Sustainable procurement: Past,present and future

Sustainable procurement is increasingly on the agenda for purchasing and supply managers seeking to demonstrate corporate social responsibility in their supply chains. In this paper, we identify trends in the literature and establish that this is a burgeoning field. We identify methodological challenges and research gaps to guide future research. We propose a sustainable procurement framework to help structure future research across supply chains. Finally, we introduce each of the papers in the special issue, and identify what makes them stand out as making a novel contribution to research in the field.     

Sustainable Development and the Financial System: Society's Perceptions About Socially Responsible Investing

The debate surrounding the financial needs of investors and the impact on society of investment is considered to be an important research topic due to the growth of socially responsible financial markets. The main objective of this research is to study society's perception about socially responsible investing (SRI) and to identify investor's preferences regarding environmental, social and governance criteria, their real‐life investment needs and the most relevant sustainable financial products. To examine society's perception of SRI, we conducted a field survey among Spanish investors. The results show that SRI is at an early stage and Spanish investors need more exact information regarding social, environmental, and governance criteria in order to invest in socially responsible companies and products. This paper offers some guidelines that could be used by Spanish institutions, managers and investors and by foreign managers when approaching the Spanish market, in order to promote the growth of socially responsible financial products. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

行为金融学视角下投资套利者面临的成本限制与风险

随着金融市场上各种投资套利者出现套利等异常现象的累积，模型和实际的背离使得传统金融理论的理性分析范式陷入了尴尬境地，行为金融学理论悄然兴起。阐述了行为金融学的产生，研究了行为金融对投资套利者面临的成本、限制与风险的影响，最后探讨了行为金融学视角下对投资套利者的启示。     

A systematic literature review of socially responsible investment and environmental social governance metrics

Socially responsible investment (SRI) encompasses both ethical and financial paradigms. This systematic literature review explores three key research themes within the SRI literature, identifying a significant disconnect between themes and a fixation on the financial (as opposed to ethical) paradigm. One of the foundations of SRI is environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics. This review confirms the importance of ESG metrics in the SRI field, as they play two crucial roles, namely, as a proxy for sustainability performance and an enabler of the SRI market. However, there are two main issues related to ESG metrics that undermine their reliability: a lack of transparency and a lack of convergence.     

Socioeconomic Impacts of high-speed rail: A bibliometric analysis

High-speed rail (HSR), as an efficient and environmentally sustainable mode of transportation mode, has received increasing attention in many countries over the past decades. While the literature on HSR's technology development and the assessment of the socioeconomic impact of the system has increased substantially in recent years, it remains unclear how the understanding of the socioeconomic impact system has evolved, and what the characteristics of various research focuses are. The objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive examination of the evolution of the high-speed rail literature, with a focus on socioeconomic impact analysis. Specifically, the following research questions are addressed: what is the global trend of scientific publication on the socioeconomic impact analysis of HSR? What specific focuses are uncovered from this trend? And what are the future directions of research in this field? A thorough understanding of the literature helps scholars better identify the research gaps, needs and directions for future research endeavors. In addition, it may also facilitate the decision-making for future investment in HSR through a better understanding of the potential impacts of the system.     

Sustainable environmental practices and financial performance: Evidence from listed small and medium‐sized enterprise in the United Kingdom

In this article, we investigate the financial implication of sustainable environmental practices on UK small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs)–traded firms. Existing literature indicates that there is a direct relationship between sustainable environmental practices and financial performance. However, studies looking at this relationship have focused mainly on large firms with little attention paid to SMEs. Further, those looking at environmental and financial performance relationships have often used a single measure of performance in their studies. This study bridges these research gaps by focusing on listed SMEs in the United Kingdom using multiple measures of sustainable environmental policy indices on a panel of 201 SMEs on the Alternative Investment Market from 2011 to 2016. Evidence from our panel data analysis suggests significant and a nonlinear (concave) relationship between sustainable environmental practices and firms' financial performance. Specifically, energy efficiency practices, greenhouse gases, material, and resource efficiency revealed an inverted U‐shaped relationship with financial performance. The results will offer guidance to management in terms of allocating resources to sustainable environmental practices investment.     

Green financing for sustainable development: Insights from multiple cases of Vietnamese commercial banks

Although the public sector is seen as the main party responsible for taking action on climate change and sustainable development, private commercial banks are in a unique position to support or shift the funding focus on green investment. By employing a qualitative research approach based on six commercial banks, this paper aims to investigate the current practices of how commercial banks are contributing to advance green business initiatives. Accordingly, this research examines and identifies the facilitators and challenges in domestic and foreign commercial banks in Vietnam which support green business initiatives. In addition to addressing the recent calls for the investigation of the role of commercial banks in facilitating green finance, our study expands the emerging literature by demonstrating the current efforts of Vietnam's commercial banks in fostering green finance during the Covid-19 pandemic.     

