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The aim of this paper is to map and analyse the state of the art of eco‐energy labelling and its potential as a fundamental component in the transition process towards eco‐sustainability.

A detailed scenario of trends in eco‐energy labelling systems, both on an international and European Union scale are outlined, followed by identification and analysis of the key representative experiences. Subsequently, the main constraints that limit their full potential as a benchmark and tool of improved customer communication for environmental sustainability have been highlighted and critically analysed.

The full implementation of eco‐energy labelling, as a authentic driving force in sustainability building processes, requires the elimination of the critical factors identified. Therefore, standardisation of benchmarking methodologies, based on improved customer information mechanisms regarding qualitative and quantitative indicators, need to implemented. A strong commitment on the part of all participants involved, to define a multi‐level framework, capable of promoting a recognised international rating scheme in needed.

The most significant implications regard the attempt to classify and coordinate all the information concerning instruments, initiatives, policies and strategies related to eco‐sustainability.

The paper is a contribution towards pinpointing the current fragmented scenario of eco‐energy labelling tools with the aim of re‐conducting them into a coherent and more functional whole.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate that values-focused assessment can provide a useful lens for integrating sustainability and institutional performance assessment in universities.

This study applies a values elicitation methodology for indicator development, through thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews and a stakeholder workshop, in a pilot project at BOKU University, Vienna.

This case highlights that many of the values held by university staff and students are pro-sustainability values. Starting from these values may be a useful way of engaging university stakeholders in sustainability dialogues. The paper illustrates how values-based indicators can be integrated into university performance assessments, providing a novel way of thinking about sustainability assessment in universities.

The exploratory pilot was carried out in a university with a focus on natural sciences. Further research could replicate and compare the results of this paper in other institutions.

Creating a shared understanding of pro-sustainability values can help individuals to reconceptualise sustainability in relation to their own work and motivations. In doing so, it can highlight the inherent synergies between sustainability assessment and institutional performance assessment in the higher education sector, which are usually seen as separate domains.

As is well known, architectural design pedagogy persistently demands to look outside the classroom for real-world problems to deal with, and exemplary solutions to learn from. Studio-based learning alternately takes place between indoor and outdoor environments as well as built and natural environments. Especially the use of outdoor workspaces where students may generate and test their design proposals strengthens the case for a better understanding of human habitability and environmental sustainability. Nonetheless, outdoor activities are traditionally confined to on-site information gathering, whereas design and evaluation processes are carried out indoors simply as a desk-bound activity. In these cases, the empirical evidence to back up the problem modeling and the design decisions made inside the studio classroom is missing. In mainstream architecture education, indoor and outdoor learning experiences are operationally dissociated. The intent to create real outdoor studio classrooms not only opens a new research field in learning space design, but new challenges to the studio-based learning culture. We expose a few exemplary cases from an ongoing series of trials, started in 1999 by the Department of Architecture at the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, to assess the effective integration of outdoor learning environments with our local studio-based learning culture.

The purpose of this paper is to show and critically discuss the motivations, conflicting narratives, practices and effects around the marketisation of cultural heritage. The work focusses on the exemplar case study of the ancient temple of the Athenian Parthenon, as a proto-brand, to explore ancient, medieval and modern marketing forces and practices through which various stakeholders have promoted, gifted, commercially traded, exchanged, acquired and illegally removed national cultural artefacts and historical monuments.

The study is based on a structured historical periodisation that covers three main eras – classical age, late antiquity and modern period – that triggered the marketisation of the ancient temple in diverse ways. First, historical research was conducted through the use of a range of secondary sources and archives. Second, observation techniques were used to study heritage marketisation practices at the New Acropolis Museum and the Parthenon in Athens and the British Museum in London. Third, visual material further facilitated the analysis.

This paper identifies multifarious institutional forces, political interests, technologies and sociocultural events that shape the commodification of history and marketisation of heritage offering a broader discussion on the evolution of early marketing practices and brands used to promote particular values, cultures and places, as well as the emergence and growth of illicit arts and antiquities markets.

Considering the lack of marketing research on the commercialisation of heritage, the work discloses novel insights around the use of cultural proto-brands and the formation of illegal markets and questionable arts trade practices. It, therefore, questions the ethical, socio-political, economic and aesthetic implications of the extensive marketisation of history and raises issues around the legitimate ownership, promotion and consumption of heritage.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corporate debt-like compensation and the value of excess cash holdings.

The environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure score provided by Bloomberg is used as a proxy for the extent of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 379 firms that made up the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index over the period 2010-2015. In order to take into account the endogeneity problem between board gender diversity and ESG disclosure, a fixed effect model with lagged board variables is used.

Two main results arise from this study. First, no significant relationship is found between board gender diversity and ESG disclosure. Second, the evidence also partially confirms critical mass theory, as below three female directors the relationship between board gender diversity and ESG disclosure is not statistically significant. However, beyond that, no significant relationship was found.

Reasonable theoretical arguments drawn from stakeholder theory suggest that board gender diversity may have a positive effect on ESG disclosure. The empirical evidence presented neither supports, nor denies stakeholder theory. However, the results may be improved by enlarging the frontiers of this research in time and space, increasing the perimeter of qualitative data integrated in this investigation.

