SMEs as an organization to succeed and to be sustainable must have the most essential and strategic capital, namely creativity, competitive advantage, and intellectual capital. This study aims to explore how creativity and intellectual capital determines SMEs’ sustainability as well as examine the emerging role of competitive advantage in supporting this relationship. A quantitative method was applied to gain a better understanding of the relationship between variables undergoing Structural Equation Modeling with Partial Least Square (SEM-PLS). This study collected data from 123 SMEs in East Java of Indonesia using an online survey. The approach adopted in this study is a convenience random sampling method, which is widely used in entrepreneurship and SMEs’ sustainability research. The findings showed that intellectual capital positively affects both competitive advantage and SMEs’ sustainability. Additionally, the result of this study confirms a robust relationship between intellectual capital and SMEs’ sustainability. However, partially, creativity failed in explaining SMEs’ sustainability. Furthermore, this study confirmed that competitive advantage has successfully mediated both the influence of creativity and intellectual capital to SMEs’ sustainability. Although this research only involved participants in East Java, this study can be the first step for relevant research of SMEs’ sustainability, in particular, in Indonesia.

This study explores whether the implementation of sustainability disclosure can trigger or stimulate the change in the roles of management accountants in adopting organizations in Vietnam as business partners. To do so, it explores the roles of management accountants in integrated reporting (IR) adopting organizations and sustainability reporting (SR) adopting organizations based on the use of the pragmatic constructivism (PC) theoretical framework. In addition, qualitative semi-structured interviews were used to provide an in-depth investigation of management accountants’ work in both IR and SR adopting organizations. The empirical findings suggest that the adoption of the IR framework has triggered changes in management accountant roles toward the new business partner roles to support the decision-making process within their organizations. On the other hand, management accountants from SR adopting organizations still work as traditional “bean-counter” roles. Our paper concludes by indicating several propositions based on our empirical findings that can be tested by future researchers from the domain by collecting relevant data. Our study can be seen as a response to the recent call for a more in-depth examination of the practice of sustainability disclosure from the practitioners’ perspectives in adopting organizations.

The board of directors play an important role in corporate climate strategy-making and decisions but might also compromise environmental policies to minimize agency cost. This study critically investigates the relationship between the attributes of the board of directors and the degree of sustainability performance for the energy sector as discussed in the literature. Our study cumulates existing knowledge offering important characteristics for a balanced board structure to increase the board’s effectiveness in adopting sustainable initiatives that could reduce the adverse impact of an energy corporation’s operation on the environment. Crucial attributes of the board of directors deemed to be positively associated with the commitment to reduce carbon footprint in the environment have been identified. Based on our extensive analysis of the literature we propose a conceptual framework that measures the influence of the board of directors’ attributes on corporate environmental and social sustainability performance. The proposed framework will be useful as an initial step for top management and regulators to gain a better understanding of the balanced board structure required to achieve the social and environmental sustainability performance of corporations. Further, this paper contributes to a body of knowledge about how the board of directors could play a crucial role in monitoring social and environmental threats.

This study aims to test empirically whether the ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard (ACGS) has a positive effect on Sustainability Reporting (SR) and whether the ACGS and Sustainability Reporting (SR) have a positive effect on Firm Value (FV). The study was conducted in five ASEAN countries - Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Thailand from 2014 - 2017. The research sample was collected from companies with the ACGS data and obtained with the help of 359 company observations. Hypothesis testing was performed using the Ordinary Least Square (OLS). The results of the study do not support all hypotheses. The ACGS has no effect on sustainability reporting. The ACGS has a significant negative effect on firm value, while sustainability reporting has a negative and insignificant effect on firm value. The ACGS and sustainability reporting are not good news for investors. This research’s limitation is that companies rarely disclose the final value of the ACGS in their annual reports, so this research uses content analysis. The weakness of content analysis is the researchers’ subjectivity so that the point of view between researchers is different. Besides, sustainability reporting for several ASEAN countries is voluntary, so not all companies can be sampled, which ultimately affects interpretation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of the Operational Self-Sustainability (OSS) of Vietnamese microfinance institutions (MFIs). This research uses both qualitative and quantitative research methods: (i) qualitative research was via in-depth interviews with ten microfinance practitioners, policymakers and researchers; (ii) quantitative research was conducted by using panel data of 34 MFIs in the period 2011-2015 with binary logistics and OLS regressions. Results are as follows: (i) MFIs’ OSS in Vietnam are mainly determined by five key factors: portfolio at risk (PAR>30), capital structure, gross loan portfolio, scope of activities and legal form; (ii) OSS are most affected by legal status (social organizations have better OSS than formal MFIs or programs/projects), location (MFIs focus in one province have higher OSS than working nationwide or just in one district), capital structure (MFIs with more equity proportion have higher OSS); (iii) surprisingly, average loan size per borrower and age of MFIs do not have statistically significant correlation with OSS. The key recommendations are: (i) MFIs should focus on its professionality and increase its equity; (ii) related stakeholders such as State Bank of Vietnam should promote the enabling ecosystem for microfinance development to enhance poverty reduction and economic development.

