Search Results (877)

The cooperatives combine a pyramidal structure, in which few members concentrate decision-making power, with ownership dispersed among a broad membership base. This configuration favors adverse selection and moral hazard arising from information asymmetry between managers and stakeholders, which legitimacy theory suggests may be reduced through sustainability disclosure. The study advances the literature by combining three elements not yet integrated in research on cooperatives: the cultural pillar as an autonomous dimension of sustainability, disaggregated analysis by pillar, and risk-adjusted financial performance. The level of sustainability disclosure was analyzed from a stakeholder perspective, along with its association with financial performance. Forty-four expert-validated indicators were applied to 39 cooperatives listed in the 2022 World Cooperative Monitor that published complete reports over the 2020–2022 triennium, resulting in 117 observations, estimated by fixed effects with cluster-robust standard errors. Mean disclosure was 0.52, led by the environmental pillar (0.70), followed by the economic (0.62), social (0.47), and cultural (0.33) pillars. The aggregate index showed no statistically significant association with risk-adjusted financial performance, either for ROA or for ROE, whereas the social dimension remained positive and significant regardless of the metric used. This pattern is consistent with the propositions of legitimacy theory regarding the social pillar, although the underlying mechanisms of information asymmetry reduction and legitimacy strengthening were not directly measured in this study. Full article

Environmental, Social, and Governance practices have emerged as a critical mechanism for mitigating extreme climate risks and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Against this backdrop, this study focuses on Chinese listed manufacturing enterprises from 2015 to 2023. By incorporating the city-level climate risk expressions of public views index, we examine the impact of public concern and negative sentiment regarding climate risk (CR-PCNS) on corporate ESG performance. Our baseline findings indicate that elevated CR-PCNS significantly enhances corporate ESG performance, particularly within the environmental and social pillars, while exerting no significant effect on the governance dimension. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that this promotional effect is more pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises and firms located in the eastern region, with the most noticeable improvements manifested in their environmental performance. Furthermore, the moderation analysis demonstrates that higher executive educational attainment significantly amplifies the positive impact of CR-PCNS on corporate ESG performance, whereas local protectionism severely attenuates this promotional effect. These findings offer crucial policy implications for how to effectively harness public involvement to incentivize greater corporate engagement in ESG initiatives. Full article

Sudan faces riverine flooding along the Blue Nile and chronic drought across Darfur–Kordofan, yet no national assessment integrates both hazards with social vulnerability to support sustainable and climate-resilient development. This study develops a Societal Impact Index (SII) for Sudan’s eighteen states using a terrain-based flood-susceptibility surface, a drought-frequency indicator (SPEI-12), and thirteen social-vulnerability indicators. These are combined into four weighted pillars following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) risk architecture and validated against independent humanitarian-needs assessments, with convergent checks based on displacement and malnutrition. An unsupervised machine-learning audit, combining k-means clustering with principal component analysis, tests whether the data’s structure supports the composite ranking. The audit shows that the five High-impact states follow two distinct pathways: hazard-and-exposure dominance in Al Qadarif and Al Jazirah, and sensitivity dominance in the remaining three Darfur states. This distinction enables risk-reduction and infrastructure measures to be tailored to the dominant pathway in each state. The first two principal components correlate only weakly with the SII ($r=0.02$ and $r=0.36$), indicating that the ranking reflects the assigned weights as well as the data structure. Each score is exactly decomposed into pillar contributions, improving transparency, while a prototype scenario tool illustrates practical use. Flood-exposed population increased by 7.4 percent between 2017 and 2020, highlighting the need for continuous updating. The reproducible, open-data framework can support equitable resource allocation, sustainable infrastructure planning, long-term vulnerability reduction, and future disaster-resilience digital twins in data-scarce Sahelian settings. Full article

