that limits the impact of governance mechanisms for sustainability. To map the space for governance mechanisms in a network-sensitive context more comprehensively, the study analyzes supply network characteristics from a power perspective.

This research is conceptual. To better understand power imbalances and mutual dependencies from network centrality and complexity, network configurations were constructed drawing on resource dependence theory. These configurations allow deducing the impact of (non-)mediated governance mechanisms for a sustainable development in the supply network. An agenda to stimulate future empirical and model-based research is accordingly presented.

The research shows that those networks with densely interconnected first-tier suppliers promote network centrality and complexity, leading to an inverted U-shape relationship between the focal firm's exertion of coercive power and the sustainability performance in the supply network. The findings allow a more comprehensive theoretical grounding for mapping governance approaches in a network-sensitive context and provide insights on how to avoid negative effects from power asymmetries.

The findings suggest the need for accompanying, indirect governance mechanisms already at the stage of first-tier suppliers based on non-mediated forms of power, such as referent power, also promoting disintermediation. Purchasing companies may also consider using digital platform technologies that foster disintermediation, such as blockchain technology.

By studying intermediaries from a power and network perspective, the conceptualization adds to the discussion on governance in multitier sustainable supply chain networks in various industries. Furthermore, it contributes to the increasing efforts of middle-range theorizing in logistics and supply chain management. The results partially challenge previous assumptions on the moderating role of specific network characteristics.

Since the publication of the 1987 Brundtland Report, discussions about sustainable development have been nothing short of a buzz among politicians and academics. This chapter takes stock of an emerging strand of the sustainable city literature that recognizes local political dynamics, conflicts of interest, and power struggles.

The review is organized into three sections. The first section reviews how past studies have utilized sustainable urban development as an opportunity for advancing theories of urban politics, highlighting recent developments in the growth machine, regulatory state, and risk society theses. The second section examines a range of studies that place the questions of scale, unit, and boundary at the center of inquiry. The third section draws together a body of research that interrogates different meanings of sustainability.

The first section discusses the extent to which social and political processes in the sustainability age exhibit a pattern consistent with established theoretical accounts. The second section focuses on studies that address how urban sustainable development has brought challenges to existing configurations of spatial relations. These studies pose important methodological and epistemological questions for studying environmental politics. In the third section, the focus is placed on political implications of urban sustainable development, which is subject to multiple interpretations.

This chapter ends with a review of an emerging thesis – strategic urbanism, which draws attention to the patterns of change in urban politics. Much of the contributions to this thesis are based on urban sustainability politics in recent years.

The purpose of this study is to identify the pathway that leads to cities to proceeding towards urban sustainability.

This study intends to propose a theoretical analysis on the city as sustainable community that drives urban development adopting a smart vision for urban growth.

Cities as sustainable urban communities develop smartness as a vision for change understanding and developing the potential offered by information technology reinforcing the community by shaping collaborative governance.

Cities using information technology as a source for urban sustainability develop smartness to evolve as smart communities following a managerial and organizational view towards sustainability as a source for continuous innovation and change within urban ecosystem.

Cities identify a sustainability-oriented and community-driven pathway as a vision for continuous change that helps to improve urban competitiveness, innovation and democracy ensuring high quality of life by strengthening the potential offered by technology-enabled and human-centred smartness.

The purpose of this study is to explore under-addressed issues of collaborative participation, decision-making, representation and inclusion in tourism governance in the twin cities of Bryan-College Station in Texas, USA. The study demonstrated that improved tourism governance has the potential to address underrepresented issues and contribute to sustainable community-based tourism (SCBT) success.

Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 40 tourism business owners/managers, key persons in cultural/community organizations, tourism associations, government officials and backstage staff (mainly ethnic minorities) to explore key issues relating to governance, collaborative participation and responsiveness relating to tourism development.

It was found that a collaborative decision-making process existed with significant opportunities for listening to various stakeholders with the majority being happy with how the governing agencies responded to them. However, some expressed concerns regarding participation in decision-making processes, the inclusion of their voices and issues of low job representation. These suggest the need for enhancing collaborative participation, representation and decision-making. Guided by the theory and results of the study, recommendations for more collaborative, responsive and inclusive governance have been suggested.

As one of the few studies exploring the under-addressed issues in tourism governance in SCBT operations, the study is believed to hold significance from the perspectives of sustainable tourism development.

This paper seeks to provide an overview and context for the emerging field of public policies for scaling voluntary standards, or private regulations, on the social and environmental performance of business and finance, to promote sustainable development; in order to stimulate more innovation and research in this field.

