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The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, as few universities have assessed their ecological footprint (EF), a benchmark for Colombian universities is presented. Second, a practical calculation tool for measuring the EF in educational institutions (EIs) is developed. The purpose of this tool is to facilitate the process of assessing the EF in EIs that are starting sustainability initiatives and to unify criteria with those already involved.

The development of the Ecological Footprint for Educational Institutions (EFEI) calculator is detailed showing the seven categories analyzed and the adaptation to the Colombian context.

Results are presented from a case study of EFEI implementation at Universidad Icesi. Furthermore, the relation between these results and the action taken to mitigate EF at the university is detailed.

Colombian EIs have recently joined the sustainable campus movement. The EF methodology and this tool serve to assess impacts and identify what EIs can do to ameliorate their environmental stewardship.

EIs are called on to lead by example in terms of sustainability, not only in teaching and researching cutting-edge technologies but also in being sustainable and transferring this knowledge to future generations.

First, an EF benchmark for Colombian universities is presented. In addition, a unified methodology for EIs is developed. The availability of a standard tool will encourage other EIs to move forward in the effort to achieve a sustainable campus.

This paper evaluates consumers' responses to claims regarding fruit sustainability. The authors compared the effects of this factor on consumers' moral satisfaction and purchase intention with respect to 12 sustainability claims.

A mixed-model experiment was conducted with seven fruits (i.e. guava, pineapple, red apple, green apple, red grape, green grape and avocado) to evaluate the effects of the 12 sustainability claims on purchase intention through moral satisfaction, relative to a control condition.

The results show that claims of supporting local farmers are those that move consumers the most. Claims regarding local farmers' production positively affect moral satisfaction and purchase intention.

This paper takes a consumer behavior approach to sustainability, enabling organizations to consider consumer behavior outcomes that could affect their strategic investments and commitment to social responsibility.

Food-related studies have not produced consistent results with respect to the relevance that sustainability claims have for consumers. This study differs from previous studies, as it focuses on fruit, a product that is important for social and environmental sustainability issues. This study demonstrates that, in the case of fruit, sustainability arguments are meaningful to young consumers through the mediating effect of moral satisfaction. Thus, the effect of claims is predicted by the meaning these arguments have for the consumer.

Este artículo evalúa las respuestas de los consumidores a los argumentos de sostenibilidad en una fruta. Se comparan los efectos de este factor en la satisfacción moral y la intención de compra de los consumidores con respecto a 12 argumentos de sostenibilidad.

Se realizó un experimento de modelo mixto con siete frutas (guayaba, piña, manzana roja, manzana verde, uva roja, uva verde y aguacate) para evaluar los efectos de los 12 argumentos de sostenibilidad sobre la intención de compra a través de la satisfacción moral, en relación con una condición de control.

Los resultados muestran que las afirmaciones de apoyo a los agricultores locales son las que más influyen en los consumidores. Las afirmaciones relativas a la producción de los agricultores locales afectan positivamente a la satisfacción moral y a la intención de compra.

Este trabajo adopta un enfoque de la sostenibilidad basado en el comportamiento del consumidor, lo que permite a las organizaciones considerar los resultados del comportamiento del consumidor que podrían afectar a sus inversiones estratégicas y a su compromiso con la responsabilidad social.

Los estudios relacionados con la alimentación no han arrojado resultados consistentes respecto a la relevancia que los argumentos de sostenibilidad tienen para los consumidores. Este estudio difiere de los anteriores, ya que se centra en la fruta, un producto importante por cuestiones de sostenibilidad social y medioambiental. Este estudio demuestra que, en el caso de la fruta, los argumentos de sostenibilidad son significativas para los consumidores jóvenes a través del efecto mediador de la satisfacción moral. Así, el efecto de los argumentos se predice por el significado que estos tienen para el consumidor.

This study aims to examine the early stages of family business philanthropy amid institutional transformations to address the challenges of limited statehood. Despite a growing interest in the historical aspects of corporate responsibility, these dimensions remain relatively unexplored, especially in certain regions and for family businesses. However, they hold valuable insights that can contribute to contemporary discussions.

The study analyzes the board minutes of Ingenio Manuelita, an emblematic family business in the sugar industry in Colombia, from 1929 to 1947. Using a qualitative approach, the authors categorize the top management’s decisions to respond to various stakeholders’ demands.

Most early social responsibility in family businesses has been characterized as philanthropy, driven by family owners’ morals and ethical predispositions. The authors argue that depicting these actions as purely entrepreneurial philanthropy or implicit corporate social responsibility fails to capture the strategic dimension of businesses. Ingenio Manuelita implemented a multifaceted approach, comprising charity, providing public goods and increasing wages and social welfare for its employees and communities. The analysis contributes to understanding philanthropy as a practice that arises from the ongoing interaction between the requests formulated by close stakeholders and board members’ willingness, which nonetheless privileges the paternalistic predispositions of the family business board members and systematically reflects strategic business concerns.