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations have become an increasingly important component of sustainable finance, investment decision-making, and banking regulation. As financial institutions face growing pressure to integrate sustainability objectives into their business models, understanding how sustainability performance relates to market valuation has become an important issue for investors, regulators, and bank management. Despite the growing ESG literature, evidence regarding the valuation relevance of individual ESG dimensions remains limited, particularly in the European banking sector. This study examines whether ESG dimensions are uniformly associated with the market valuation of European banks or whether financial markets differentiate among individual ESG pillars. Using a panel dataset of European banks covering 2021–2024 and Bloomberg ESG indicators, the study estimates panel econometric models to evaluate the associations between disaggregated ESG pillars and market-based valuation measures. The empirical findings reveal substantial heterogeneity across ESG dimensions. The social pillar is positively associated with market valuation, whereas the environmental pillar is negatively associated, while governance exhibits weak or statistically insignificant associations. The findings remain robust across several alternative model specifications. The results indicate that investors in highly regulated European banking markets differentiate between ESG dimensions, suggesting that financial markets differentiate among ESG dimensions and that analysing ESG at the pillar level provides a more nuanced understanding of market valuation than aggregate ESG measures. Full article

Offshore wind energy is rapidly emerging as a pivotal technology for global decarbonization and energy security, particularly in emerging markets with vast maritime resources like Brazil. This article presents a comprehensive and integrative literature review that evaluates the socio-environmental impacts of offshore wind while simultaneously analyzing its strategic role in providing “Capacity Value” and systemic security to the Brazilian Power System. Unlike onshore wind, offshore resources in Brazil exhibit superior technical characteristics, with capacity factors reaching up to 67% and a strong countercyclical complementarity with hydrological regimes. These features allow offshore wind to reliably contribute to meeting peak demand and reducing power deficits, quantified through metrics such as Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) and Firm Energy Certificates. However, the expansion of the sector brings complex socio-environmental challenges, including impacts on marine biodiversity, disruptions to artisanal fisheries, and a high reliance on critical minerals. The analysis reveals that current licensing frameworks in Brazil, although evolving with the enactment of Law No. 15,097/2025, still face gaps in cumulative impact assessment and participatory governance. The article concludes by proposing a “dual-track” governance approach that integrates Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) with supply-adequacy requirements. By aligning technical optimization with biodiversity safeguards and social equity, Brazil can foster a sustainable offshore wind sector that acts as a reliable pillar for its long-term energy transition. Full article

Nomadism and the tent tradition constitute foundational pillars of Anatolia’s vernacular building culture, yet the spatial continuity between nomadic dwelling practices and their urban coastal adaptations remains underexplored in the literature. This study examines how nomadic spatial strategies were reproduced in Antalya’s coastal oba settlements, evaluating them as architectural expressions of indigenous material culture and collective building knowledge rather than provisional structures. Employing a qualitative approach, the research synthesizes data from literature reviews, archival analysis, and semi-structured interviews with former residents, utilizing Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis as an analytic framework to examine how seasonal cycles, recurring daily rituals, and patterns of collective occupation shaped the spatial logic of these now-vanished settlements. Findings reveal three distinct oba typologies with traceable morphological continuities to the nomadic tent tradition, particularly in semi-open spatial configurations, modular organization, and the flexible adaptation of indigenous materials to coastal conditions. Interpreted through the lens of cultural landscape, the oba emerges as a site where tangible building practice and intangible cultural heritage converge. The study concludes that Antalya’s coastal obas represent a significant yet under documented chapter of vernacular architectural heritage, one whose physical erasure under post-1980 tourism-driven development has rendered its preservation in collective and embodied memory all the more urgent. By transitioning from physical fabric to intangible heritage, these settlements persist as a critical representational field for cultural and social sustainability discourse. Full article

This study examines the relationship between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and bank credit risk among publicly listed U.S. banks over the period 2016–2025. It distinguishes between forward-looking and realized credit risk by using the loan loss provision ratio (LLPR) as the primary measure of expected credit risk and the non-performing loan ratio (NPLR) as a robustness measure. Using fixed-effects and dynamic System Generalized Method of Moments (System GMM) estimations, the results show that stronger ESG performance is associated with lower forward-looking expected credit risk. The ESG pillar analysis indicates that the social dimension exerts the strongest risk-reducing effect, followed by governance and environmental performance. In addition, economic policy uncertainty weakens the beneficial effect of ESG on bank credit risk. By contrast, ESG performance is not significantly associated with realized credit deterioration measured using NPLR, suggesting that ESG primarily influences banks’ expectations of future credit losses rather than realized loan performance. Overall, the findings demonstrate that the impact of ESG on bank credit risk depends on both the measurement of credit risk and the surrounding macroeconomic environment. Full article

