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PurposeThe present study aims to empirically investigate whether supply chain agility and lean management practices are antecedents of supply chain social sustainability.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 311 supply chain practitioners from the Indian manufacturing sector. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to test the validity and reliability of the measures used, and a structural model was analyzed to test the hypotheses of the current study.FindingsThe results indicate that agility and lean practices are significant antecedents of social sustainability orientation as well as social sustainability performance. The results also suggest that agility has a significant indirect effect on operational performance via social sustainability orientation, basic social sustainability practices as well as agility is indirectly affecting social sustainability performance via social sustainability orientation and basic social sustainability practices.Practical implicationsThe results of the present study have implications for managers that want to make their supply chain more socially sustainable.Originality/valueThe study is unique in the sense that it empirically links agility and lean practices with social sustainability orientation, social substantiality performance and operational performance in supply chains.

Purpose Socially sustainable supply chain (SSSC) practices address pressing social issues and may provide operational benefits as well as positive impacts on society. However, due to gaps in the current knowledge, it is difficult to know what practices will provide benefits and what management orientations can maximize the impact of these practices on operational performance. The purpose of this paper is to advance the knowledge on the effect of social sustainability orientation on operational performance by examining the mediating roles of basic and advanced SSSC practices and the moderating role of long-term orientation (LTO). Design/methodology/approach Data were collected through a survey of US-based companies about their relationships with key suppliers. Confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regression were used to test the proposed moderated mediation model. Findings Surprisingly, sustainability orientation predicts operational performance through advanced but not basic SSSC practices. Results also indicate that the effect of sustainability orientation on operational performance is significantly moderated by LTO. Research limitations/implications Results are limited by the US context, the cross-sectional nature of the research, the use of a single-respondent survey instrument and the challenges of measuring LTO. Practical implications Managers and policymakers should be aware of the limitations of adopting basic SSSC practices on the performance of their operations. Advanced practices provide a more robust business case and significantly and positively impact operational performance. In addition, the interaction of a sustainability orientation and LTO can lead to even greater improvements in firms’ operational performance. Firms with the highest levels of social sustainability and LTOs attain superior operational performance. Originality/value This study contributes to the growing literature on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and extends this literature by focusing on social sustainability practices, identifying specific practices that impact and the orientations that maximize operational performance. The authors contribute to the growing literature on the importance of manager’s temporal orientation and provide nuance to emerging SSCM theory by exposing the interplay of these orientations and the impact of SSSC practice adoption.

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of sustainability advertising on brand personality, credibility, attitude toward the ad and brand attitude; special attention was given to whether or not environmental and social sustainability advertising have different effects. The results of an online survey revealed that environmental sustainability advertising has a stronger influence than social sustainability advertising. Thus, the findings suggest that a focus on environmental aspects delivers the more impactful advertising content when promoting a brand’s sustainability. This result is consistent with the existing studies on the sub-dimensions of sustainability; although only researched in different contexts, earlier findings also showed that environmental sustainability has a higher impact. Furthermore, an explicit integration of environmental aspects into the measurement of brand personalities offers a new and interesting field of future research. The study is based on data collected from 166 respondents. The impact of sustainability advertising is investigated by an experimental manipulation of the advertising condition. To test the hypotheses, structural equation models are applied, as well as one-way analyses of variance.

With growing evidence of positive relationships between social sustainability and financial performance, there is a critical need for understanding how innovative organizations integrate sustainability and tie theory to practice. The research in this study uses a sample of Fortune 500 firms simultaneously listed in the Newsweek Green rankings, The Corporate Knights Global 100, and the 100 Best Corporate Citizens lists. The analysis from this purposeful sample of leading firms reveals positive relationships between the management of sustainability practices leading to improved social sustainability performance and firm financial performance constructs. The results of this study advance construct and item development involving sustainability management and social sustainability practices while testing relationships to measures of financial performance. Further advances in the field and opportunities for future research involve testing larger cross-sector samples, the development and measurement of social sustainability practices from secondary sources, longitudinal studies, and the evolving nature of organizational performance measurement.

