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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework which sheds new light on how sustainability control systems (SCS) can be used in proactive strategic responses to corporate sustainability pressures.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Corporate sustainability pressures are identified using insights from institutional theory and the resource-based view of the firm.

Findings – The paper presents an integrated framework showing the corporate sustainability pressures, proactive strategic responses to these pressures, and how organizations might use SCS in their responses to the corporate sustainability pressures they face.

Practical Implications – The proposed framework shows how organizations can use SCS in proactive strategic responses to corporate sustainability pressures.

Originality/Value – The paper suggests that instead of using traditional financial-oriented management control systems, organizations need more focus on emerging SCS as a means of achieving sustainability objectives. In particular, the paper proposes different SCS tools that can be used in proactive strategic responses to sustainability pressures in terms of (i) specifying and communicating sustainability objectives, (ii) monitoring sustainability performance, and (iii) providing motivation by linking sustainability rewards to performance.

This study explores the relations among corporate sustainability strategies, the intense use of sustainability control systems (SCSs) to implement these strategies and the emergence of organizational capabilities for sustainability.

Using survey data from a sample of 157 European firms across different industries, the authors explore differences between reactive and proactive sustainability strategies in their impact on the intense use of SCSs. The authors analyze the joint impact of a proactive sustainability strategy and an intense use of SCSs on the emergence of the organizational capabilities of sustainable market orientation, sustainable organizational learning and sustainable innovation. Furthermore, we explore the relevance of single levers of control for these capabilities.

The results show that a proactive sustainability strategy is associated with an intense use of SCSs and with the development of the three organizational capabilities. The authors provide evidence that the intensity of use of SCSs mediates the association between proactive sustainability strategy and the emergence of the three organizational capabilities. An interactive use of controls is constantly more important than a diagnostic use of controls in the emergence of the three capabilities.

The findings provide novel empirical evidence on the mechanisms through which corporate sustainability strategy is implemented in European organizations. The results contribute to an improved understanding of the organizational determinants underlying the development of organizational capabilities for sustainability.

This paper analyzes the mediating role of green process innovation in the relationships of green entrepreneurial orientation and proactive sustainability strategy with environmental performance.

The authors analyze data from 81 Brazilian agriculture technology startups (AgTechs) using partial least squares–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The results show that the green process innovation assumes an important role in AgTechs, promoting full mediations between green entrepreneurial orientation and proactive sustainability strategy with environmental performance. There are two ways for AgTechs to achieve high environmental performance. In both, green process innovation is a central condition, while green entrepreneurial orientation or proactive sustainability strategy is a complementary condition.

This study demonstrates how internal elements (green entrepreneurial orientation, proactive sustainability strategy and green process innovation) improve environmental performance. This answers calls to explore which elements translate green entrepreneurial orientation and proactive sustainability strategies into environmental performance, by highlighting the mediating role of green process innovation.

The findings are useful for founders and managers of AgTechs to find ways to manage sustainable technological advancement and cleaner production in agribusiness.

This study analyses the interface between sustainable entrepreneurship, strategy and innovation in promoting environmental performance of AgTechs from an emerging economy country.

The present paper contributes to the development of sustainable strategies by focusing on the social perspective and the role played by HRM. Specifically, we identified and compared the employee competencies that supported the compliance strategy as well as the innovative/proactive sustainability strategies – and their impacts on social outcomes.

After formulating hypotheses, we tested them on a sample of 179 companies from the chemical and metallurgical industries using the bootstrap method.

The results revealed that both sustainability strategies were present in the sample. The compliance sustainable strategy showed to be negatively associated with employee competencies, whilst proactive sustainable strategy firms presented a positive relationship with employee competencies. We also found that compliance strategies failed to have any impact on social outcomes, but proactive strategies had a positive effect on social outcomes. Indeed, normative and foresighted thinking competencies acted as mediating variables in such a relationship.

The originality of this paper lies in three aspects hitherto unaddressed in the literature: first, the conceptualisation and assessment of sustainable strategies focused on a social dimension; second, the identification of individual competencies required developing sustainable strategies; and third, the demonstration that it is only the firms that adopt proactive sustainable strategies that obtain positive social outcomes.

This paper aims to adopt the strategy-structure-performance (SSP) framework to explore how proactive social strategy could motivate firms to collaborate with suppliers on social sustainability initiatives, and how such collaborative efforts could unlock a win-win opportunity for both noneconomic (social performance) and economic (operational performance) performance. Additionally, drawing on the tenets of the social exchange theory, the different moderating effects of distributive justice and procedural justice on the social collaboration-performance relationship are also examined.

This study uses survey data collected from 215 manufacturing companies in China. The proposed hypotheses are tested using multiple linear regression models as well as the PROCESS macro within SPSS.

The results suggest that (1) a proactive social strategy could motivate firms to collaborate with suppliers on joint social activities and (2) social collaboration with suppliers can have a significant positive effect on both social and operational performance. The moderation results suggest that distributive justice has a differential effect on the collaboration-performance link. Particularly, distributive justice strengthens the relationship between social collaboration and operational performance, while it weakens the relationship between social collaboration and social performance. Surprisingly, procedural justice did not have a significant moderating effect on the social collaboration-performance link.

