Enterprise Practices in Sustainable Development: Boundary‑Spanning Strategies for Social, Environmental, Economic and Technological Transformation
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 April 2027 | Viewed by 160
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Contemporary enterprises operate under intensifying sustainability pressures—climate change, social inequality, resource constraints, digital disruption, and institutional fragmentation. Yet organizations do more than react to this; they also shape future trajectories. This Special Issue examines how firms design, enact, and institutionalize enterprise practices that move beyond CSR compliance to reconfigure market logic, business models, organizational routines, and multi‑actor relationships across the sustainability spectrum.
This collection centers enterprise‑level practices—their strategies, boundary‑crossing behaviors, organizational innovations, and ecosystem engagements—as drivers of sustainable development. We welcome concise conceptual, empirical, and mixed‑method studies that connect everyday practices to system‑level outcomes.
We understand sustainable development as an integrated, practice‑oriented transformation across environmental, social, economic, cultural, and technological domains, which is aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs: https://sdgs.un.org/goals). We therefore highlight boundary‑spanning strategies—organizational activities that cut across the identity, practice, institution, and ecosystem role boundaries. The question is not only what firms do, but how they redefine who participates, which practices become legitimate, and how institutions coevolve. Boundary theory shows that distinctions and membership categories are actively made and remade, shaping participation and legitimacy, with boundary work often underpinning such shifts. Institutional work clarifies how actors reconfigure practices and group boundaries during field transformation, especially under institutional complexity. We also treat markets as plastic—capable of “taking and retaining form” when practices, roles, and evaluative frames shift—and draw on practice theory to show how changes to materials, meanings, and competences reorganize routines. We especially welcome work on Born Sustainable Firms (BSFs) and sustainable entrepreneurship, which embed sustainability aims from inception and often pioneer boundary‑spanning capabilities.
This Special Issue focuses primarily on the following:
- Corporate sustainable development practice design and cross-border strategy and boundary operation.
- Core driving practices of corporate sustainable development: enterprise‑level practices—their strategies, boundary‑crossing behaviors, organizational innovations, and ecosystem engagements—as drivers of sustainable development.
- Native sustainable firms and sustainable entrepreneurship. This research focuses on native sustainable firms (BSFs) and sustainable entrepreneurial entities, and their value in promoting sustainable development.
Dr. Veronika Tarnovskaya
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- enterprise practices
- boundary work
- boundary‑spanning
- sustainable development
- market plasticity
- practice theory
- institutional work
- organizational innovation
- born sustainable firms
- cross‑sector collaboration
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