Managing the logistics sector from a sustainability perspective represents an important challenge, which is even more difficult to practice under Industry 4.0 technologies regime. This study investigates the question of what enablers can be there that can be useful for social sustainability in the age of Industry 4.0. In this study, first, important social sustainability factors were assimilated from literature and secondary data derived from industry reports. In the second step, these factors were classified into five categories related to social sustainability enablers (SSEs) using principal component analysis (PCA). Finally, to support the decision makers, the critical SSEs are synthesized using the Fuzzy DEMATEL approach to find the importance of these factors concerning sustainability in logistics operations. The result shows that the use of green technologies related to Industry 4.0 is the most important aspect that derives social sustainability in logistics. The next important critical factor found was promoting social sustainability, the economic aspect, and the safety and well-being of people involved in logistics operations. The critical factor will further help in achieving human-centric automation, fair & inclusive logistics in the era of Industry 4.0.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of nonfinancial sustainability reporting (NFSR) on enterprise value moderated by the management legitimate authority (MLA) for companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. Design/methodology/approach To this aim, 190 firms were assessed during 2014–2019. This study used Arianpoor and Salehi’s indicators. The scoring method for NFSR, environmental sustainability reporting (ESR), social sustainability reporting (SSR) and governance sustainability reporting (GSR) was based on Zimon et al. Also, the CEO pay slice index was used to calculate the management’s legitimate authority. Tobin’s Q was used as a standard measure for the firm value, providing a suitable means of comparison. Findings The results revealed that NFSR affects enterprise value positively. In addition, ESR and SSR positively affect the enterprise value. However, GSR did not affect the enterprise value. MLA affects the relationship between NFSR/ESR/SSR/GSR and enterprise value, resulting from the effect of MLA on firm-related information quality and transparency. Practical implications Linking NFSR and management’s legitimate authority to firm value will enable managers to lead in helping firms enhance transparency and disclosure, improving their reporting standards and increasing the enterprise value. This, in turn, will ultimately result in better sustainability and governance practices. Social implications The results can help understand that analysts and investors somehow consider discussions related to the NFSR in decisions related to the company’s value, and positive market reactions to these practices’ disclosures can motivate firms to improve value and performance. Originality/value The majority of prior research in this field has focused on developing countries. An international perspective is critical, and this study helps draw a more contextualized picture of sustainability than before. In addition, the present research explored the management’s legitimate authority role, which is considered an innovative aspect.

This paper investigates the impact of board characteristics (such as board size, board independence, CEO Duality, board meetings, and committee) on corporate sustainability reporting (CSR) in China. Unlike previous studies, we examine this relationship in light of the three pillars of corporate sustainability reporting: economic, environmental, and social. Using both the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) and Dynamics Ordinary Least Square (DOLS) empirical models, our data, which comprises 9842 firm-year observations from both the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges covering the 2006–2019 fiscal periods, reveals that board independence, a larger board size, and a board sustainability committee promote CSR in the three CSR pillars. However, the study shows that CEO duality is more likely to impede CSR. While the current study seems to provide some understanding regarding the relationship between board characteristics and corporate sustainability reporting to corporate boards, regulators, and practitioners interested in advancing the course of CSR, some significant knowledge gaps still need to be explored in future studies. Future research may consider other board characteristics as well as explore other CSR indices like integrated reporting and triple-bottom-line approaches.

Social sustainability is a dimension of sustainability that has received little attention. Our aims in this article are to create a definition of social sustainability based on a comprehensive literature study, and to discuss the implementation of the concept in higher education settings at theoretical and practical levels. We also aim to answer the question of whether it is possible to achieve a socially sustainable and transformative practice in educational contexts. Our approach in the study is critical and reflective and, firstly, built on a literature review including policy documents, research articles and books on sustainability from the perspectives of education and social studies. Secondly, we provide examples of practice from four university sustainability courses. In these courses, social sustainability appears in an interdisciplinary and a sustainable leadership framework. The conclusion from this study is that it is possible to implement social sustainability in various ways at the course level. We identify elementary features at basic, personal and educational levels that facilitate the implementation. However, we see the inclusion of social sustainability as the only way to reshape education and rethink the role of educational institutions. In this reshaping, ethics is the core.

This short opinion article critically comments on some current mainstream trends, characteristics, and biases in urban social sustainability research literature. Through identifying some gaps regarding geography, sub-topics, and study approaches, and through considering “off-the-map” southern urban realities, it calls for the need to refocus and reshape some of the basic notions and presumptions that currently stand behind urban social sustainability theory, concepts, and policy design. Enhancing our sensitivity to truly global urban conditions, argue the authors, would result in less expected and generic (Eurocentric) approaches regarding urban social sustainability and would contribute to its more meaningful and comprehensive understanding. A bias towards qualitative, place-based, and context-sensitive analysis is a necessary step in rendering urban social sustainability truly global as well as in the making of more place-intelligent and place-responsive planning interventions.

Social sustainability and, in particular, its measurement and reporting are gaining importance in society, politics and business but are facing major challenges. This is because there are no standardized and uniform approaches or frameworks. The existing approaches cover social issues, but no systematic presentation has been proposed. Moreover, there is no approach that can be applied in both management accounting and financial reporting. The aim of this paper is to present a catalog of criteria for addressing this issue and thus to close the research gap. For this purpose, frameworks utilizing catalogs of criteria for social sustainability assessment and reporting are analyzed and critically reviewed. One major weakness found is that all frameworks are oriented around only socially protected values in their catalogs. As social sustainability is focused on the impact on stakeholders, these are frequently missed. One solution to this problem is to adopt a 1:1 ratio of socially protected values to stakeholders, which is developed and described in this paper via a catalog of criteria. Furthermore, a systematic presentation of social issues using a four-level structure is proposed. Social indicators are, in turn, assigned to subcategories, to supercategories, and finally to stakeholders. This not only improves transparency and comprehensibility but also simplifies decision-making. A procedure model for the application of the catalog is also suggested. Such a catalog has not been described in previous research.