Search Results (4,030)

With intensifying measures related to investor and policy requirements, corporate governance and sectoral environmental performance became a focal point for sustainability disclosure, especially in energy-intensive industries with high environmental externalities. This study evaluates whether corporate environmental governance practices in key sectors correspond to their pollution intensity and economic output, analysing a panel dataset across EU member states, for the 2000–2021 period. The empirical methodology includes ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed- and random-effects models, and dynamic system generalised method of moments (GMM) panel estimation to account for sectoral heterogeneity. Results prove that sectoral value added is an influential factor of greenhouse gas emissions, with carbon dioxide exhibiting the highest elasticity to economic activity, followed by methane emissions, and nitrous oxide displaying cross-country variations due to structural and regulatory differences. While services and manufacturing sectors partially decouple via cleaner technologies, overall growth positively correlates with emissions, and renewable energy offers limited mitigation due to scale and integration challenges. Conclusions emphasise robust governance frameworks in high-value energy sectors to meet EU climate-neutrality goals, as stronger environmental accountability attracts capital and supports sustainable development, underscoring the needs for targeted decarbonisation, regulatory coordination, and accelerated technological innovation within persistent industry disparities. Full article

The study examines the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) adoption and firms’ future CSR investment, with a particular focus on the mechanisms and conditions that shape this relationship, drawing on the business case perspective and the resource-based view. A quantitative research design was employed using survey data collected from 568 business executives in Greece. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied to test the proposed relationships. The findings indicate that CSR adoption has a significant positive impact on future CSR investment, confirming that CSR engagement evolves into a sustained strategic commitment. Perceived benefits are found to play significant mediating roles, suggesting that firms increase future CSR investment when they recognize the value generated by CSR. In contrast, institutional barriers negatively moderate this relationship, weakening the effect of CSR adoption. The study demonstrates that the continuation of CSR investment is driven by internal reinforcement mechanisms and external conditions rather than purely by financial constraints. It offers empirical evidence that CSR adoption initiates a self-reinforcing process supported by perceived value decisions. The findings provide practical insights, emphasizing the importance of strengthening institutional frameworks and enhancing the perceived benefits of CSR to foster long-term investment in sustainable business practices. Full article

Although sustainability has consolidated as a central criterion of value and performance in project management, a deep gap persists between its conceptual recognition and its effective application, making it difficult to structure and measure its real scope. Faced with this complexity, this study aims to dimension sustainable project management in productive sectors by analyzing its strategic alignment and operational trends. Methodologically, the research relies on a meta-aggregative review of 124 articles, integrating qualitative synthesis with quantitative structural analysis to decipher how the field is operationalized. Qualitatively, the results reveal that sustainability redefines project success, shifting toward the integral generation of long-term economic, social, and environmental value, contingent upon its anchoring in corporate strategy, governance, and the project lifecycle. However, quantitative analysis exposes an inherent thematic multidimensionality. The Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model identifies multiple simultaneous dimensions (entropy = 0.74), and the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) explains 27.24% of the cumulative variance. While these values align with the standard benchmarks for high-dimensional textual data, they empirically represent a highly complex and distributed knowledge structure rather than a unified theoretical framework. Consequently, while consolidated nuclei exist around management and governance, critical empirical gaps persist regarding risk integration, performance metrics, and, particularly, the circular economy. It is concluded that, although the discipline enjoys high theoretical legitimacy and growing measurement capabilities, its integration into operational decision-making remains partial. The ultimate challenge lies in articulating conceptual knowledge, tangible metrics, and strategic governance, ensuring that sustainability evolves from a declarative ideal into the inescapable, cross-cutting operational framework of project management. Full article

Morocco has developed one of the most comprehensive sustainability governance architectures among middle-income emerging economies, yet the relationship between its formal regulatory ambition and on-the-ground implementation effectiveness remains poorly understood. This narrative literature review provides an integrated, critically analytical account of Morocco’s sustainability governance system, organised around three interlocking dimensions: (i) a progressively strengthened legislative corpus anchored by the 2011 Constitution and Framework Law 99-12; (ii) a portfolio of national sustainability strategies aligning domestic policy with Paris Agreement commitments, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); and (iii) corporate sustainability practices driven by regulatory obligations, international supply chain pressures, and ESG disclosure norms. Drawing on 124 sources, comprising 62 peer-reviewed articles, 38 legislative texts, and 24 institutional reports, and applying institutional isomorphism theory as an integrating analytical lens, the review advances three theoretical propositions concerning the conditions under which formal governance architectures translate into effective sustainability outcomes. It further proposes a validated conceptual framework and develops a comparative positioning of Morocco against peer economies (Tunisia, Egypt, South Africa, and Turkey). Critical implementation gaps are identified in enforcement capacity, SME integration, sustainability data infrastructure, and green finance, contributing a balanced and evidence-grounded assessment of Morocco’s sustainability transition. These findings offer actionable insights for policymakers, regulators, and business leaders operating in the Moroccan and broader African context. Full article

