Sustainability is aimed at addressing the environmental and socio-economic issues of this generation and future ones. In this context, sustainable public procurement (SPP) has been proposed to link the consumption side (government) to the production side (companies), whilst addressing the four dimensions of sustainability (economic, environmental, social, and time). This paper undertakes an analysis, through hermeneutics, of four sets of system elements of SPP: (1) demand-offering, which includes products, services, and their combination; (2) procurement specifications (technical, non-technical, and socio-cultural); (3) stakeholder interactions; and, (4) research disciplinary approaches. The analysis shows that despite most SPP efforts focussing on demand-offerings or specifications, there have been some framework proposals aimed at explaining the complexities and interactions between the system elements. Additionally, most research on SPP has been carried out through single disciplinary approaches. The paper proposes the Harmonic SPP framework, which integrates the demand-offering, specifications, stakeholder interactions, disciplinary approaches, and the four sustainability dimensions, where the harmonisation of their interrelations is sine qua non. The Harmonic SPP framework is aimed at providing a more holistic perspective to SPP and thus fostering more effective and efficient SPP research and implementation.

Public participation is crucial for policy-making and can contribute to strengthening democracies and decision-making. Public participation can help to address sustainability challenges and plays a key role in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While the SDGs are policy concepts, there has been limited research conducted on how the public perceives the SDGs. Public participation in scientific research has been carried out through citizen science (CS). This paper analyzes the public's perception of the SDGs through CS and how the public can participate in their implementation. The paper uses the OSDG community platform, a citizen science platform with >2000 participants, to analyze public perception of the SDGs. A set of 40,062 excerpts of text (v2023-01-01), a topic modeling and agreement scores by using CorTexT Manager software, was analyzed. The results show that some SDGs, e.g. health (SDG3) or life below water (SDG14), have higher levels of agreement from the public, whilst for other SDGs the public disagree on their perception, (e.g. zero hunger). The paper shows that issues affecting citizens' daily lives (e.g. in People related goals) tend to have a higher level of agreement among volunteers, while economic issues and directives have greater discrepancies. The results provide an overview of the differences in public perception on the SDGs and their implementation. The misperceptions regarding the SDGs should be reduced to achieve a better implementation, improve public participation, and help policy-making processes.

There has been increasing interest on how organisations address the four dimensions of sustainability. Despite calls for a holistic perspective, empirical research on sustainable organisations has been carried out on (1) engagement efforts, focussing inside the organisation, i.e., the system elements engage with sustainability, or (2) efforts to contribute to sustainability, focussing outside the organisation, i.e., how the organisation as a whole impacts sustainability. A survey was developed to investigate engagement of the system elements and their contribution to sustainability, from which 210 full responses were obtained. The data were analysed using descriptive analysis, Friedman test to rank the engagement of the organisation system elements with sustainability, ratio analyses (positive to negative) and ANOVAs regarding organisation type and size. The results show that the organisation system elements most engaged with sustainability are research and management, and strategy, and the least are operations and production, products, procurement, and supply chain. The impact ratios are highest from research, services, and management and strategy. The ANOVA test results demonstrate that the type of organisation does not affect how the system elements engage with and impact sustainability, with some exceptions. The paper proves that the inside and outside sustainability efforts of an organisation are not separated but intertwined through a series of connections. The results are integrated into for the “organisation system elements engagement and impact to sustainability” model. Organisations must take a holistic a systems perspective that considers the system elements engagement and how each of these contribute to sustainability and its dimensions.

Purpose

Government-owned companies (GOCs), such as ports, have engaged in efforts to become more sustainable. Most of such efforts have been technological and policy ones and mainly focusing on the environment, with limited research on organisational change management. This paper aims to provide insights into how ports have been addressing sustainability change forces and pressures.

Design/methodology/approach

Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with top-level directors and sustainability managers, representing ports across Europe’s maritime regions and a range of port types and sizes. The interviews were analysed using grounded theory’s constant comparative analysis.

Findings

The findings highlighted that the ports’ success in their process to become more sustainable depends on how they take advantage of the thrust forces and reduce the drag ones. The findings serve to develop the “ports’ sustainability change management framework”, with five stages: reactive, proactive, transactive, interactive, and sustainable port.

Practical implications

Ports, and other GOCs, should capitalise on their private–public nature in their contribution to making societies more sustainable by adopting a holistic perspective and interactive changes.

Originality/value

This paper provides a dynamic perspective on corporate sustainability efforts, particularly on GOCs, through organisational change management complementing technocentric and managerial approaches.

Progress towards more sustainable societies requires moving from reactive responses to immediate problems, towards a more proactive focus on avoiding possible future problems and preparing for potential events. This requires that sustainability is endorsed by a group or opinion leader to be adopted by society. Organisations have been instrumental in fostering sustainability and can be such opinion leaders. During the last 10 years, there has been an increasing interest in organisational sustainability; however, research on civil society organisations (CSOs) has been scarce. Sports organisations (such as football clubs) are a particular type of CSO, and have been adopting sustainability, albeit slowly. Twelve interviews with representatives of Swedish football clubs (from which nine were male clubs and three were female clubs) were conducted between August and November 2021. The data were analysed using Grounded Theory's constant comparative analysis method. The findings show that football clubs have been undertaking several sustainability efforts (e.g. stakeholder collaboration, energy, health, gender and transportation) and have been connecting the sustainability dimensions throughout such efforts. The findings provide insights into the stages of sustainability awareness in football clubs, starting from the social dimension, then the environmental, economic and time dimensions. An important finding from the interviews was the potential that football clubs have in engaging and influencing society through their fans. This research provides insights into the contributions of football clubs to sustainability. Football clubs, and other CSOs, have the potential to become societal change agents and make societies more sustainable through a shared identity.