Interorganizational trust constitutes a foundational pillar of relational governance that facilitates coordination and enhances organizational performance. However, recent scholarly debate suggests that an overreliance on trusted interorganizational relationships may engender unintended counterproductive consequences. Integrating Social Exchange Theory (SET) and the Knowledge-Based View (KBV) through a capability-based perspective, this study examines a capability-based mechanism through which interorganizational trust influences firm performance via the mediating role of problem-solving capability (PSC). Based on a census dataset of all 48 licensed futures brokerage firms operating under the Jakarta Futures Exchange (JFX), primary survey data gathered from Chief Executive Officers were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The empirical evidence indicates that interorganizational trust is negatively associated with both problem-solving capability and firm performance. In contrast, problem-solving capability is positively related to firm performance and likely to significantly mediate the relationship between interorganizational trust and firm performance. These findings suggest that the organizational implications of relational trust are better understood by examining the internal adaptive capabilities that transform relational resources into firm performance. From this capability-based standpoint, problem-solving capability serves as a critical internal mechanism linking external relational conditions to organizational performance. Meanwhile, the concept of capability erosion offers a plausible theoretical explanation for how excessive reliance on relational support may reduce organizations’ incentives to sustain internal problem-solving capability. Overall, this paper contributes to the relational governance literature by providing a capability-based perspective on the dark side of interorganizational trust, offering practical insights for industry executives and market regulators on balancing relational governance with internal capability development. Full article

This research establishes a framework to evaluate how effectively financial institutions convert environmental, social, and governance (ESG) pressures into readiness for open innovation (EOIR). EOIR is conceptualized as a higher-order capability that encompasses environmental opportunity, social legitimacy, and governance discipline. This study employs a triangulated multi-criteria decision-making framework consisting of CRITIC, Shannon Entropy, and Fuzzy AHP weighting with MARCOS ranking, TOPSIS validation, and pillar-focused scenario analysis to evaluate ESG–open innovation readiness. Results inindicate the importance of governance practices, such as board independence, low controversies, and alignment with the Paris Agreement and environmental innovation. Data privacy outperforms representational social attributes. The MARCOS and TOPSIS rankings demonstrate a high degree of concordance; leaders maintain their stability across weighting philosophies, while mid-tier positions exhibit policy-sensitive mobility. Scenario analysis indicates a stable frontier, high top-10 overlap, and mid-teen rank shifts, highlighting actionable levers. The framework provides a transparent, reproducible multiple-criteria decision-making pipeline for EOIR measurement and clarifies important enablers, including credible governance, environmental technology alignment, and privacy-centric data governance, from a theoretical and practical perspective. Full article

This paper provides an up-to-date, policy-oriented assessment of wind energy development in Spain, analysing recent technological, market and regulatory trends within a European and global context. It reviews the evolution of wind technology (including onshore scaling, digitalisation, hybridisation and emerging floating offshore solutions) and examines changes in the Spanish policy framework, with particular attention to auctions, corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs) and the updated National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) targets. The study highlights Spain’s strong position in terms of resource availability, industrial capacity and a competitive levelized cost of energy (LCOE), while also identifying key structural challenges affecting future deployment. These include permitting bottlenecks, social acceptance issues, grid constraints and the need for increased system flexibility through storage and hybrid solutions. The analysis shows that, although wind energy is well positioned to remain a central pillar of Spain’s energy transition, achieving the 2030 targets will require improved regulatory stability, more effective auction design and accelerated investment in networks and flexibility resources. The paper concludes with a set of policy-relevant recommendations aimed at ensuring sustainable growth of the wind sector while maximising its economic, environmental and social benefits. Full article