Understanding the factors that shape firms’ borrowing costs has become increasingly important amid growing concerns about corporate transparency, sustainability, and tax practices. Specifically, the study investigates the relationship between tax avoidance (TA) and the cost of debt (CoD) among non-financial firms listed on an emerging Stock Exchange, while examining the moderating effect of environmental, social, and governance disclosure (ESG disclosure) based on the Panel-Corrected Standard Error (PCSE) approach. The findings indicate a significant positive association between TA and CoD, suggesting that lenders perceive aggressive tax practices as a source of additional risk, which consequently increases borrowing costs. The results further show that ESG disclosure plays a moderating role in this relationship, as the positive effect of TA on borrowing costs becomes weaker among firms with higher levels of ESG disclosure. This implies that stronger ESG disclosure improves transparency and alleviates creditors’ concerns about firms’ tax-related behavior. The findings were further validated through robustness checks using alternative CoD measures, fixed-effects regression, and dynamic panel GMM estimations to address endogeneity concerns. The study contributes to the literature by providing evidence from an emerging market and highlighting the role of ESG disclosure in mitigating the negative financial effects of TA. Full article

Corporate sustainability and the reliability of ESG reporting have gained relevance in the evaluation of listed companies, particularly in emerging capital markets, where reporting practices are still in their early stages of development. The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the quality of ESG reporting, the risk of greenwashing estimated using a proxy derived from reported information, and the market value of companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The research employs a mixed-methods design, involving content analysis of annual reports, sustainability reports, and sustainability statements for 25 companies over the 2020–2024 period. The scores corresponding to the Environmental, Social, and Governance dimensions, as well as the proxy for greenwashing risk, were developed using an ordinal scoring grid, which was validated through inter-rater assessment. During the course of the study, the empirical relationships were tested using pooled OLS specifications on short panel data, incorporating the natural logarithm of market capitalization, financial controls, year effects, and sector dummy variables. The results highlight the presence of an association between the quality of ESG reporting and market value, particularly for environmental and social dimensions, while the greenwashing risk proxy exhibits a limited statistical influence. The study contributes to the literature on ESG reporting in emerging markets and highlights the need for a cautious interpretation of indicators constructed based on corporate disclosures. Full article

The escalating global climate crisis has increased scholarly and practical attention to green investment as a key driver of corporate sustainability. From a systems perspective, enterprises can be viewed as complex socio-technical systems in which green resource allocation, technological innovation, and digital transformation interact dynamically. Against this background, this study examines how green investment (GI) affects corporate digital value (DV) and whether green technological innovation (GTI) serves as a transmission mechanism in this relationship. Using panel data from 15,244 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2024, this study applies panel data estimation methods to test the proposed relationships. The results show that GI significantly enhances DV, indicating that green resource allocation can strengthen firms’ digital value creation. GTI plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between GI and DV, suggesting that green investment contributes to digital value not only directly but also by stimulating technological innovation within the corporate system. Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive effect of GI on DV is more pronounced among state-owned enterprises and firms located in eastern regions. These findings enrich the literature on green–digital transformation by highlighting the systemic linkage between green investment, green technological innovation, and digital value creation. They also provide practical implications for policymakers and corporate managers seeking to promote coordinated low-carbon and digital development through more effective green investment and innovation strategies. Full article

Fulfilling corporate ESG responsibilities enhances a firm’s sustainable development capabilities but also comes at an economic cost. This study investigates whether firms should invest heavily in ESG or maintain moderate ESG practices to balance cost efficiency and resilience. Using a sample of A-share listed companies in China from 2012 to 2024, we employ OLS regression models to explore the impact of ESG responsibility fulfillment on cost stickiness and the factors that influence this relationship. The study finds that (1) there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between corporate ESG responsibility fulfillment and cost stickiness; (2) the turning point lies between the B and CCC Huazheng ESG rating levels. Below this level, ESG responsibility fulfillment reduces cost stickiness, while above it, excessive ESG fulfillment increases cost stickiness; (3) environmental sensitivity, managerial overconfidence, and state ownership amplify this non-linear effect, making the reduction or increase in cost stickiness more pronounced. This paper deepens the understanding of the drivers of cost stickiness from the perspective of ESG responsibility fulfillment, offering new insights for future research on cost behavior and providing valuable guidance for firms seeking to optimize cost management through ESG strategies. Full article