Sustainable Entrepreneurship Research: Taking Stock and looking ahead

The recognition of entrepreneurship as a solution to, rather than a cause of, environmental degradation and social inequality moved the field to identify a new type of entrepreneurial activity, namely sustainable entrepreneurship. Scholarly interest has spiked in recent years; however, aside from its aspirational appeal, there remains a lack of understanding of the nature of the phenomenon and the future of sustainable entrepreneurship in theory and practice. This review seeks to provide a conceptual basis for stimulating scholarly thought and improving our collective understanding of sustainable entrepreneurship as a distinct subdomain within entrepreneurship research. Based on boundary definition and delineation of main features, this review critically discusses the main challenges ahead and elaborates on the research implications and future research directions beyond current, dominant approaches to entrepreneurial action. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

European Pension Funds and Sustainable Development: Trade‐Offs between Finance and Responsibility

Pension funds try to account for sustainable development in their operations. This mainly translates in responsible investing. We investigate how this interacts with the financial objectives. We use a survey of more than 250 pension funds based in 15 European countries. Multinomial logistic regression is used to find out how pension funds trade off sustainable development and financial objectives. Our findings suggest that pension funds that have not included responsibility in their strategy and investments have a clear priority regarding their financial performance. Pension funds who integrate sustainable development in their strategy can bring balance between finance and responsibility. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

北京地方财政可持续发展的协整分析

地方财政可持续发展是财政收入、财政支出、经济发展三位一体的系统平衡与协调。本文对北京市1978-2012年的财政收入、财政支出和经济增长的协整检验结果表明其财政可持续发展能力比较好;Granger因果检验结果表明经济快速增长是北京市财政可持续发展的关键,但财政收入弹性较小、财政支出对经济的刺激作用不明显是影响财政可持续发展的深层问题;最后,从提高财政收入质量、提高财政支出效益和加强财政监管三方面提出了提升北京市财政可持续发展能力的建议。     

Nudging toward diversity in the boardroom: A systematic literature review of board diversity of financial institutions

Going beyond the mere gender diversity in the boardroom, this systematic review comprehensively covers the research on board diversity of financial institutions. More specifically, we cover gender diversity, as well as other characteristics of diversity, such as nationality, age, tenure, experience, education, ethnicity, and religion. A systematic literature review was employed using Scopus and Web of Science databases, covering all publications until May 2020, which resulted in 91 studies from 66 top-ranked journals in accounting, finance, and economic fields. We analyze them based on the journal, methodology, research construct questions, and theoretical perspectives. Our results highlight the substantial knowledge gaps and the inconsistent findings of prior studies on several aspects of the field, suggesting avenues for further studies in terms of research designs, settings, scope, and theories. We argue that there is a need to explore other board diversity attributes rather than focusing on the gender diversity of the boards of financial institutions to achieve sustainable development. Also, more work is outlined on topics related to board diversity of financial firms that receive limited attention from scholars, such as (but not limited to) environmental performance, capital structure, intellectual capital, innovation and earnings quality of financial institutions, as well as the indirect effect of policy settings.     

城市金融可持续发展研究综述

城市金融是构成区域金融和区域经济的重要资源与核心,其可持续发展是促进区域经济健康、快速发展的关键,本文通过对可持续发展内涵、金融可持续发展理论、区域金融可持续发展理论相关研究分析基础上,提出了城市金融可持续发展含义和内容,为进一步研究奠定了基础。     

Looking for sustainable development: Socially responsible mutual funds and the low-carbon economy

Sustainable investment responds to demands for carbon and climate-neutral societies. To address the urgency around climate change and provide investors with more qualified information, Morningstar has developed the Low Carbon Designation (LCD) to indicate that the companies held in a portfolio are in general alignment with the transition to a low-carbon economy. The designation is given to portfolios that have low carbon risk and fossil fuel exposure scores. The present study builds on the LCD by examining the relationship between these scores and financial performance. With this aim, we analyze 3920 socially responsible mutual funds from across the world. Results show differences in financial performance according to scores and investment areas. We find evidence that funds considered to have higher levels of sustainability achieved better performance than funds with higher exposure to companies involved in carbon and fossil fuel industries. We provide insights on the informativeness of these new scores with a focus on climate change and their relevance in helping investors to identify climate-aware funds. This study highlights the importance of introducing strategies to develop green finance; the analysis confirms that sustainability improves performance. Finally, the LCD indicator is shown to be relevant for making fairer comparisons among socially responsible funds and, ultimately, for developing low-carbon economies.     