Food loss and waste (FLW) constitutes a structural challenge for agri-food systems. However, current analytical tools for assessing management and valorisation options remain fragmented across disciplines. Existing frameworks rarely capture within a single structure the environmental, social, and economic–institutional feasibility dimensions needed to compare alternative recovery pathways. This study introduces the ESG-FLW Index, a multidimensional composite index designed to support comparative evaluation of FLW valorisation strategies, with particular attention to recovery for human consumption. The index draws on a comparative analysis of eight established frameworks. It integrates Life Cycle Assessment for the environmental pillar; Techno-Economic Assessment together with compliance, data-quality, scalability, and replicability indicators for the governance pillar; and Social Return on Investment for the social pillar. These components are aggregated through Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, following methodological guidance for robust composite indicators. The framework aligns explicitly with the Food Waste Hierarchy and SDG Target 12.3. It also includes hurdle criteria to limit the risk that high aggregate scores obscure critical shortcomings. As a proof of concept, the index was applied to the CiboAmico redistribution programme. Redistribution scored substantially higher than composting (85.1 versus 30.7). The ranking remained stable under ±20% weight variations and Monte Carlo simulations (n = 1000). The ESG-FLW Index offers a transparent and replicable decision-support tool. It is best suited to relative comparison among options and to making sustainability trade-offs explicit. Full article

Background: Although cervical cancer is a highly preventable malignancy, Romania continues to report critical mortality rates. This paradox is largely attributable to the suboptimal implementation of clinical guidelines and a passive, “opt-in” administrative framework. This cross-sectional study investigates the cognitive and behavioural determinants—specifically, human papillomavirus (HPV) knowledge, institutional trust in healthcare systems, and digital misinformation exposure—that modulate female attitudes toward HPV immunisation. Methods: An observational cross-sectional study was conducted between December 2025 and March 2026 across four obstetrics and gynaecology clinics. Data were collected via digital questionnaires administered to adult female patients aged 18 to 65 years. The assessment tool evaluated four primary domains: HPV knowledge, perceived vaccine safety, immunisation intention, and the degree of exposure to social media misinformation. Results: The cohort demonstrated a substantially low vaccination rate (28.6%). Statistical analysis elucidated significant positive correlations between HPV knowledge, trust in health authorities, and vaccination intention. Furthermore, reliance on official information sources strongly correlated with perceived vaccine safety. Conversely, exposure to negative online content exhibited a weak negative association with knowledge levels, yet it did not directly influence vaccination intention. Conclusions: Health literacy and institutional trust emerge as fundamental pillars for HPV vaccine acceptance. To overcome patient vaccine hesitancy, the national healthcare system must initiate a strategic paradigm shift, prioritising the neutralization of digital misinformation and transitioning from a passive model to a proactive, “opt-out” infrastructure. Full article

The current trajectory of Artificial Intelligence (AI) development represents a critical phase transition from a tenable academic pursuit to an untenable industrial behemoth, and ultimately toward an unsustainable environmental burden. This conceptual review and perspective article synthesizes evidence across sustainability science, information theory, AI governance, and regulatory studies to argue that Brute Force AI constitutes a systemic sustainability threat whose resolution requires a return to Algorithmic Parsimony. We formally redefine sustainability in sensu lato through a contrapositive logical criterion applicable to any system. We introduce an operationalized Intelligence-per-Joule ($\mathcal{I}/J$) index and Sustainability Index S, defined in terms of mutual information gain relative to thermodynamic and computational resource expenditure, and demonstrate their interpretive application across landmark AI systems. A quantitative synthesis of published empirical data across six landmark models (BERT through GPT-4) documents the Intelligence–Cost Divergence: the growing chasm between logarithmic capability gain and exponential resource cost. We further distinguish warranted from unwarranted scale—acknowledging that some large-scale capabilities are qualitatively irreplaceable—while arguing that the current default toward scale without efficiency justification is ecologically and socially indefensible. We introduce the Symbiotic Policy Covenant—a three-pillar governance framework encompassing Algorithmic Parsimony Mandates, Expanded Waste Taxonomy, and an AI Equity Safeguard addressing both access and benefit inequity—operationalized through a proposed ISO/IEC 42001-Plus standard addendum. We conclude that genuine intelligence and genuine sustainability are not in tension but are, at their mathematical foundations, the same aspiration. Full article