The study attempts to assess the level of environmental sustainability awareness in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In the process, the study tries to assess the impact of extracurricular activities in increasing awareness of environmental sustainability. A survey questionnaire was administered to the students of Prince Sattam University and other universities of Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire comprises statements on simple environmental conservation activities, which we come across on a daily basis. Hypothesis testing is used to identify significant differences across different categories of respondents. Further, the method of binary logistic regression is used to analyze the data. Though all the respondents agree that conserving the environment is important still there are significant differences across categories when it comes to believing in and practicing environmentally-responsible behavior. The results show that environmental awareness can be increased using awareness activities on sustainability issues in a University setting. The study concludes that increasing the number of extracurricular activities on environmental topics as only 38% of the respondents reported any activity related to the environment in the past year. The findings of this study suggest that increased awareness of environmental issues can boost the sustainability awareness, which will ultimately lead to a sustainable environment.

This study investigates the influence of community involvement on the destination sustainability for community destinations and spiritual destinations in Vietnam. Community involvement is measured by two constructs, which are community attachment and residents’ support. A structural questionnaire consisting of 41 observation variables measured on a 5-point Likert scale was used to survey households who live in a spiritual destination in An Giang province and three community destinations in Lang Son province with the help of local tour guides and Youth Union. 168 out of 200 responses collected were valid for multivariate data analysis. The results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) reveal three main findings. Firstly, community attachment has a direct effect on both perceived benefits and destination sustainability. Secondly, while residents’ support has a direct effect on perceived benefits, it indirectly affects destination sustainability. Finally, community destinations have a higher level of sustainability than the spiritual destination. Based on those findings, this study proposed three suggestions for local authorities, policymakers, and residents to improve the sustainable development of their local tourism destinations, including (1) diversifying local tourism products, (2) encouraging the community participation in tourism development programs, and (3) increasing in the expected benefits in local tourism development policies.

This study analyzes the key drivers (commitment, integration of big data, green supply chain management, and green human resource practices) of sustainable capabilities and the influence to which these sustainable capabilities impact the banks’ environmental and financial performance. Additionally, this study analyzes the impact of green management practices on the integration of big data technology with operations. The theory of dynamic capability was deployed to propose and empirically test the conceptual model. Data was collected through a self-administrated survey questionnaire from 319 participants employed at 35 banks located in six ASEAN countries. The findings indicate that big data analytics strategies have an impact on internal processes and banks’ sustainable and financial performance. This study indicates that banks committed towards proper data monitoring of its clients achieve operational efficiency and sustainability goals. Moreover, our results confirm that banks practising green innovation strategies experience better environmental and economic performance as the employees of these banks have received advance green human resource training. Finally, our study found that internal and external green supply chain management practices have a positive impact on banks’ environmental and financial performance, which confirms that ASEAN banks contributing in reduction of environmental impact through its operations will ultimately experience increased financial performance.

