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The objective of this instrumental case study is to investigate issues impacting capability development/transformation with respect to student entrepreneurs’ aspirations to create a viable, evolving business model for their start-ups, namely, that are underpinned by goals featuring the “triple bottom line”. That is, instead of simply profits as an economic performance metric, there is also a consideration of wider social issues within the notion of “responsible leadership”, involving people and the planet.

Underpinned by a “capabilities lens”, the research setting focuses on the perceptions of student entrepreneurs together with other stakeholders in a Canadian university. The country context is pertinent, since to gain scalability, owners of start-up firms may need to internationalise to overcome limited domestic demand (despite the large geographic area); also, stakeholders’ support is sometimes needed to facilitate growth.

New insights demonstrate the need for appropriate stakeholders to facilitate effective transformative capability development amongst student entrepreneurs with triple bottom line objectives. Student entrepreneurs’ capability of validating facets of a viable evolving business model that address “all” and not “some” aspects of the triple bottom line is especially important. This is alongside the capability of being able to pivot product-market strategies where necessary, and this may feature the need to internationalise in the event there is limited domestic demand. A capability to develop soft skills is also likely to help student entrepreneurs communicate with stakeholders. In turn, such capabilities are likely to help move ideation, passed validation and through to commercialisation.

The utility of institutions and associated stakeholders offering education and training support to develop capabilities amongst students as aspiring entrepreneurs has featured in earlier studies. Likewise, issues associated with the notion of sustainability have also been previously considered. The originality of this instrumental case study is to offer a more nuanced investigation into salient issues associated with capability development amongst student entrepreneurs exhibiting triple bottom line objectives in their start-ups. That is, focusing on considerations related to validating their evolving business models and especially when facing limited domestic market demand.

We investigate the innovative supply chain contracts developed and implemented by Barilla, the leading Italian pasta company, in sourcing high-quality durum wheat from farmers in Northern Italy in the Emilia Romagna region.

Using case study techniques to gather information, we captured the evolution of the supply chain contracts adopted by Barilla. We gained information mainly through semi-structured interviews with Barilla’s managers, co-op and consortium managers representing farmers, Barilla’s quantitative data related to contracts’ elements and structure, preliminary experimental results, agri-business magazines, industry reports, and academic literature.

These contracts helped the company improve not only its long-term profits and strategic objectives such as supply security, but also the farmers’ income as well as environmental sustainability, thus providing triple bottom line benefits.

We investigate how Barilla and its suppliers – with the support of additional stakeholders, such as regional institutions – combine in their innovative contracts fixed and market-based prices as well as quality and sustainability-based premiums for desired triple bottom line benefits.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis that examines the semiotics of triple bottom line (TBL) and how it has been developed since its inception in the early 1990s.

This study was conducted over a period of nine months, during which semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 40 organizations around the world that were considered to be organizations having best practices in non‐financial reporting. The key interviewees were managers and heads of the sustainability departments within the organization.

This study has attempted using semiotics and coding to show parallel themes within how organizations perceive TBL. The codes of language, compliance, integration and limitations provide symbolic attempts by which sustainability managers create and communicate the perception of “corporate sustainability” through TBL reporting in order to satisfy external pressures and stakeholders. A semiotic analysis of TBL has shown that these four codes or concepts do in fact have a common interpretive scheme.

The non‐financial reporting process or TBL reporting process tend to be conducted and developed by a sustainability team within an organization, rather than just by an individual. The interviews conducted in this research paper are with the head of the sustainability departments at each organization and hence this is a potential limitation in terms of understanding the semiotic powers of TBL.

While the codes explained in this paper do not show the entire culture and views on non‐financial reporting, they do capture a major aspect of it through the eyes of TBL and provide examples of how semiotics can be used to study and map the systems of meaning employed by members of a certain occupational setting. Having a semiotic view provides many conclusions about the study of an organizational culture or framework.

