• Energy Research
• economics and business close
• ES close
• Sustainability close

On 25 September 2015, the member states of the United Nations approved an initiative in New York called “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” [...]

The European Universities initiative, launched by the European Commission in 2018, has its origin in the concept of Civic Universities (CivUs) and consists of transnational higher education alliances throughout the European Union that share long-term strategies. They are expected to become universities of the future, to promote European ideals and character, and to revolutionize the competitiveness and excellence of European higher education. European universities add 41 alliances, involving 31 different countries. This article presents an early quantitative evaluation of this initiative. This paper addresses the coverage of the 41 alliances and selects five of the most advanced for a deeper evaluation of their best practices and their contribution to the realization of CivUs. This paper also outlines the criteria for evaluating the extent to which good practices implemented by these alliances are aligned and can contribute to the attributes of CivUs, based upon state-of-the-art educational standards. A quantitative framework, based on application of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), is also provided to rank the good practices developed by these alliances against the previous evaluation criteria. Furthermore, by applying a sensitivity analysis, this paper also addresses the robustness of this approach.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the factors influencing the success of real estate crowdfunding projects in Spain. This type of crowdfunding invests in real estate assets. We analyzed 60 projects published on the Housers platform, a kind of participative platform that uses the lending and equity crowdfunding modalities. These projects have involved around 36,623 investment decisions and have raised a total amount of almost 26 million euros. The empirical analysis is based on ordinary least squares and negative binomial regression. Our main findings reveal that success differs depending on the type of project; in fact, buy-to-sell projects are less successful than development loan projects. In addition, while total return has a positive impact on project success, in the case of risk level and project term, the impact is negative.

Globalization and the ever-growing presence of technology have paved the way for better developmental opportunities in society. Nonetheless, these have also been to the detriment of the environment as well as sustainable development. The aim of this study is to discover the mediating effect of green innovation with regard to the relationship which exists between green culture and environmental performance in the State of Mexico’s automotive sector. The research hypotheses were formulated following an extensive study of the literature available and were based on resource- and capability-based theory, specifically, the natural-resource view of the firm (NRBV). The design of the study was non-experimental and cross-sectional with a confirmatory reach, applied to a sample of 157 observations. The proposed theoretical model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings provide empirical evidence that green innovation acts as a mediator variable on the relationship between green culture and environmental performance. The scientific merit of the study is found in its proposal of a hierarchical second-order model, categorized as reflective-formative, and the study’s confirmation of the role of green innovation as a mediating construct. Therefore, the findings herein can be considered as complementary to the existing body of knowledge in the field. The practical implications derived from this study will contribute to sustainable development and expand knowledge in the following areas: Government institutions, companies that operate in the sector, decision makers, academics, and practitioners who are working on this issue at different levels.

The objective of this research is to contribute to the scientific debate on “complementary monetary systems” (CMSs), what strategies may be the best for allowing the implementation of a CMS in a territory and that optimise the potential that it seems to have to strengthen processes of sustainable local development and urban resilience. For this, the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats-Analytic Hierarchy Process methodology (SWOT-AHP) has been used, which has allowed us to identify four strategies: (1) build a social, economic and political consensus, (2) create a community observatory for “complementary social monetary systems” (CSMSs), (3) define communication tools for raising awareness and education in ethical finance and (4) promote the alignment of the CSMS with sustainable local development strategies. These strategies have been formulated so that that they can be implemented by any entity, public or private, and for any of the types of CMS that may be part of a CSMS.

Recent financial scandals and the global financial crisis have generated numerous criticisms of the value and use of annual financial and sustainability reports prepared by companies. This has generated the elaboration and use of a new model of corporate-information reporting that considers strategic, social, economic, and environmental aspects. This study synthesizes the knowledge of the use of integrated reporting as a source of information, and bibliometrically analyzes of 268 articles published in the Web of Science database in 2011–2019. Results show that 77.6% of the academic articles were from developed countries, and the five most influential countries are Italy, South Africa, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Results show that the development of this type of research is scarce in emerging economies. The most influential authors are García, Rodríguez, and De Villiers. A high level of interconnections is observed in used keywords, of which the most used are ‘sustainability’ and ‘management’. Lastly, this article contributes to the international discussion on integrated reporting by carrying out a structured review of the literature, highlighting previous research.

Academic research specifically focused on employee-related disclosure practices is needed to enhance understanding on CSR reporting. This paper aims to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in research on employee-related disclosure, analyzing the characteristics of the scientific production on this topic. A bibliometric analysis is conducted on the papers specifically focused on employee-related disclosure published from 2000 to 2019 in journals indexed on the Web of Science database. The findings show that relatively few studies specifically focused on employee-related disclosure have been published over the last two decades (63 papers). Most articles were published during the last 8 years (93.6%), although the highest interest in the study of employee-related disclosure among scholars concentrates on a short period around 2017. Six journals concentrate 31.75% of the publications on the subject. Most papers are empirical studies, using the content analysis technique to analyze corporate reports. Papers are spread over three research subtopics: (1) extent, quality and drivers of human resource disclosures, (2) occupational health and safety disclosures, human rights disclosures and employee-related disclosures as a legitimization tool, and (3) diversity reporting. In all research subtopics, most of the papers have been published during the last four years, confirming that employee-related disclosure is a topic of current interest to researchers. The studies found that the overall level of employee-related disclosure is low, with an increasing or irregular tendency over time. Furthermore, not all items/categories got the same attention by firms. It can be concluded that this research subject is still far from reaching the level of research on environmental reporting and important issues remain to be resolved, both theoretically and empirically.