The objective of this paper is to explore how board gender diversity affects corporate sustainability performance. Therefore, this paper examines the direct association between board gender diversity with corporate sustainability performance and the mediation effect of enterprise risk management (ERM) on this association. The study employed a cross-sectional survey method. Data were collected from annual reports, websites, and through the questionnaires that were distributed to Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of all the listed companies of Dhaka Stock Exchange, Bangladesh. The partial least square technique of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach was employed for data analysis. The result did not find support for the direct association between board gender diversity and sustainability performance in Bangladesh context. This implies that contextual factors, such as, male-dominant board, appointment of female directors based on family ties, lack of education and expertise etc. may discount gender diversity direct influence on sustainability performance. However, the study finds strong support for the mediating role of ERM use within the corporate structure. Further analysis of indirect effect suggests that ERM use mediates the relationship of board gender diversity and sustainability performance in full. This implies that in the Bangladesh context effective use of ERM is highly recommended.

The paper investigates the effect of the factors on the disclosure of sustainable development information of enterprises. The research sample includes 120 manufacturing companies listed on Vietnam stock market in 2019. This research uses ordinary least squares (OLS) to address econometric issues and to improve the accuracy of the regression coefficients. The empirical results show that five variables have a statistically significant positive effect on disclosure of sustainable development information of manufacturing companies, including firm size (SIZE), independence of board of directors (BOD), foreign ownership (FRO), return on equity (ROE), and financial leverage (LEV). The results indicate that state ownership (STO) has a statistically significant negative effect on disclosure of sustainable development information of manufacturing companies listed on Vietnam stock market. Besides, the research results also show there is a large difference in the disclosure of sustainable development information between listed companies in Vietnam, those of other emerging economies in the region, and the companies in developed markets. Therefore, this paper provides a new insight to managers and related parties on how to improve the firm’s sustainability disclosure to bring benefit for the firm itself and the stakeholders by reasonable decisions about the factors that affect disclosure of sustainable development information.

Purpose: As nonprofit organizations have made strides in international development, ensuring financial resources has become pivotal to determine what nonprofits strive for and how they perform with the budget generated without efforts for profit-making. The purpose of this research aims to investigate the determinants of donation intention that are affected by television fundraising campaigns in order to improve financial sustainability. This study applied the effects of emotional sympathy, economic value, accountability, relevance, and sustainability on donation intention. Research design, data, and methodology: This study collected data via an online survey by classifying respondents based on donation experiences and applied statistical analyses such as factor analysis, regression, and ANOVA. This study selected television fundraising campaigns aligned with criteria of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Results: The results of this study showed that emotional sympathy was a dominant variable regardless of previous donation experiences, while economic value was significant for inexperienced donors. Conclusions: The results provide implications to nonprofit organizations for fundraising as to what aspects need to be addressed in order to draw donors’ motivation for giving behavior. Given efforts for successful implementation of development agenda, it is fundamental to establish financial sustainability of nonprofit organizations and build up public awareness.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between portfolio quality and financial sustainability of microfinance institutions in Kenya. Research Design, Data, and Methodology: The analysis was based on a panel dataset of 30 microfinance institutions for the period of 2010 to 2018. Data was obtained from the Microfinance information exchange (MIX) database, and it was analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of STATA. Based on the results of the Hausman test, the study adopted the fixed effect regression model to test the research hypothesis. Results: The study found that portfolio quality had a positive significant effect on financial sustainability of Microfinance institutions in Kenya (β= 0. 211; p-value < 0.05). For the control variables; firm age had a positive effect (β= 0.773; p-value <0.05), while firm size (β= -0. 749; p-value < 0.05) had a negative effect on financial sustainability. Conclusions: The study concluded that portfolio quality has an important influence on the financial sustainability of microfinance institution. The study recommends that managers of microfinance institutions should devise good collection policies to improve portfolio quality while lessening loan default rate. The portfolio quality may improve the overall profitability and enhance investor confidence in their strategic decision-making on refinancing.

