In this article we systematically review the literature relating to Sustainability-Oriented Innovation (SOI), and present a model to help understand different types and phases of SOI in companies. SOI involves making intentional changes to organizational mind-sets and values, as well as the products, processes or practices that produce environmental and/or social benefits in addition to economic value. The model distinguishes between contexts of Operational Optimization, Organizational Transformation, and Systems Building, and is populated with a range of innovation practices illustrating what firms do to become more sustainable. The model is developed from a review of 127 articles from the academic and practitioner literature and focuses on the period between the two Earth Summits . The systematic review forms the foundation of this paper, but we supplement and populate the model with instances of SOI activity drawn from more recent practitioner literature to provide richer insights into contemporary pioneering SOI practice.

Measurement of the process of innovation is critical for both practitioners and academics, yet the literature is characterized by a diversity of approaches, prescriptions and practices that can be confusing and contradictory. Conceptualized as a process, innovation measurement lends itself to disaggregation into a series of separate studies. The consequence of this is the absence of a holistic framework covering the range of activities required to turn ideas into useful and marketable products. We attempt to address this gap by reviewing the literature pertaining to the measurement of innovation management at the level of the firm. Drawing on a wide body of literature, we first develop a synthesized framework of the innovation management process consisting of seven categories: inputs management, knowledge management, innovation strategy, organizational culture and structure, portfolio management, project management and commercialization. Second, we populate each category of the framework with factors empirically demonstrated to be significant in the innovation process, and illustrative measures to map the territory of innovation management measurement. The review makes two important contributions. First, it takes the difficult step of incorporating a vastly diverse literature into a single framework. Second, it provides a framework against which managers can evaluate their own innovation activity, explore the extent to which their organization is nominally innovative or whether or not innovation is embedded throughout their organization, and identify areas for improvement.

This paper suggests how the 'grey literature', the diverse and heterogeneous body of material that is made public outside, and not subject to, traditional academic peerreview processes, can be used to increase the relevance and impact of management and organization studies (MOS). The authors clarify the possibilities by reviewing 140 systematic reviews published in academic and practitioner outlets to answer the following three questions: (i) Why is grey literature excluded from/included in systematic reviews in MOS? (ii) What types of grey material have been included in systematic reviews since guidelines for practice were first established in this discipline? (iii) How is the grey literature treated currently to advance management and organization scholarship and knowledge? This investigation updates previous guidelines for more inclusive systematic reviews that respond to criticisms of current review practices and the needs of evidence-based management.

Conceptualizing growth trajectories of organizations in organismic terms describing transitions through a series of stages, from birth to maturity, has considerable intuitive appeal. Recently, the assumptions underpinning the life‐cycle perspective (growth is linear, sequential, deterministic and invariant) have been argued not to pertain to organizations. This paper reviews the literature on life‐cycle growth models, traces the development of a growing sophistication of conceptualizing growth and highlights some of the limitations of the literature. The authors make a contribution by proposing an alternative conceptual framework for thinking about growing businesses. The framework consists of two dimensions. First, a typology of key issues that are likely to be faced by all growing firms, and the discussion is shaped by M. Gladwell's (The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston: Little Brown, 2000) notion of ‘tipping points’. The second dimension is developed by drawing on the knowledge management literature and the concept of absorptive capacity (Cohen, W.M. and Levinthal, D.A. (1990). Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, 128–152). This concept is applied to a discussion of the state of an organization regarding its ability to absorb and use new knowledge. Further, it is suggested that the framework has value for both policy and practice and can be used for the design and specification of interventional support and, to identify and evaluate their impact. If interventions are to help firms to grow, they must provide the right knowledge or support in forms that the firm can utilize. Together, these two dimensions provide a framework to examine firm growth issues and to analyse the effectiveness of different interventions on firms in different states within this framework.

Universities across the globe are giving increasing priority to the challenges of sustainability, encouraged by a variety of drivers including international and national policy, student and societal pressures. Many extant initiatives focus on a relatively narrow set of activities including: Technological solutions; Integrating sustainability across the curriculum; Integrating sustainability as an operational, strategic and outreach principle. These have met with mixed success, and have overlooked the importance of cultural change in embedding sustainability. Drawing and building upon previous studies in the cultural change and sustainability literature, the purpose of this article is to propose a conceptual framework for designing interventions and measuring and monitoring progress in building and embedding a university sustainability culture. Initial staff and student survey data from a UK university has been applied to the framework and their interpretation and implications are explored.