Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability plays a key role in the development of new policies and regulations for financial markets. Investors, regulators, and private companies must work together to improve corporate transparency in financial markets and account for comparability measures across different markets. As a result, it is critical to further study sustainable corporate finance to properly model corporate financial decisions, develop innovative and effective financial instruments for investors, and create artificially intelligent agents in a firm.

In particular, a sound corporate governance environment is important not only for firms but also for society. Decent corporate governance improves the public’s faith and confidence in its corporate leaders. Legislative processes are designed to protect societies from known threats and prevent problems from occurring or reoccurring. Recent corporate scandals have shed light on corporations’ effect on social responsibility. This new focus on corporate social responsibility increases corporations’ responsibility and accountability to their stakeholders. Hence, firms have increasingly pressured themselves to improve best practices for corporate governance with the goal of enhancing their relationships with stakeholders.

As firms recognize their impacts on society, they create a sense of sustainability and accountability. Because sustainability strongly considers the future, sustainable operations are at the core of corporate social responsibility, as firms and society observe evidence of present and future changes. The recent global financial crisis, in which stakeholders experienced agency problems requiring sustainable corporate decisions, highlights the importance of corporate governance mechanisms that benefit key stakeholders in the long run. 

The aim of this Special Issue is to advance the understanding of the role of corporate governance and investment practices in establishing a firm’s sustainable internal and external environments. Specifically, this Special Issue is devoted to empirical and theoretical studies of these and other relevant positive and normative issues. Although submissions from a wide range of perspectives are welcome, this Special Issue will focus on some of the following topics: 

• Sustainable corporate governance;
• Sustainable board of directors;
• Sustainable executive compensation;
• Institutional investors and sustainability;
• Sustainable corporate strategy;
• Corporate financial decisions and sustainability;
• Artificial intelligence and corporate finance;
• Corporate social responsibility;
• Controlling and minority shareholders;
• Fiduciary duties and shareholder activism;
• Socially responsible investing;
• Sustainable investment and risk management;
• Social entrepreneurship;
• Strategic responses to social and environmental demands;
• Sustainable accounting practices;
• Regulatory authorities;
• Business ethics.

Prof. Dr. Chune Young Chung
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Corporate governance
• Board of directors
• Corporate executives
• Shareholder activism
• Institutional investors
• Sustainable corporate strategy
• Corporate social responsibility