This study empirically analyzes how the career orientation factors of startup entrepreneurs affect entrepreneurial satisfaction as well as business sustainability. We propose directions for startup sustainability and development. Based on previous research, we defined the career orientation of entrepreneurs through the five orientation factors of security, autonomy, technical competence, managerial competence, and entrepreneurial creativity. We constructed a research model to determine whether these factors have a causal relationship with entrepreneurial satisfaction or business sustainability through the medium of organizational entrepreneurship. We surveyed startups in Korea using a questionnaire and collected and analyzed a total of 282 points of survey data. The analysis results demonstrated that the entrepreneurial creativity and managerial competence of the members of a startup can play an important role within entrepreneurial satisfaction and business sustainability. Both autonomy and technical competence exhibited no effect on entrepreneurial satisfaction and business sustainability through the medium of entrepreneurship, while security showed a negative effect. In order to improve entrepreneurial satisfaction and achieve business sustainability, we confirmed that it was more important for startups to consider the creativity and business management competences of entrepreneurs rather than pursue business security or have a technology-oriented attitude.

This study aims to utilize big data contents of news and social media for developing a corporate strategy of multinational enterprises and their global decision-making through the data mining technique, especially text mining. In this paper, the data of 2 news media (BBC and CNN) and 2 social media (Facebook and Twitter) were collected for the three global leading Korean companies (Samsung, Hyundai Motor Company, and LG) from April, 2018 to April, 2019. The findings of this paper have shown that traditional news media and also modern social media have become devastating tools to extract global trends or phenomena for businesses. Moreover, this presents that a company can adopt a two-track strategy through two different types of media by deriving the key issues or trends from news media channels and also grasping consumers’ sentiments, preference or issues of interest such as battery or design from social media. In addition, analyzing the texts of those media and understanding the association rules greatly contribute to the comparison between two different types of media channels to see the difference. Lastly, this provides meaningful and valuable data empowered insights to find a future direction comprehensively and develop a global strategy for sustainability of business.

The purpose of this study is to discover the interaction between credit growth and operational self-sustainability and to examine factors that affect credit growth and operational self-sustainability of people's credit funds (PCFs). Credit growth and operational self-sustainability are factors affecting the operations and the goals of people's credit funds (PCFs) in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam. After regression analysis on a set of panel data from 2013 to 2018 of 24 PCFs, it appears that deposit growth and loan-to-deposit ratio have positive relationships with credit growth, while capital adequacy ratio and operational self-sustainability have negative relationships with credit growth of PCFs; capital adequacy ratio, deposit growth and income have positive relationships with operational self-sustainability, while credit growth and non-performing loan ratio have negative relationships with the operational self-sustainability of PCFs. At the same time, credit growth and operational self-sustainability have a relationship to interact with each other in a contrary trend. The results of this research are accurate according to the characteristics and development history of PCFs in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam from 2013-2018. This study helps researchers and managers to understand the key determinants for better management of PCFs.

본 연구는 윤리적 패션으로서 업사이클링 패션 브랜드의 지속가능성을 살펴보고 패션 산업의 지속가능한 발전 가능성을 모색하고자 하는 것이다. 본 연구의 목적은 첫째, 지속가능한 발전에 대한 관심에 따라 윤리적 패션, 국내 업사이클링 패션 브랜드에 대한 개념과 특성을 이해한다. 둘째, 윤리적 패션으로서 지속가능한 발전을 위한 국내 업사이클링 패션 브랜드의 현황과 사례를 살펴본다. 셋째, 국내 업사이클링 패션 브랜드 5곳을 선정하여 윤리적 패션으로서 국내 업사이클링 패션 브랜드의 지속가능한 발전 특성을 도출한다. 윤리적 패션으로서 국내 업사이클링 패션 브랜드의 지속가능성은 첫째, 사회적 지속가능성에서 패션 취업 교육 및 훈련이나 교육서비스 제공을 통해 업사이클링에 관한 정보를 제공하여 사회적 책임을 독려하는 사회적 가치를 추구할 수 있는 것으로 나타났다. 이는 지속가능성이라는 공공의 가치를 높이며 사회적 공동체의 이익 실현하여 지역사회 발전에 기여하는 사회적 지속가능성을 실천하는 것이다. 둘째, 경제적 지속가능성은 국내 업사이 클링 패션 브랜드의 일자리 제공이나 협력 업체와의 공정 및 공동 경제 활동을 통해 시장 경쟁력을 확보하여 경제적 이익 창출로 나타났다. 셋째, 환경적 지속가능성은 업사이클링 브랜드의 창의적인 패션디자인 제안, 개선된 품질, 친환경 및 고기능성 소재 사용에 대한 미래 환경 관심으로 나타났는데, 이는 환경보호운동 같은 캠페인과 천연소재 및 기능성 소재를 활용을 제시하여 지속가능한 패션 산업을 위한 미래 환경의 중요성을 강조할 수 있다.

