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How to change consumption patterns remains one of the most wicked global sustainability challenges, and it is increasingly acknowledged that such wicked problems require interdisciplinary solutions. In this chapter, we ask what can be learnt from contrasting two approaches to sustainable consumption that only to a very limited extent interact. First, psychological approaches to consumption have been immensely influential concerning individual behavioural change, particularly through their theorisations of ‘nudge’ and ‘choice architecture’. Second, social practice theories (SPTs) have obtained a dominant position in sociocultural approaches to consumption, focusing on how bodily, social and material elements combine into taken-for-granted daily routines that make up shared patterns of (unsustainable) social life. Interestingly, despite the theoretical approaches' different ontologies and analytical loci, nudge theory and practice theories seem to end up in surprisingly similar recommendations for facilitating sustainable change. In this chapter, we explore the differences and similarities of two theoretical bodies that rarely interact, with the aim to explore the room for breaking out of disciplinary silos and investigate potentials for cross-field pollination. We use the empirical case of continuity and change in meat consumption, but the dynamics discussed are arguably relevant for all fields of consumption. We demonstrate that while cross-pollination between nudge and practice theories could potentially increase political attention as well as be used to deliver more precise and tailored interventions, the diverging ontological underpinnings of these directions of thought significantly reduce the potential for further co-development.

Greenwashing is defined as the overstatement of companies’ environmental disclosures relative to their performance. This paper aims to develop a greenwashing measure, examines its relationship with environmental performance and investigates the mitigating effects of Japanese firm-level corporate governance characteristics (corporate structure, board leadership, foreign share ownership, ratio of independent directors and ratio of directors’ variable compensation) and third-party assurance of environmental information on the extent of greenwashing.

This paper analyzes a sample of 420 firm-year observations from the period between 2018 and 2019 from Japanese listed companies that responded to the CDP Climate Change survey via probit/logit and multivariate panel data regression models.

This paper finds that the probability of engaging in greenwashing is negatively associated with environmental performance, which supports the reliability of the study’s greenwashing measure. Japanese firm-level corporate governance characteristics are ineffective at mitigating greenwashing. This paper also finds that assurance carries a significant risk of being exploited by companies involved in greenwashing to increase the degree of their overstatement.

The findings have significant implications for investors, who should increase scrutiny and skepticism of environmental disclosures, particularly from companies with poor environmental track records. Japanese companies should consider strengthening their corporate governance to ensure the effective oversight of environmental disclosure and performance. Regulators and standard setters should implement stricter guidelines for and oversight of environmental information assurance.

No empirical study has examined the effectiveness of Japanese corporate governance characteristics and environmental disclosure assurance on the mitigation of greenwashing.

The research aims to applying Baumol’s framework to address some research gaps in the literature. This paper aims to analyze how institutional variations at the subnational level impact entrepreneurship decisions and the path toward productive or unproductive entrepreneurship in an institutionally underdeveloped country. The results offer potentially new theoretical insights and practical implications for developing or emergent countries.

The research applies Baumol’s framework to Mexico’s context. The research collects data compounded by individual- and state-level variables from diverse sources for the 32 Mexican states. The individual level and some controls were obtained from sources of regular frequency, but the institutional variables were derived from surveys of irregular frequency, nonsynchronic and mostly nonoverlapping, which required aligning and centered them around 2016 and 2019 to match with the individual variables. The authors apply multilevel nonlinear mixed-effects probit regression to test nine hypotheses regarding the impact of institutional variables on entrepreneurial decisions and the path toward productive or unproductive entrepreneurship.

Improved formal institutions across the Mexican states reduce the entrepreneurship probability, implying interactions with other variables and indirect effects; encourage the selection of productive entrepreneurship, e.g. formal ventures; and discourage self-employment. Consequently, those institutions do not encourage entrepreneurship selection as an occupation but entrepreneurial quality, i.e. the selection of productive-formal entrepreneurship and larger ventures. Deficient informal institutions increase the entrepreneurship and formal entrepreneurship probabilities, implying the interactions with other variables and indirect effects and supporting the corruption “greases the wheels” hypothesis, consequently encouraging productive ventures. New evidence of the positive relationship between criminality and entrepreneurship types in Mexico is reported.

Our findings indicate important impacts of the individual-level variables on the entrepreneurship decisions and that most of those decisions are potentially necessity driven and a minority are driven by opportunity, given their relationship with the macroeconomic controls and the institutional variables. The authors report mixed results on the relationship between institutions and entrepreneurship partially consistent with the literature; some results contribute additional evidence on controversial hypotheses or imply the existence of indirect effects. Overall, the results suggest that institutions impact the individual decisions to venture and the type of venture consequently affecting the amount and quality of entrepreneurship across states.

The research addresses some of the literature gaps by providing empirical evidence on a middle-income country and how diverging regional institutional contexts, including formal and informal institutions, impact the individual’s entrepreneurship decisions within an institutionally underdeveloped country. The paper contributes new knowledge and insights into entrepreneurship in emerging or developing countries with implications for Baumol’s framework in this context and adds to the debated hypothesis on the relationship between some institutions, e.g. corruption and criminality and entrepreneurship.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the safety value of implementing Asimov's Laws of Robotics as a future general framework that humans should obey. Asimov formulated laws to make explicit the safeguards of the robots in his stories: (1) A robot may not injure or harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (2) A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. In Asimov's stories, it is always assumed that the laws are built into the robots to govern the behaviour of the robots. As his stories clearly demonstrate, the Laws can be ambiguous. Moreover, the laws are not very specific. General rules as a guide for robot behaviour may not be a very good method to achieve robot safety – if we expect the robots to follow them. But would it work for humans? In this chapter, we ask whether it would make as much, or more, sense to implement the laws in human legislation with the purpose of governing the behaviour of people or companies that develop, build, market or use AI, embodied in robots or in the form of software, now and in the future.