Sustainability has been proposed to address societal challenges. A number of efforts have been undertaken to implement sustainability, particularly through frameworks such as tools, initiatives and approaches (TIAs). Most of the research on the implementation efforts has been in the corporate context. This paper is aimed at analysing the implementation of TIAs in academic research. A bibliometric analysis of twenty TIAs during the period 1961–2020 was carried out to analyse their implementation in academic research. The results highlight that there has been research published on all the TIAs analysed. The TIAs have a better balance and interrelations between the sustainability dimensions in their implementation than in the theory. The results show that for a better implementation of TIAs in academic research it is necessary to address sustainability dimensions (economic, environmental, social, and time) in a holistic and balanced way considering alignment of general and specific efforts, i.e. TIAs, and congruence (linking ‘theory’ and ‘implementation’). The results were integrated to propose a ‘Sustainability Implementation Framework’ (SIF), which is divided into three levels (i.e., Initiatives, Approaches, and Tools). The TIAs implementation should follow more strictly the definitions, or, perhaps, the TIAs definitions should be redefined to encompass the insights from their implementation.

There has been increasing research on pedagogical approaches, sustainability competences, and how to connect them in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This paper's aim is to provide deeper insights into the system of pedagogical approaches and sustainability competences, as well as how these interrelate. A survey was developed to investigate sustainability teaching in 15 HEIs. The survey was sent to educators of each HEI from which 668 responses were obtained. The responses were analysed in a five-step process: (1) descriptive statistics; (2) Pearson correlations; (3) principal component analyses (PCAs) to detect groups; (4) Pearson correlations between the groups; and (5) regressions. The first step provided the base to carry out the PCAs, from which three groups for the pedagogical approaches (Universal, Social, and Environmental) and three for the sustainability competences (Extrospective-social, Introspective-personal, and Cogitative-processual) were obtained. The correlations between the groups showed that: (1) the competences are closely interrelated; (2) the pedagogical approaches are somehow interrelated; and (3) the pedagogical approaches are somehow interrelated to the competences. The regressions showed that the Universal and Social groups would be most suitable to develop all the competences' groups. The Environmental group develops only the cogitative-processual competences' group. The results served as bases to propose the Sustainability Teaching System (STS), which provides deeper insights into the system of pedagogical approaches and sustainability competences by grouping them, as well as showing directionality and strength. To improve sustainability teaching, it is necessary to understand the pedagogical approaches' groups and how they can develop the competences' groups.

Organisations have been driving sustainability, where some efforts have focussed on the organisation itself and some on how organisations contribute to society, such as addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although organisations have been working to address the SDGs, there has been limited integration of the SDGs in organisation systems. This paper aimed at analysing how organisations have been addressing the SDGs. A survey was developed to investigate the impacts and contribution of organisations to sustainability, where 294 responses were obtained for the questions on organisations' impacts to the sustainability. The data were analysed using descriptive analysis: Friedman test to rank the impacts on the SDGs and divided into quartiles; a ratio analysis between positive impacts and negative impacts; and correlations. The results show that organisations' impacts on the SDGs are quite generalisable to all types of organisations, with three exceptions (SDGs 4, 5 and 16). The results also served to develop an SDG impact categorisation. The correlation analysis showed that organisations address the SDGs through a compartmentalised approach. The results helped to propose the ‘organisations' impacts on the SDGs framework’ focussing on the contribution of organisations to sustainability. This research shows that organisations can contribute directly to some of the SDGs, but not to others. Therefore, the discourse must change from integration of SDGs on organisations to the contribution that organisations can have on the SDGs.

Energy is key in achieving sustainable societies. There have been great efforts towards improving energy access worldwide. Despite the advances in energy access, energy poverty remains a major problem in many parts of the world, particularly in rural communities. Modern energy, in particular electricity, can help rural communities develop through improving education and health. During the last two decades, there have been improvements on bioenergy technological innovations, e.g. electricity generation from bioenergy from residual biomass from several agricultural crops in biorefineries. Most research has focussed on large biorefineries, with limited research on small-scale gasifiers' location and contribution to energy poverty. This paper is aimed at assessing technological options to generate electricity in situ from biomass to reduce energy poverty of rural communities. This is done using four analysis methods: (1) crops availability data; (2) poverty and marginalisation data; (3) electricity provision/distribution; and, (4) GIS/Geographical latitude and longitude to locate municipalities in Mexico. The results shows that the generating potential for electricity using residual biomass with gasifiers could improve the welfare of almost 10 million people communities using residual biomass from crops harvested in such communities. This research provides location solutions on the best places to locate small-scale biorefineries. The research also provides systemic analysis to reduce energy poverty through in situ electricity generation using cheap accessible small plant technologies and biomass as raw material, as well as their location. Generating electricity in a decentralised way through agricultural residual biomass can help lift rural communities from poverty and improve their well-being, and, thus, make societies more sustainable