The paper aims to incorporate the relationship of reverse logistics into the economic, environmental, and social sustainability, known as triple bottom line and developed a framework for reverse logistics performance evaluation.

The performance measures, based on triple bottom line approach, were selected, and fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and extent analysis approach was applied for estimating the weights, global weights of performance measures and hence, the reverse logistics performance index. Reverse logistics performance of three electronic companies were evaluated and compared for the demonstration of the methodology.

The results show that economic performance has highest performance index followed by environmental performance and social performance. “Recapturing value” and “return on investment” from economic, “minimum energy consumption” and “optimum use of raw material” from environmental and “community complaints” and “customer health and safety” from social perspective have higher performance indexes. Over all, “reduced packaging”, “use of recycled material” and “employee benefits” show very poor performance indexes.

The study will provide useful guidance to the academicians and practitioners for evaluating, improving and benchmarking the reverse logistics performance.

The analysis adds to the very few studies on triple bottom line aspects of reverse logistics and its performance evaluation. Also, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and extent analysis is used first time being an efficient tool to tackle the fuzziness of the data involved in performance evaluation.

This research has the following specific objectives: provide an overview of the literature addressing operational excellence (OE) and OE in emerging countries; propose an integrative framework of OE attributes; and propose future research directions for the OE literature.

To remain competitive in industry, many organizations are implementing OE initiatives. However, achieving OE in emerging markets has been a pressing challenge due to the scarce knowledge on how it works. Through a systematic review of the literature, this study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the concept of OE in emerging countries through the triple bottom line.

This study has found nine attributes of OE based on the three pillars of sustainability or triple bottom line (economic, environmental and social). Four of them were the most cited and served to build the proposed framework. The analysis concludes that most of the studies related to OE in emerging countries have been carried out in Asia. Finally, based on the results obtained from the literature review, six points of future research are proposed based on three research directions: OE in emerging countries, active participation by employees and culture generation and finally, research methods.

The gap that is filled in this study is that some authors have studied the application of OE in emerging countries, specifically on the Asian continent. In those cases, the literature is either oriented to describing OE from different perspectives or to its application in different companies, some of which are emerging countries. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no study that describes the specific and complete aspects that make up a model of OE and which can show how this model can be applied in emerging countries.

The purpose of this paper is, first, to examine environmental, economic and social sustainability. Second, to build upon Jones et al.’s (2011) preliminary investigations into the sustainability agendas of the world’s top ten retailers through an examination of Marks and Spencer’s (M&S) Plan A sustainability strategy. Third, to complement this with a case study examination of its first eco-learning store.

A case study of M&S’s first eco-store using a consideration of the published literature and interviews with members of staff.

Retailers exert a significant influence on sustainability issues due to their position in the supply chain between producers and customers. It is argued that M&S’s Plan A environmental strategy demonstrates evidence of an economically successful “strong model of sustainability” compared with the world’s top ten retailers. In total, 15 factors emerged which may provide a checklist for organisations undertaking and managing their own sustainability change programmes.

The research examined only public material produced by M&S and was not privy to internal documentation. Also, due to the traditional limitations of the case study approach findings about the first eco-store may not have transferability to other situations.

Environmental strategies can produce positive financial and social benefits. The grounded approaches used by M&S’s Plan A and first eco-store provide many illustrations of the possible future directions of retailing. Whole life accounting overcomes some of the limitations of annual accounting methods.

The triple bottom line and whole life accounting at M&S have been little discussed. The prototype eco-learning store in Sheffield provides practical insights into a holistic strategy.

This paper aims to identify the pattern of CSR programs run by PT Unilever Indonesia Tbk, PT Sari Husada PT, Astra International Tbk, and PT Aneka Tambang Tbk.

The research was focused on three main areas, namely: relation of CSR programs with the companies' core businesses; coverage of the programs on triple bottom line (economic, social, and environmental); and the execution of CSR programs as sustainable development and the companies' competitive advantage. It used a qualitative approach, i.e. a case study. Primary and secondary data are in the form of information about CSR programs conducted by the four companies from sustainable reports downloaded from each respective company's web site, mass media news downloaded from the internet, and other literature studies.