This study deals with the issue of how ethnic diversity on boards in a given firm may influence its performance in human resource management (HRM). Moreover, the study also tests the interaction between ethnic diversity and gender diversity and examines their joint effect on HRM.

Based on prior research, we predict that, with increasing demographic diversity in organizations today, ethnic diversity on boards should have a positive effect on HRM. Moreover, gender diversity, as a most visible dimension of demographic diversity, should have both a direct positive effect and an indirect moderating effect on the relationship between ethnic diversity and HRM. Hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses.

Our data analyses show empirical evidence supporting our predictions. First, our study shows that employer–employee relationship can be influenced by ethnic diversity on boards. Second, the foregoing analyses highlight the importance of considering the interaction between different dimensions of demographic diversity, such as that between ethnic and gender diversity. With a higher level of gender diversity on boards, the positive effect of ethnic diversity on HRM can become more salient.

This research tests the benefits of ethnic diversity on boards for improving firms’ performance in HRM, thus making a contribution by helping to understand the effects of ethnic diversity in a more comprehensive way. We also document the beneficial moderating effects of gender diversity on boards for the first time.

This study introduces a new type of platform recommendation about mutual funds and draws on the signaling theory to conduct a quasi-experimental design to investigate how the platform recommendation influences investors’ investment decisions. Moreover, the authors examine the combined effect of star ratings and the platform recommendation on fund flow and test the investment value of recommended funds.

This study implements a quasi-experimental design based on 1,295 mutual funds traded on Alipay’s online platform to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results show that the recommended funds received higher fund flows from investors when the platform recommendation was established. Moreover, a substitution effect between tag recommendation and star ratings on fund flow was identified. We also uncovered that investing in platform-recommended funds can yield significant and higher fund returns for investors than those without platform recommendations.

Our findings shed new insights into the role of platform recommendations in helping fund investors make investment decisions and contribute to the business of online mutual fund transactions by investigating the effect of platform recommendations on fund flow and performance.

Since buying slow fashion can be both a rational choice and socially reactive behavior, this study adopts the prototype willingness model to predict Flemish young adults’ slow fashion consumption.

An online survey was administered to consumers aged 18–25 years old (N = 264). Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data.

Attitude and descriptive norm predicted intention to buy slow fashion, which in turn predicted current self-reported slow fashion consumption. Injunctive norm, prototype favorability and prototype similarity predicted socially reactive willingness to buy slow fashion.

The sample is predominantly female and higher educated. The results were partially in line with the PWM, indicating that the model is suitable for predicting young adults’ self-reported slow fashion consumption.

Slow fashion brands might benefit from increasing the visibility of slow fashion consumption and the occurrence of socially reactive shopping situations as well as improving the prototypical image of slow fashion consumers and the perception of what others approve.

Prior research generally uses rational behavioral models to predict slow fashion consumption. This study is the first to apply the PWM to slow fashion consumption, accounting for rational (i.e. reasoned) and non-rational (i.e. socially reactive) decision-making. Furthermore, this study argues the relevance of “prototypes” in sustainable decision-making.

This study aims to apply Process Mining (PM) techniques to identify the critical elements that primarily affect the trials’ duration and suggest the best practices to enable their more efficient execution, reduce their duration and, consequently, create public value, through a case study conducted in an Italian Civil Court.

Through PM analyses and in-depth discussions with the court staff, we analysed the trials with the longest duration and those belonging to a specific subject matter to identify peculiar features and inefficiencies that prolong the trials’ duration.

Our results highlight how innovative tools like PM can revolutionise the judicial system by providing judges with objective trials data that can support and facilitate the entire trials’ definition. However, many issues, especially related to the little spread data culture and process-oriented approach in courts, are highly present, leading to data inconsistencies and subsequent difficulties in trials’ analysis and interpretation.

Little research has devoted attention to the PM potential to enhance the judiciary. Our study contributes to this strand, yet adopting a different approach: it investigates the trials’ excessive length by focusing on bottlenecks and inefficient activities that slow down trials and identifies activities’ thresholds to monitor the trials’ execution and limit delays.

This paper provides a critical assessment of Indonesia’s pioneering initiative in issuing cash waqf-linked sukuk (CWLS), a hybrid government sukuk integrated with Islamic endowment funds (waqf). Focused on addressing urgent health-care and essential expenditures, this study aims to evaluate the features and performance of CWLS sales.

Using a literature review and in-depth interviews, this study comprehensively analyzes CWLS from multiple perspectives.

The research indicates that CWLS effectively mobilizes public funds, benefiting the government by supporting essential needs and enhancing waqf management in Indonesia. Moreover, it significantly improves the quality of life through social projects financed by CWLS returns.

The study offers actionable recommendations for enhancing CWLS performance in Indonesia and serves as a suggestion for other governments considering similar financial instruments.

As a socially oriented financial tool, CWLS emerges as a pivotal strategy for enhancing national waqf management and promoting equitable wealth distribution.

This study represents the first critical assessment of CWLS in Indonesia, advancing theory by integrating Islamic finance principles with governmental fiscal policies through innovative sukuk structures. It contributes to the distributive justice theory by demonstrating how CWLS operationalizes fairness and equity in resource allocation.