The primary contribution of this research is its analysis and explanation of how philanthropic decisions changed within family businesses at the beginning of the 20th century. Specifically, the study proposes that philanthropy in the early 20th century was driven by strategic rationality, in contrast with the paternalistic and charity orientations that characterized philanthropical practices in the 19th century. This work addresses a notable gap in business history literature, which has not adequately explained the emergence and routinization of social responsibility actions. Furthermore, the authors propose the concept of strategic philanthropy to understand the origins of modern social responsibilities of family businesses in Latin America, offering a complementary approach to the paternalist, charity-doing-good hypothesis in traditional (family) business historiography that undervalues the strategic motivations.

Sustainability is one of the leading challenges of our age, and higher education plays a vital role in supporting the implementation of sustainability initiatives. There has been substantial progress in business schools introducing sustainability into courses with extant literature detailing case studies of sustainability education and student perceptions of their learning. The purpose of this paper is to address the gap in literature from educators' perspectives on their experiences of introducing sustainability teaching using specific teaching tools for sustainability.

This paper presents a case study on a sustainability teaching tool, WikiRate, that was embedded into business and management courses at seven higher education institutions from across the globe. Interviews were conducted after course delivery to gain insights into the practical challenges of designing and implementing a sustainability education activity.

The findings show that educators perceive sustainability as a complex issue, presenting a challenge to teaching in university systems whose normative curricula are rooted in instrumental problem-solving. Furthermore, educators described challenges to their own learning in order to implement sustainability into curricula including the need for compromises and adaptions.

This empirical study reports on educators' experiences embedding sustainability into their courses through an innovative teaching tool, WikiRate. This paper has implications for reframing how we can approach sustainability education and presents discussion ways to teach complexity without reduction or simplification.

This study seeks to analyze the influence of the consumer's perceived benefits deriving from two different promotional incentives offered via social media on the perceived quality of the heritage complex.

A quasi-experimental study was carried out among online users, implementing two different promotional stimuli. Facebook was selected as the social network through which the promotional incentives were offered in the experiment. The sample was obtained via a panel of Internet users provided by Sondea Internet SL.

The results showed that the benefits perceived by the tourists will depend on the sales promotion type offered. On the one hand, free VIP pass was found to be mostly related to hedonic benefits that positively affect perceived quality. On the other hand, 2 × 1 offer would be perceived as a utilitarian benefit and is likely to exert a fairly negative effect on perceived quality.

Tourism managers and practitioners are encouraged to analyze the characteristics of certain types of sales promotions, as each promotional incentive bears different values and associated benefits. The findings of this study suggest managers and practitioners to implement non-monetary promotions to enhance brand equity and perceived quality. Thus, it is paramount for the managers of cultural institutions and heritage sites to trust in sales promotions which can be very helpful if they are designed carefully.

This study pioneers the analysis of the impact of the benefits associated with different typologies of sales promotions on social networks on the perceived quality of a heritage site.

Este estudio busca analizar la influencia de los beneficios percibidos por el consumidor derivados de dos incentivos promocionales diferentes ofrecidos a través de las redes sociales sobre la calidad percibida del complejo patrimonial.

Se realizó un estudio cuasi-experimental entre usuarios en línea, implementando dos estímulos promocionales diferentes. Facebook fue seleccionada como la red social a través de la cual se ofrecieron los incentivos promocionales en el experimento. La muestra se obtuvo a través de un panel de internautas facilitado por Sondea Internet SL.

Los resultados mostraron que los beneficios percibidos por los turistas dependerán del tipo de promoción de ventas ofrecida. Por un lado, se descubrió que el pase VIP gratuito se relaciona principalmente con los beneficios hedónicos que afectan positivamente la calidad percibida. Por otro lado, la oferta 2 × 1 se percibiría como un beneficio utilitario y es probable que ejerza un efecto bastante negativo en la calidad percibida.

Este estudio es pionero en el análisis del impacto de los beneficios asociados a diferentes tipologías de promociones de ventas en redes sociales sobre la calidad percibida de un sitio patrimonial.

Se alienta a los gerentes y profesionales del turismo a analizar las características de ciertos tipos de promociones de ventas, ya que cada incentivo promocional tiene diferentes valores y beneficios asociados. Los hallazgos de este estudio sugieren que los gerentes y profesionales implementen promociones no monetarias para mejorar el valor de la marca y la calidad percibida. Por tanto, es primordial que los gestores de las instituciones culturales y los sitios patrimoniales confíen en las promociones de venta que pueden resultar muy útiles si se diseñan con cuidado.