This study investigates how eco-efficiency and socio-efficiency influence firms’ default risk across the European financial, industrial, and consumer service sectors from 2010 to 2024. This study aims to determine whether integrating environmental and social performance into corporate strategies mitigates financial distress over time. The Pooled Mean Group ARDL estimator was employed to capture the short- and long-term dynamics. The results indicate that higher eco- and socio-efficiency significantly reduce long-term default risk, particularly in the financial and industrial sectors. Short-term effects were found to be insignificant, suggesting that sustainability benefits gradually emerged. This study offers novel sector-specific evidence linking sustainability efficiency to default risk in European firms and provides insights into how environmental and social efficiencies enhance corporate resilience and financial stability. Full article

Firms are increasingly expected to pursue multiple sustainability priorities, but the implementation consequences of expanding sustainability agendas remain insufficiently understood. This study investigates whether and how sustainability overload reduces sustainability execution consistency. Drawing on the attention-based view and the corporate sustainability tensions perspective, the study proposes that a broad and simultaneous sustainability agenda exceeds managers’ attentional and coordination capacity, thereby weakening implementation coherence across departments. Specifically, the study hypothesizes that sustainability overload increases managerial attention strain, which in turn increases interunit priority divergence, ultimately reducing sustainability execution consistency. To test this sequential mechanism, a randomized experimental vignette study was conducted with 300 middle- and senior-level managers working in Türkiye-based firms operating in sustainability-exposed sectors. Participants were assigned to either a focused sustainability strategy condition or an overloaded sustainability strategy condition. The results support all proposed hypotheses. The overloaded condition increased managerial attention strain and interunit priority divergence, while reducing perceived sustainability execution consistency. PROCESS Model 6 analysis confirmed the sequential mediation mechanism. The findings suggest that sustainability implementation depends not only on the breadth of sustainability goals, but also on whether these goals are organized through a manageable priority architecture. The study contributes to sustainability strategy implementation research by highlighting managerial attention and cross-functional divergence as mechanisms linking sustainability overload to execution inconsistency. Full article

Autonomous robotic systems are being deployed in commercial, healthcare, logistics, and mixed-use built environments at a rate that significantly outpaces the adaptive capacity of existing building design and management paradigms. Buildings have historically been conceived exclusively for human occupants, and the resulting absence of a structured, scalable framework for evaluating or designing robot-ready facilities constitutes a critical gap in both research and professional practice. This article introduces the Robot-Friendly Buildings Level of Service (RFB-LOS) framework: a five-tier hierarchical classification system that characterises the degree to which a built environment supports autonomous robotic operations across six evaluative dimensions—building intelligence, active infrastructure, architectural planning, accessibility, observability, and safety. The framework spans a continuum from Robot Excluded (RFB-LOS-1), in which a building has no awareness of its robotic occupants, to Physical AI Robot Optimised (RFB-LOS-5), in which a Physical AI middleware layer assumes the highest command authority within a coordinated human–robot–building ecosystem. Drawing structural inspiration from the SAE J3016 Levels of Driving Automation, the EU Smart Readiness Indicator, HIMSS EMRAM, and BREEAM/LEED sustainability certification, the RFB-LOS framework is positioned as a foundational standard for the built environment and systems engineering community. Five real-world case studies spanning retail, hospitality, healthcare, and corporate sectors across four countries validate the framework’s tier assignments against observed operational outcomes. Full article

This study introduces a comprehensive framework for understanding sustainable online shopping preferences, validated using survey data collected in Serbia and Slovenia in 2025 (n = 572), thereby enhancing its generalizability. The primary aim of this research is to examine the extent to which specific environmental, social, and economic indicators influence decision-making processes for online purchasing and delivery. A detailed quantitative analysis was conducted using a structured questionnaire that included a wide range of variables related to online shopping behaviors and delivery preferences. The findings indicate that preferences for sustainability are inherently complex and multifaceted, shaped by critical factors such as environmental concerns, social responsibility, trust, skepticism towards sustainability claims, willingness to pay (WTP), and price sensitivity. Demographic variables, particularly gender and age, show consistent links to preferences for environmental considerations and corporate social responsibility (CSR), while income impacts trust-related behaviors and WTP. Furthermore, the analysis distinguishes between two distinct decision-making approaches: a value-driven sustainability cluster represented by EcoIndex, SocialIndex, and WTPIndex, and a cost-minimization strategy focused on price sensitivity (PriceIndex), with trust acting as a related yet separate factor (CredibilityIndex). Overall, this study emphasizes that a range of interconnected dimensions significantly shape sustainable online shopping preferences. The study was conducted in two developing European countries. Additionally, the findings highlight the need to address universal market barriers, such as price sensitivity, information asymmetry, and consumer skepticism. In a business context, they underscore the importance of adopting advanced analytical methods to enhance decision-making and optimize sustainable business strategies. Full article