This paper offers theoretical and empirical arguments for the feminization of corporate boards, not only in the name of equality between women and men and organizational justice, but also in the light of organizational performance (examined through the prism of governance). Transparency, analyzed using the proxy of ESG disclosure, is strongly and positively correlated with a feminization of boards, if the proportion of women is significant and sufficient to be able to prevent and surpass the “invisibilization” phenomenon, which is based on the marginalization of passive ultra-minorities, reduction to silence, marginalization (disqualification of women voice or exit strategy), assimilation or the endorsement of stigma.

First, this makes a theoretical contribution to the diversity and governance literature by examining the effect of WOCB on ESG disclosure through the stakeholder theory (Freeman, 2010). Second, the authors contribute to the CSR literature (cf. Byron and Post, 2016) by documenting specifically the effect of board gender diversity on CSR disclosures through ESG. Indeed, ESG research mainly concentrates on firm financial performance (Galbreath, 2013). No study has examined the relationship between WOCB and ESG disclosure. Finally, from an empirical standpoint, an FE model with lagged board variables (Liu et al., 2014) is used to fully address the endogeneity problems in the relationship between WOCB and ESG disclosure that may occur because of differences in unobservable characteristics across firms or reverse causality (Boulouta, 2013).

This paper discusses the nominal and real convergence regarding Greece being a country-member of the European Union (EU), and of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). We argued that nominal convergence is relative to Maastricht criteria when real convergence has been investigated through six different axes: (1) the five Maastricht Criteria, (2) the GDP per capita in PPP prices, (3) the real GDP growth rates, (4) the minimum wages, (5) the HDI index development, and (6) the unemployment rates. We concluded for the case of Greece that by utilizing alternative indicators, such as the Maastricht criteria, and the above criteria only nominal convergence exists while real convergence appears to be a long-term target with many obstacles. In particular, Greece has managed to achieve the criteria proposed by the EMU (Maastricht Criteria) for membership, decisively different levels of unemployment, wages, and GDP growth rate/GDP per capita in PPP prices, and different human development indexes appear for the case of Greece.

The purpose of this paper is to explicate the ways in which the practice of the dramatic arts has evolved to facilitate second-order observation of social systems and can be used to “pragmatize” systems thinking for a wider audience.

Survey of selected dramatic theory and practice from the nineteenth century to the present framed within the cyber-systemic theories of Niklas Luhmann, Werner Ulrich and Oswaldo Garcia de la Cerda and Maria Saavedra Ulloa.

Beginning with Naturalism in the late nineteenth century, theatrical practitioners have increasingly revealed the structure of social systems through their work, largely without any explicit adoption or deployment of systems theory. Current methods of theatrical presentation are highly compatible with cyber-systemic heuristics and could be used to make this body of theory known to a wider public.

Work involving the direct application of systems theory to theatrical practice is still in its very early stages.

Despite the lack of direct influence by systems theory, Western theatrical practice has evolved in such a way as to facilitate increased opportunities for second-order observation of, and subsequent intervention in, the structure of social systems. The deliberate cultivation and integration of systems theory could allow theatre to become a significant tool for the explication of systems theory to the general public in a highly practical manner.

As a communal and, in certain forms, interactive endeavour, a systems-oriented theatrical practice can provide an inclusive public space for the critique of social systems as they are currently structured and for the modelling of alternative structures.

Theorizing selected moments of theatre history as the development of platforms for second-order observation is a unique analytical approach. The applications suggested in this paper may lead to novel approaches to the development of systems literacy across society.

Knowledge‐based system techniques are increasingly being invoked in aid of assembly. A conference held in London in March drew attention to several current activities.

How responsible education and “green” learning becomes crucial for survival for the Mamanwa ethnic minority in Surigao del Norte, Mindanao, Philippines. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Ten interviews to teachers and 40 Mamanwa students at the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit School in Palalihan, Surigao del Norte, Mindanao, Philippines. Each interview lasted for 1 hour and had ten questions related to “green” learning, responsible education, ecospirituality and sustainable practices. The teachers' interviews took into account how the students incorporate into their learning process the traditional curriculum being taught in the Philippines in primary schools and the Indigenous People's Core Curriculum (IPCC) which has been implemented recently to indigenous people all through the country. Each interview to the students lasted 30 minutes and was related about the things they leaned, how they learned it and applied it to their daily lives.

The importance of a Christian approach to indigenous education respects the traditions and sacred knowledge of a marginalised community in the Philippines. The teaching approach of the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit (MSSHS) shows the development of “green” knowledge and responsible educational capabilities in their practices as educators.

Tribal cultural values and MSSHS education bring in a kind of “transcultural” learning process which gives Mamanwas greater skills for cross-cultural adaptation in the Pilipino environment.

Non-formal education through the IPCC becomes a key element for the learning process in an environment where sustainable practices are part of the upbringing of the Mamanwa community.

The relationship between spiritual values and the environment shows a greater closeness between responsible education and “green” learning.

Thanks to the MSSHS education, the Mamanwa community has learned, through a syncretic educational process, a greater ability for transcultural adaptation in a transitional process for ethnic minorities in the Philippines.