The European crafts ecosystem faces critical structural threats, declining practitioner numbers, weakening intergenerational transmission, limited digital literacy, and competition from industrial imitation. Existing online craft communities are narrowly material-specific and structurally ill-suited to the cross-disciplinary dialogue required for systemic sector transformation. This paper presents the design, iterative development, and pilot evaluation of the Craeft Community, a multi-stakeholder Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP) developed within the Horizon Europe CRAEFT project. Three research questions guided the study: how a multi-stakeholder VCoP should be structured to overcome disciplinary fragmentation; to what extent a stewarded digital forum can operationalize Situated Learning and Communities of Practice theory; and what factors facilitate or inhibit engagement and post-funding sustainability. Using design-based research, the platform evolved through four iterative phases, culminating in restructuring from a material-based architecture into five transversal thematic pillars, driven by survey evidence from 151 European craft professionals and systematic stakeholder feedback. The pilot phase yielded 86 registered members, 31 posts, and 27 interactions, with Transmission & Training as the most engaged pillar. Qualitative analysis reveals substantive cross-disciplinary discourse alongside a structural Effort-Engagement Gap, a persistent tension between forum participation demands and the gravitational pull of mainstream social media. The study demonstrates that a thematically organized, stewarded VCoP can meaningfully operationalize apprenticeship-based learning in digital settings, advancing craft heritage preservation, economic resilience, and hybrid professional identity formation at the intersection of craft and technology. Full article

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly used in entrepreneurial practice, yet limited empirical evidence explains how sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs appropriate it in relation to Triple Bottom Line (TBL) performance. This study examines the strategic alignment paradox faced by entrepreneurs who pursue accountable sustainability outcomes while using fast-moving, probabilistic, and partly opaque technologies. It investigates whether Sustainability Orientation (SO) is associated with Sustainable Entrepreneurial Performance (SEP) through five theoretically distinct GenAI appropriation dimensions: Adoptive, Customized, Ethical, Integrative, and Interface Appropriation. In this study, Ethical Appropriation is interpreted as ethical-boundary permissiveness because the retained GAIA items capture acceptance of self-serving, improper, or beyond-intended GenAI use rather than broad responsible-AI governance. A cross-sectional survey of 360 GenAI-using entrepreneurs and SME owner-managers in Saudi Arabia was analyzed using PLS-SEM in SmartPLS 4, with a 10,000-resample bootstrapping procedure, MICOM, permutation-based multi-group analysis, and higher-order robustness tests. The empirical results show that SO is positively and significantly associated with Customized, Ethical, and Integrative Appropriation, but has no significant relationship with Adoptive or Interface Adoptive Appropriation or Interface Appropriation. The aggregate model explains 60.8% of the variance in SEP. Mediation analysis indicates that the observed indirect association between SO and aggregate SEP is statistically significant only through the Customized, Ethical, and Integrative pathways. The pillar-specific analysis further shows that the aggregate SEP construct masks important differences across TBL outcomes: Integrative Appropriation is consistently associated with all three pillars; Ethical Appropriation is selectively associated with economic sustainability and should be interpreted as a governance warning rather than as evidence of responsible-AI governance; and Customized Appropriation is associated only with environmental and social sustainability. Finally, multi-group analysis provides no statistically robust evidence of gender-based heterogeneity after Bonferroni correction, suggesting that the SO–GenAI appropriation–SEP relationships are broadly comparable across male and female respondents in this sample. Overall, the findings suggest that GenAI should not be treated as a monolithic adoption construct; its sustainability implications depend on how generative tools are customized for specific tasks, interpreted with attention to ethical-boundary permissiveness, and structurally integrated into business routines. Full article