The rapid expansion of e-commerce has reshaped global consumption systems by transforming production processes, logistics infrastructures, and consumer behaviour. While this transformation has generated significant economic opportunities, it has simultaneously intensified environmental pressures, particularly through last-mile delivery emissions, excessive packaging waste, and high return rates. At the same time, the growing diffusion of corporate sustainability reporting has raised increasing concerns about greenwashing, defined as the misrepresentation of environmental performance through selective disclosure or symbolic communication. This study aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of sustainability practices in e-commerce, focusing on the relationship between environmental performance, transparency, and economic outcomes. Particular attention is devoted to the role of blockchain technology as a potential mechanism for enhancing verifiable transparency in complex supply chains. The research adopts a multiple case study design grounded in the methodological frameworks and integrates qualitative analysis with a semi-quantitative evaluation model. Seven companies operating in different segments of the e-commerce ecosystem are analyzed through an extensive review of secondary data sources, including ESG reports, financial disclosures, NGO assessments, and industry benchmarks. The findings reveal a substantial gap between declared sustainability commitments and actual implementation, with significant heterogeneity across firms. Companies that embed sustainability into their strategic core demonstrate stronger alignment between environmental and economic performance, whereas firms relying primarily on communication-driven approaches exhibit higher implementation gaps. The study contributes to the literature by introducing an analytical framework centered on the concept of the implementation gap and by demonstrating the central role of transparency in determining sustainability effectiveness. It also highlights the potential, yet still largely unrealized, role of blockchain technology in addressing information asymmetry and reducing greenwashing in e-commerce. Full article

This study aims to investigate the role of artificial intelligence (AI) for strategically steering corporate environmental sustainability, which remains underexplored in the context of emerging economies. Drawing on the resource-based perspective and Dynamic Capabilities Theory, we argue that the adoption of AI also represents an aspect associated with an organizational capability on a higher rung that can enhance performance towards environmental goals. We further examine a mediating framework through which the effect of AI on environmental sustainability is transmitted through firms’ green governance structures. Using a longitudinal panel dataset of 75 publicly listed industrial firms operating in six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries from 2018 to 2025, we used fixed-effects regression analysis alongside bootstrapped mediation analysis. In fact, the empirical evidence suggests that AI adoption is positively and significantly associated with environmental sustainability. We also show that green governance partially mediates this relationship implying that AI-based strategic investment is better realized in terms of measurable environmental impacts when it is embedded within sound board-level ESG governance systems. As such, the findings provide an important empirical perspective on the AI–sustainability nexus in the GCC industrial landscape and also explain the empirical role played by green governance in implementing technology, constituting technological enablers for the transformation of technological capabilities to concrete environmental outcomes. The study will also provide policymakers and managers with actionable insights on the potential for digital transformation to act as a strategic enabler of sustainable development in resource-intensive industries. Full article

This study aims to examine whether and how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance is related to corporate tax avoidance in a non-linear and threshold-dependent manner using explainable machine learning. Based on 6461 firm-year observations of publicly listed European firms over the 2018–2023 period, this study employs a multi-algorithmic machine-learning classification framework. Model interpretability is achieved through SHAP, which identifies feature importance, marginal effects, interaction patterns, and ESG-related threshold dynamics. The results demonstrate that the ESG–tax relationship is highly non-linear. While the Country and Industry factors establish baseline tax risks, ESG sub-dimensions act as critical firm-level determinants. Specifically, high Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Human Rights scores effectively constrain tax avoidance. In contrast, exceptionally high Management scores correlate with increased tax-avoidance risk. These findings support the legitimacy buffer argument and show that strong governance may also reflect managerial sophistication and capacity for less visible tax planning. The study contributes by revealing non-linear ESG threshold effects and by demonstrating how XAI/SHAP can distinguish between symbolic and substantive sustainability practices in corporate tax behavior. Full article