The paper aims to combine balance sheet analysis at the firm level with the International Monetary Fund’s public debt sustainability assessment framework to assess state-owned enterprises’ (SOE) leverage as a contingent liability to the public sector. Based on company data and the interest coverage ratio as a measure of debt at risk, aggregate baseline scenarios are projected to gauge the magnitude of SOE debt as a contingency. SOE’s financial and debt ratios are first bootstrapped to generate firm-level distributions and then averaged into a fan chart of the economy-wide SOE contingent liability. Applied to the People’s Republic of China as an example, the study finds that by the end of 2015 SOE leverage had grown to a substantial liability. However arbitrary the assumptions underlying these projections, it would appear that even if authorities had to mop up as much as 20% of SOE debt at risk gone bad, this would have been manageable at roughly 2.7% of the gross domestic product in 2016 or 5.5% by 2021. This projection framework is fully amenable to alternative assumptions and settings, which makes it a useful analytical tool to monitor contingent liabilities from non-financial corporate debt that have been building in emerging and advanced economies alike.

This study is conducted to propose urban park utilization and master plan in rural areas. Urban parks designed for the rural areas can be divided into three types: a themed type for rural tourism, a community type for hub regenerations and a waterfront type for using agricultural reservoirs. To use the themes and characteristics of ruralness, these types are required a multi-layered spatial structure. And ecological, cultural and economic networks of local tourism resources have to be integrated by utilizing agricultural reservoirs. Therefore, urban parks in rural areas can be defined as a part of the public benefit project aiming to revitalize the local economy. Also, urban parks are necessary to use attractions and amenities in rural areas. Based on theoretical backgrounds, this study proposed two sustainable master plans as the tourism resource development project for Baelyeonje, Gulye-gun. For ecological and cultural sustainability, this study proposed the environment restoration plan which reinforces the scenic resource of Nogodan in Mt. Jiri by developing the underdevelopment plan with consideration of the local landscape characteristics and resources. For economic sustainability, building the Mt. Jiri tourism complex and economic communities are needed to promote investments for securing mutual economic benefits. To achieve the sustainability, further studies related to the social equity and investment of private capital in rural areas are needed.

The residential population of Jeju Island has increased more than 10% for last 10 years. Especially, the tourist population is more than twice comparing to 2005. The population growth of Jeju has brought about large-scale urban development and increased land demands for tourism services. The goal of this study is to analyze the human, social, and environmental status of Jeju Island and to evaluate the environmental capacity of land use using ecological footprint (EF) model. This study shows the changes in ecological deficits of Jeju Island through estimating ecological productive land (EPL) considering EF from 2005 to 2015. The categories of total EF consists of food land, built-up land, forestry, and energy consumption. In order to reflect the characteristics of resort island, we consider not only residential population but also tourist population who can increase land demands. The outputs of this study also provide the potential excess demands of EPL and suggest needs of sustainable management plans for the limited land of Jeju Island.

The article compares economic and environmental performance of Taipei and Almaty from the point of view of "green" economy, which is able to act as a key tool to ensure sustainable development of the region. As the comparison of the parameters of ecological and economic development of the Taipei and Almaty cities shows, they are similar in population size, but demonstrate completely different trends of sustainable development. Economic performance of the Taipei city is achieved with a decrease in the consumption of natural resources and the production of pollution, while the situation in Almaty is the opposite. Almaty maintains a high level of air pollution due to the use of coal in electricity production, as well as increased traffic and density of construction, including the southern part of the city, which is a zone for the transit of mountain air flows. The article discusses the activities jointly conducted by the Government of Taiwan and non-governmental organizations on environmental issues, as well as environmental NGOs, which resulted in significant improvements in the environmental field. Measures to stimulate the development and implementation of environmental innovations applied in the field of sustainable development in the city of Taipei can be adapted for the city of Almaty, where the environmental situation deteriorates year by year.