Corporate sustainability governance: Insight from the Australian and New Zealand port industry

Institutional Theory and City Council as a Driver for Urban Sustainability

“…A practical conception of institutional theory comprises the international notion that is related to the institutional capacity of relationship when the actors involved are the national states (Pourchot and Stivachtis 2014;Schrobback and Meath 2020). Such a conception is useful insofar as it can be observed how the theory fits into practice in an institutional environment hostile to the hierarchy, where the actors (national states) are not, by their nature, submitted to each other, so that it is exactly the quality of the institutional rules coordinated among the participants, which gives the tone of cordiality (or not) of the proposed and experienced institutional environment.…”

“…Institutional theory argues that interested parties are able to put pressure on organizations through their ability to guarantee legitimacy, which is understood as a process by which an organization or a state justifies its right to peers or an organized system (Schrobback and Meath 2020). When exposing the main elements of institutionalism, at the systemic level of understanding international relations, Milner (2009) assesses four key points in his analysis: (1) the emphasis on nonstate actors, international institutions, and other actors in international society and the possible hues found there; (2) forms of power beyond military force and threats; (3) the role of interdependence beyond anarchy in the international system; and (4) the importance of cooperation and conflict in international politics.…”

“…For Moravcsik (1997), the institutional theory, referred to by him as liberal theory, is useful to analyze international regimes, organized and identifiable systems of interstate governance, to know which groups influence more than others and to evaluate preferences according to the internal point of view of states. In this sense, although the focus of Keohane and Nye (1988) is multidimensional, that is, even if it mixes aspects of structural realism in their conception, it is interesting to realize that there are similarities and differences between the focus of both authors and that they lead the understanding of how an international regime related to sustainability can be built not only by states, but also by international actors who can direct their behavior (Pourchot and Stivachtis 2014;Zhang 2020;Schrobback and Meath 2020). For similarities between Moravcsik (1997) and Keohane and Nye (1988) the case of preferences can be mentioned; it is true that the structure and the actors participate in a context that helps in the creation of these preferences, but the authors give preferences the main credit when evaluating the behavior of states, that is, it is the preferences of states that determine their behavior (the internal point of view is quite relevant in relation to the external).…”

“…Here it is worth remembering the importance of social institutions that do not perform normative functions in the state system, but that also interact with the system and with state actors in order to redirect their policies (United Nations 2020). Discussions with Stockholm 72, Eco 92, and Rio + 20, which had a wide participation of this type of international actors, played relevant roles to consolidate the debates about the need to integrate economic, social, and environmental demands as they are currently treated (Pourchot and Stivachtis 2014;Schrobback and Meath 2020). Thus, the contribution of the institutionalist theory of international relations goes through the need that this area of knowledge, traditionally composed of states, essentially requires the ability of the actors to establish a minimally acceptable environment for the use of their influences, since the hierarchy does not present, notably requiring governance systems to be implemented in international arrangements, as is the case of those who can be fostered by the multisectoral partnerships proposed by the SDG targets 17 (United Nations 2020).…”

Sustainable Innovation Governance: An Analysis of Regional Innovation with a Super Efficiency Slack-Based Measure Model

“…Corporate sustainability functions can be analyzed through studying related governance characteristics [18][19][20]. Corporate governance with codified guidance can lead to sustainable value creation [21][22][23]. In addition, some scholars have studied the relationship between sustainable performance and innovation efficiency [24][25][26][27].…”