The paper takes the approach of a literature review of texts from intergovernmental and non‐governmental organisations, to develop a synthesis of issues, before literature review from management studies, development studies and international relations, to revise the synthesis and identify policy relevant future research.

Governance at all levels but particularly the international level involves corporations and their stakeholders. Together they have created non‐statutory corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards which now influence significant amounts of international trade and investment, thereby presenting new benefits, risks and challenges for sustainable development. Governments around the world are now innovating public policies on these standards, which can be categorised to inform policy development: governments prepare, prefer, promote and prescribe CSR standards. Therefore, a new dimension to collaborative governance is emerging and would benefit from research and technical assistance. As concepts and practices of regulation and governance are moving beyond state versus non‐state, mandatory versus voluntary approaches, so issues about transparency, accountability and democratic participation remain important for any new manifestation of regulation or governance.

By contextualising public policy innovations on CSR standards within new theories of governance, including “private regulation” and “collaborative governance”, the paper helps to clarify a new agenda for policy making and related research.

Based on the theoretical background of stakeholder capitalism, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the scientific debate on the topic of public–private partnerships (PPPs), considering in particular how this governance structure relates to the pursuit of sustainable development. Specifically, this objective will be pursued with a focus on stakeholder relations and governance aspects, to highlight enablers and barriers in change for sustainability.

The systematic literature review is applied starting with the use of keywords in Web of Science, which leads to the extrapolation of 629 articles on the topic of “PPP and sustainability”. Subsequently, through various skimming steps, 75 papers are sampled. A mixed (quantitative-qualitative) approach is then followed: a co-word semantic network to identify the pattern of discourse and a more in-depth and explanatory analysis of the papers. These quantitative and qualitative tools synergistically work together to evidence the main aspects related to the aim of the paper.

With reference to the governance structure and stakeholders of PPPs, the analyses highlight the shift towards a triadic type of relational governance that considers stakeholders (especially the community) in addition to public–private partners. This can improve the partnership's performance (particularly in sustainable development) and social legitimacy. With reference to the role of PPPs in the implementation of sustainable development, they have positive potential in terms of implementing sustainability and raising stakeholder awareness of it. Nevertheless, PPPs may entail risks to the implementation of sustainability. The findings lead to some concluding remarks on future research opportunities.

The research leads to some managerial implications, such as the need to follow a competitive collaboration approach among stakeholders, to develop relational governance skills and related managerial tools and to incorporate sustainability aspects starting from the design of PPPs.

The originality aspect of this research is the consideration of a PPP by relating it to the pursuit of sustainability. Such an inter-organizational structure could be suitable to deal with the complexity inherent in the implementation of sustainability and is peculiar in terms of governance and stakeholder relations, considering that it is characterised by the presence of several partners of different nature (public and private).

This paper aims to analyze how the level of adherence to sustainable development principles has evolved and also how the integration of new “good” governing rules has evolved in conjunction with the formation and functioning of the boards of directors and their committees.

The paper reports the results of a comparative case study – three French companies in the building sector – based on both primary and secondary data for the period 2002 to 2007.

It is found that the companies showed that they were capable of integrating sustainable development principles into their way of management; they also developed their rules of governance – in particular with regard to the constitution and the operating rules of their board of directors.

This study provides recent developments regarding sustainable development applied to company management, in the building sector in France. It also gives precise and recent information on the development of corporate governance rules.

In the context of a changing global environment, governance is understood as one of the main strategic pillars of the shifting paradigm. Governance is an evolved model of governing which is conceptualized as a system to define and implement strategies, in which decisions are the result of interaction between public and private institutions and society. They need to work together within a set of values and principles: openness, participation, consultation, dialogue, innovation, coordination, strong leadership, effectiveness, accountability, and more. In tourism, governance is increasingly becoming a consolidated system to create and implement inclusive management processes. Thus, governance becomes the cornerstone for the success of destinations to achieve sustainable development.

Corporate governance (CG), initially associated with private organizations, has been adopted by higher education institutions (HEIs). These are being managed more as firms in this post-standardization phase, in which the commercialization of higher education, competition and selective choice, finite resources and sustainable development (SD) have become major requirements for accountability and action. Principles of CG can collaborate and guide the process of making universities sustainable. The chapter analyses the effects of CG on the creation of a culture of sustainability in universities. In doing so, it analyzes the websites of public HEIs in EU-15 countries for a set of social responsibility indicators and investigates the impact and practices of two young Portuguese universities regarding United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. The results point out that CG and SD principles tend to guide the strategy of most public HEIs in the EU-15, confirming that they have made a commitment to good governance and sustainability.