The case study shows high commitment from the four companies to the execution of CSR programs and business ethics. They also attempt to carry out programs involving the triple bottom line. Also, this case study found that two consumer goods companies (Unilever Indonesia and Sari Husada) and one manufacturing company (Astra International) conduct CSR programs that are both related and unrelated to their core businesses while a mining company (Aneka Tambang) tends to conduct CSR programs that are unrelated to its core business. Another finding from this case study is that both related and unrelated programs are forms of the companies' sustainable development.

The primary data in this case study were only collected from the publications of CSR programs, and from company web sites or news coverage accessed via the internet, and so may be incomplete and not detailed. Therefore, it would be better to include in‐depth interviews with the companies to support the primary data in a further study. In general, this research brings a specific understanding of the qualitative research method. In particular, it gives a greater understanding of the importance of all applications in a case study. The procedures, types, designs and data analysis methods in the study case can be comprehended clearly.

The results of this case study can improve comprehension of the CSR concepts and theories, business ethics, sustainable development and reputations used to identify the pattern of CSR programs implemented by the four companies as research objects. Last but not least, the results of the case study give detailed comprehension regarding the CSR practices of several companies in Indonesia, based on the companies' characteristics, CSR programs' relations to the core business, CSR programs covering the triple bottom line, and the sustainability of the CSR programs.

While the importance of organizational learning for sustainability has been stressed by a number of authors in the literature, the practicalities of how organizational leaders might foster such learning are seldom treated. This paper seeks to demonstrate that there is much that could be learned from the aviation industry about organizational learning practice that could be gainfully applied by organizations in attempting to address the demands of triple bottom line sustainability.

The exemplary safety record of the US commercial aviation industry is explored in this paper, and the principal functions of its underlying learning and adaptive system are reviewed. Generalized application of such a learning and adaptive system in an organization operating according to triple bottom line sustainability principles is described.

Through the interaction of various functional components described in the paper, the commercial aviation industry has created a learning and adaptation support system that has significantly and effectively increased air travel safety. The characteristics of such a learning and adaptive system can be employed by any organization to vastly improve its performance as it pursues triple bottom line sustainability.

The learning and adaptive system approach presented expands the steps of understanding, creating and delivering triple bottom line sustainability by changing internal processes, organizational learning, and employee mindsets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of both internal and external environmental management (EM) on the triple bottom line (TBL), which embraces environmental, economic, and social performance. Both direct and indirect effects are estimated in order to capture the overall relationships between EM and performance. Furthermore, the paper contributes to the ongoing debate of measuring the latent variable “performance” as a formative rather than reflective construct.

A conceptual model is drawn up based on the existing literature in EM and considering the TBL paradigm. The model is tested on a large sample of Italian firms; thus, the unit of analysis is represented by single firms. A structural equation model (SEM) is tested to analyze the data, and its estimation is performed using both Lisrel and PLS – namely, covariance‐ and component‐based SEM.

Covariance‐based SEM shows that internal EM is a successful driver of TBL. EM directly improves environmental and social performance, but contributes only indirectly to the economic bottom line. In contrast, external EM is a less effective driver, contributing only positively to environmental performance and exerting only an indirect, marginal impact on economic performance. When using a formative mode to measure performance and component‐based SEM, internal EM has a positive direct and indirect influence on the TBL; however, external EM does not directly improve economic performance.

Data collection was completed at the end of 2008 and comprises only data about Italian firms. Items in the questionnaire allow for a two‐year lag period.

When targeting to meet the TBL, managers should concentrate their efforts on internal EM, which is more effective than external EM.

The paper tests the direct and indirect impacts of internal and external EM on the TBL measuring performance using a formative model and showing the different results obtained in the causal relationships.