Sustainable development (SD) -that is, ''Development that meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and aspirations'' -can be pursued in many dierent ways. Stakeholder relations management (SRM) is one such way, through which corporations are confronted with economic, social, and environmental stakeholder claims. This paper lays the groundwork for an empirical analysis of the question of how far SD can be achieved through SRM. It describes the so-called SD-SRM perspective as a distinctive research approach and shows how it relates to the wider body of stakeholder theory. Next, the concept of SD is operationalized for the microeconomic level with reference to important documents. Based on the ensuing SD framework, it is shown how SD and SRM relate to each other, and how the two concepts relate to other popular concepts such as Corporate Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility. The paper concludes that the significance of societal guiding models such as SD and of management approaches like CSR is strongly dependent on their footing in society.

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Purpose This paper aims to conceptualize impacts of higher education institutions (HEIs) on sustainable development (SD), complementing previous literature reviews by broadening the perspective from what HEIs do in pursuit of SD to how these activities impact society, the environment and the economy. Design/methodology/approach The paper provides a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2005 and 2017. Inductive content analysis was applied to identify major themes and impact areas addressed in the literature to develop a conceptual framework detailing the relationship between HEIs’ activities and their impacts on SD. Findings The paper identifies six impact areas where direct and indirect impacts of HEIs on SD may occur. The findings indicate a strong focus on case studies dealing with specific projects and a lack of studies analyzing impacts from a more holistic perspective. Practical implications This systematic literature review enables decision-makers in HEIs, researchers and educators to better understand how their activities may affect society, the environment and the economy, and it provides a solid foundation to tackle these impacts. Social implications The review highlights that HEIs have an inherent responsibility to make societies more sustainable. HEIs must embed SD into their systems while considering their impacts on society. Originality/value This paper provides a holistic conceptualization of HEIs’ impacts on SD. The conceptual framework can be useful for future research that attempts to analyze HEIs’ impacts on SD from a holistic perspective.

Governments, in particular in Western Europe, have become increasingly active in promoting and shaping corporate social responsibility (CSR). The present paper conceptually and empirically characterises the public policies on CSR in Europe. In a first (conceptual) step, public policies on CSR are portrayed by distinguishing five types of policy instruments (i.e. legal, economic, informational, partnering, and hybrid tools) that can be employed in four fields of action (i.e. awareness for CSR, transparency, socially responsible investment, and leading by example). In a second (empirical) step, this typology is employed to show how EU member states actually promote CSR policies. The empirical stocktaking provides an overview of more than 200 policy instruments in three of the four fields of action. In a third step, the paper compares the status of public policies on CSR in Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). By means of a simple instrument count and an analysis of variance (ANOVA) it is shown that Western European (particularly Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian) governments are significantly more active in promoting CSR than governments in CEE countries. Since these differences mirror the differences regarding the popularity of CSR as a management approach in Europe, the paper concludes that public policies on CSR reinforce rather than offset the European 'CSR gap'. Copyright

Despite lengthy debates about planning versus incrementalism, there is still no consensus on what strategy processes should look like in the public sector. In the environmental policy field, the decline of formal policy planning was nonetheless followed by a surge of national strategies for sustainable development (NSSDs). After summarizing this development, we highlight some key characteristics, good practices, and weaknesses of NSSDs with regard to participation, horizontal and vertical policy integration, policy implementation, and monitoring. It is shown that NSSDs go well beyond former environmental policy plans, not just in terms of their thematic scope, but foremost because they resemble evolving rather than static strategy processes. Finally, we explore what model of strategy formation may be adequate for the public sector in general. Based on the empirical evidence presented here and by drawing on strategic management theory, strategic public management is proposed as an ideal pattern for strategy formation, which reconciles planning and incremental learning.

Transnational corporations (TNCs) today are facing rising expectations that they will engage with societal stakeholders and get involved with sustainable development, even in light of an increasingly uncertain international business environment. This article explores how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a global agenda may serve as a reference framework that can support TNCs in improving their corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement in a way that contributes to sustainable development. The authors specifically consider the role of systematically measuring and managing corporate impacts on sustainable development as a prerequisite for demonstrating a net contribution to the SDGs. In order to capture these impacts, existing corporate measurement and evaluation systems need to be adapted and new management instruments have to be developed. We conclude by proposing a research agenda for this purpose.

More than 60 000 organizations worldwide have implemented environmental management systems (EMSs). About 800 of them are located in Austria. As Austria was one of the leading countries in promoting the EU scheme EMAS, and as there has been no specific study on Austrian experiences with ISO 14001, the purpose of this study is to describe the experiences with and effects of ISO 14001 in Austria. The results show that ISO 14001 often leads to reduced environmental impact, especially in the area of waste. A strong driving force behind implementation is the expected improvement of an organization's image. The average repayment time on an investment in an EMS is less than two years. Legal compliance tends to be difficult to implement, but on the other hand it works well in daily practice. To develop an EMS into a sustainability management system, the two most important challenges are to improve coordination between the EMS and the organization's strategies and to synchronize the EMS with central value chains.

Based on a theoretical exploration in a previous article, this paper empirically analyzes which issues of SD are taken into account by corporations and stakeholders in what way, and to what extent the concept of sustainable development (SD) can be achieved through stakeholder relations management (SRM) on the corporate level. An important basis for this empirical analysis is a referential framework, which specifies 14 issues of SD. In a first empirical step, the literature-based framework has been operationalized for the business world by analyzing sustainability reports. In a second empirical step, the operationalized framework served as the basis for a survey of selected MNCs. The analyses of the sustainability reports and the survey show how MNCs deal with particular issues of SD and what role they perceive particular stakeholders play. A key conclusion of the article is that SRM indeed promotes SD, but that it is no alternative to predictable government regulation.