This paper aims to provide new and valuable insights for organizations that have decided to implement Lean Six Sigma (LSS) as a strategy for continuous improvement in search of business excellence. This objective is achieved through statistically modeling the causal relationships between the critical success factors (CSFs) of LSS for a successful deployment of this strategy.

A statistically validated questionnaire was used to collect information from LSS practitioners in manufacturing industries located on Mexico’s northern border. Some hypotheses for relationships between LSS CSFs are developed theoretically first and empirically tested later using the structural equation modeling technique.

Proposed relationships between LSS CSFs have been demonstrated to be statistically significant, making clear that this implementation should always begin with a strong and decided participation and commitment of top management. Later, other CSFs must be activated and put into operation in a specified order to increase the probability of a successful implementation reflected in well-executed continuous improvement projects and achieving the expected benefits.

This paper proposes a structural model which has been statistically validated with information directly collected from skilled practitioners who have developed continuous improvement projects using the LSS methodology. Further, some relationships between LSS CSFs that, to the best of the author’s knowledge, had not been demonstrated empirically are now explored and verified in our work.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of online social networks and competency-based management on innovation capability.

The paper is theory-confirming. Theoretical relationships were tested using an empirical study of 289 firms from the Spanish biotechnology and telecommunications industries.

Results confirm that online social network use for internal cognitive processes (e.g. reading, searching and storing information) and external cognitive processes (e.g. sharing and co-creating knowledge) positively affects knowledge transfer. This knowledge helps firms to achieve superior competency in R&D to succeed in innovation programs.

All survey respondents were from Spain, which may limit the generalizability of findings. A longitudinal approach was not used. However, doing so would make it possible to explore time lags between online social network use, competency-based management and innovation.

This paper highlights the potential as well as the limitations of online social networks and competency-based management in promoting innovation capability. Businesses must consciously manage the assimilation and use of online social networks to benefit from them.

The study contributes to the literature by identifying effects on innovation capability at the meso-level (i.e. online social networks). Findings highlight the need for a shift in focus away from collaborating and interacting in online social networks (micro-level) and organizational contexts (macro-level) so as to improve innovation capability.

The purpose of this paper is to review the websites of 22 national libraries in Ibero-America to determine whether and how effectively they display these organisations’ mission statements, as well as any convergence/divergence among these texts.

A review was conducted of the national library websites of ABINIA’s 22 members to locate their respective mission statements. The statements identified were analysed and evaluated against the positioning and presence criteria and wording proposed by experts.

Website content clearly attests to national libraries’ eagerness to publicise their mission statements, which are readily accessible in most cases. Their functions are represented to a more or less standard pattern. Most are portrayed as institutions responsible for custodying, enriching, preserving and disseminating their countries’ cultural legacy. Other purposes mentioned include the promulgation of and accessibility to the heritage custodied.

The paper may prove useful for professional librarians involved in drafting or revising their organisation’s mission statement in the wake of changing circumstances or on the occasion of the formulation of a new strategic plan.

Of the very short number of analyses of libraries’ mission statements published to date, none discusses national libraries. This is the very first study of national library mission statement in Ibero-America. It forms part of a line of research dealing with national library mission statements defined and available on institutional websites for countries anywhere in the world.

The main goal of this study is to develop accounting students’ solidarity with and sensitivity to cooperation for sustainable development. This study also aims to analyze the role of participatory learning activities in developing the dimensions of involvement, critical reflection and thinking analysis.

This empirical study analyzes a case study activity conducted in accounting seminars with students from different universities in Spain. After completing the activity, the students completed a questionnaire divided into four areas: sociodemographic information, involvement, critical reflection and creativity. Students also answered an open-response question that asked them to propose new activities to enhance their learning experience and contribute more to sustainable development. The study thus used mixed methods, complementing quantitative analysis with qualitative data.

The multivariate analysis obtained significant results showing that female students were more willing to help and that most students said they were more sensitive to these issues after the participatory learning activity. Furthermore, the items and dimensions analyzed revealed a positive impact of involvement, critical and creative thinking and participatory learning on accounting students’ commitment to cooperation for sustainable development. When students answered the open-response question, they proposed more activities to enhance their learning and improve the functioning of the Non-Governmental Organization’s (NGO’s) beneficiary. HEIs must design more transversal courses aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals in their social science degrees.

The study not only examines university education in sustainable development but goes a step further in trying to involve students in a real development project from a financial and accounting point of view. The study also focuses on education for sustainability, and the project invites the students to think critically, reflect and assess real situations.