The use of real options valuation methodology in enhancing the understanding of the impact of climate change on companies

Climate change has in recent years gathered traction on the business, political and social agenda. From the business perspective, research has shown that climate change impacts on company value are uncertain, significant and strategically important. The challenge therefore is for the business community to apply financial valuation models that support the incorporation of the climate change impacts in strategic planning. However, the commonly used discounted cash flow techniques in capital budgeting are seen as failing to address the high levels of uncertainties inherent in climate change impacts. Real options thinking has been touted as having the potential to enhance understanding of these impacts via its direct handling of uncertainty, although not much research has been done to demonstrate this. Using an illustrative case study, this research presents an argument for introducing the real options approach, a new method for valuing options of future strategic action by companies in a setting that exhibits climate change impacts. The objective of this research is to contribute to the literature on strategic tools for addressing climate change and ultimately offer some management insights that can narrow the gap between finance theory and business practice. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

A systematic literature review to integrate lean,agile, resilient,green and sustainable paradigms in the supply chain management

The main focus of this study is to conduct a systematic literature review to integrate lean, agile, resilient, green and sustainable (LARGS) paradigms in the supply chain (SC) domain. To achieve this aim, several research questions were designed: First, how to locate LARGS research in context of SC domain? For this, it is important to understand which types of research articles should be selected for the study? Further, where such studies were conducted (geographical location)? Second, what is the focus of research in LARGS paradigm in SCs? For this, it is important to study, which types of industries or sectors have been targeted in literature? In addition, which tools and techniques have been used mostly? Third, what are the current trends in the relationships of LARGS paradigms, among themselves, and with SC performance measures? Fourth, what are the emerging issues, unexplored areas in this field, based on these what could be future research avenues in this subject domain have been proposed? A total of 160 relevant articles published during 1999–2019 were used for analysis. Based on analysis, findings are summarised, and main research issues and possible future research directions in LARGS paradigms in SCs are highlighted.     

Business model based on strong sustainability: Insights from an empirical study

The extant literature on traditional and sustainable business models lacks insights into how strong sustainability—that is, constraining economic and social activities within the limitations of natural resources—can shape business models. Thus, the purpose of this article is to propose a business model framework based on the principles of strong sustainability (SSBM). The proposed framework is developed combining available literature and empirical insights from a qualitative abductive study of 12 permaculture business ventures in Sweden. The results identify nature as the primary stakeholder and recommend strong local anchorage, the creation of diversified income sources, deliberate limitations on economic growth, the infusion of the business model with a systemic and ecosystem perspective, and the design of value flows beyond financial aspects. The discussion reflects on the most important results, provides practical implications and managerial guidelines, and suggests future research in the SSBM.     

浅议欧洲债务危机及启示

为防止全球经济过度衰退,各国政府统一行动,采取了积极的财政货币政策,最大限度地减少金融危机所带来的影响,而欧元区国家却为此陷入了巨大的债务危机。本文讨论了导致债务危机产生的主要原因及影响,着重探讨债务危机给各国政府带来的启示教训,认为金融监管体系改革、透明化以及政府实行财政、金融改革,实施可持续公共财政是关键因素,对我国政府采取措施,建立一整套全面危机应对体制防范可能的金融风险提出了意见和建议。     

资源型企业增长过度吗？——兼对可持续增长理论的评价与检验

本文以包钢稀土、西山煤电等四家资源型企业为研究对象,建立理论分析框架,用传统的可持续增长理论进行评价,并对评价结论进行检验,结果发现：虽然资源型企业近10年来的实际增长率高于可持续增长率,表现为超速增长状态,但是使用财务杠杆水平、Z记分模型与经济增加值检验分析,样本企业并没有出现财务资源约束、产生财务危机以及毁损企业价值等状况。说明传统的可持续增长理论不能解释目前资源型企业是否可持续增长。本文对其原因做了进一步的分析,同时结合资源型企业的实际财务状况,提出可持续增长政策建议。     

互联网金融行业信用风险分析及防控改进对策探究

随着信息技术的不断发展,互联网与传统金融的有机结合初步踏上舞台。互联网金融是一种新型金融业务模式,主要是指传统金融机构和互联网企业通过使用互联网和信息通信技术的方式,从而完成资金融通、支付、投资和信息中介服务。但最近几年,随着互联网金融的不断发展,国内互联网金融行业风险事件高发,其风险问题逐步浮现在公众面前。     

基于封闭式基金折价的投资策略和政策建议

封闭式基金折价是困扰金融理论界的谜团之一,传统金融学学者从基本面因素对其进行剖析,行为金融学学者从投资者情绪出发,得到了更令人信服的解释。笔者认为,封闭式基金折价之谜的研究目的不在于如何解释这一现象,而是如何分析折价给投资者带来的投资机会,如何审视折价现象为监管层所带来的政策建议。