This paper extends the SSP framework to the social sustainability context by not only stressing the importance of proactivity in managing sustainability, but also revealing collaboration as a structural aspect that could achieve superior performance benefits. This study also contributes to sustainable supply chain literature by exploring the moderating roles of justice elements.

This chapter discusses the evolvement of the sustainability concept and its importance in the strategic management context. First, the authors review the development of the concept over the last century and presents the most commonly used sustainability definitions. Then, the three pillars of sustainability (economic, natural and social) are reviewed, highlighting the sustainability aspect of each pillar individually and the problems of their non-substitutability, irreversibility and non-linearity. Based on the literature review, this chapter discusses the main motives for integration of sustainability concept into the overall strategy of the company, namely compliance with regulation, response to public concern, expected competitive advantage and top management commitment. Furthermore, important distinctions between reactive and proactive approaches are presented, and the results and benefits (such as cost reductions, differentiation and added value) of proactive approaches to corporate sustainability are analyzed. Nevertheless, such benefits can only be achieved if corporate sustainability is understood and treated as a holistic concept, which is deeply embedded in the company’s strategy and is approached proactively from the interdisciplinary viewpoint, looking at all three dimensions simultaneously.

The purpose of this paper is to address the implementation of proactive interorganizational sustainable supply chain strategies by empirically exploring the relationship between key (inter‐)organizational resources of the initiating company and the establishment of widely accepted voluntary sustainability initiatives.

The study is built on comparative case studies as well as literature on institutional entrepreneurship and the resource‐based view.

The authors identify capabilities that enable the creation and establishment of company‐driven voluntary sustainability initiatives – namely external stakeholder integration, cross‐functional integration, the management of loosely coupled business units, supply chain implementation, process improvement and cultural framing.

With this study, the authors introduce institutional entrepreneurship theory to supply chain management literature and show that institutional entrepreneurship theory may contribute to the question of how organizations implement their interorganizational sustainable supply chain strategies. Specifically, the study derives propositions for key resources enabling the establishment of voluntary sustainability initiatives widely accepted by participants as well as initiative‐external stakeholders.

This study examines a moderated moderation model in which the hardiness of chief marketing officers (CMOs) moderates the relationship between CMOs' future focus and firms' sustainability marketing commitment (SMC), and this moderating effect is moderated by CMOs' proactive personality.

A sample of 298 CMOs of firms in Vietnam was surveyed to collect data. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to validate the measures of the constructs used in the model and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the model and hypotheses.

The SEM results reveal that CMOs' future focus had a positive relationship with firms' SMC. Furthermore, both CMOs' hardiness and its interaction with CMOs' future focus had positive effects on firms' SMC. Finally, the three-way interaction between CMOs' future focus, hardiness and proactive personality had a positive effect on firms' SMC.

The study findings assist firms in emerging markets in understanding the roles of some key personality-based resources of CMOs in fostering firms' SMC.

This study is among the first to investigate the roles of CMOs' personality-based resources (i.e. future focus, hardiness and proactive personality) in firms' SMC, offering insight into the sustainability marketing literature.

Drawing on the natural resource-based view (NRBV) of the firm, this study aims to investigate the mediating role of sustainability performance management (SPM) practices in the relationship between corporate sustainability strategy (SS) and sustainability performance (SP). The conceptualization of SS and SPM practices follow the NRBV resources and capabilities to promote sustainability for competitiveness.

Data for the study were collected through a questionnaire from 114 small-medium to large organizations within environmentally sensitive industries operating in Malaysia.

The results indicate the indirect relationship between SS and SP through SPM practices. The results suggest that SS can only be realized through a broader management accounting control system (such as SPM practices) that provides information to generate, analyze and control environmental, social, economic and governance performance.

As some organizations may face their resource constraints, this study may help managers and management accountants prioritize their focus on SS and adopt the necessary SPM practices to enhance their SP.

This study sheds new light on the role of the SPM practices adopted by firms to manage their SS.

The paper aims to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in overcoming the difficulties they encounter in initiating sustainability reporting, proposing a “general” process for identifying a standard set of key sustainability indicators, that is specifically tailored on SMEs characteristics.

The paper moves from the analysis of the existing international frameworks for sustainability reporting, and it discusses the main motivations whereby they are hardly applicable for SMEs. Then, it proposes a theoretical approach, which derives the set of key sustainability indicators starting from GRI, but explicitly considering SMEs specificities.

The paper presents and discusses the application of the proposed approach to a network of Italian steel SMEs.

The approach proposed can support SMEs to face the problems they face in implementing sustainability reporting (resource and capability constraints and lack of operative instruments to support them), helping them to derive financial benefits arising from more sustainable choices.

Contrary to most existing international reporting guidance, this work does not seek to identify a set of general purpose key sustainability indicators (KSIs). Instead, the paper sets out a “general” process for obtaining a standard set of KSIs for use by any promoting organisation, whether a public administration seeking to reinforce sustainability strategies, or a trade association looking to support proactive SMEs.