Jul 2026· Construction Innovation· pp. 1-30· 0 citations· 114 references
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the complex challenges to sustainability in the built environment and uncover their interlinked causal relationships.
This study applies grey influence network analysis (GINA) and its novel interpretative extension (iGINA) to model, quantify and prioritise the interrelationships among barriers using expert judgements.
The iGINA analysis revealed misaligned stakeholder incentives as the most influential barrier, followed by high initial cost, while technological readiness ranked lowest, challenging tech-centric assumptions.
Expert-driven data limits generalisability, but advances grey systems theory for uncertain, large-scale networks.
This study prioritises realigning incentives via performance-based contracts, green bonds, life cycle costing and regulatory sandboxes − breaking economic barriers for scalable green adoption.
iGINA uncovers feedback loops and leverage points overlooked by traditional methods, offering a blueprint for managers, policymakers and researchers.
The case was developed using both primary data gathered from a series of semi-structured interviews with Yash Mehta, Co-founder at Greenobar and well-sourced and published secondary data.
The case examines Greenobar, India’s inaugural zero-waste fruit juice bar established in Gujarat by Yash Mehta in 2021. Born from Yash’s experience with Farmse India, a sustainability-focused organic enterprise, the venture introduced a “Pedal–Blend–Drink” concept designed to merge eco-friendly consumption with active living.Despite attracting good initial interest, the venture eventually faced reduced footfall, operational inefficiencies and inventory management complexities. By late 2023, Yash reached a strategic crossroads regarding the business’s sustainability. This case challenges students to evaluate whether Greenobar’s hurdles stemmed from impulsive opportunity recognition, flawed venture planning or a fundamental misalignment between social objectives and commercial viability. It provides a robust framework for discussing entrepreneurial traits, business model design and the unique pitfalls of sustainability-oriented start-ups.
The case is intended for postgraduate students enrolled in courses on Entrepreneurship, New Venture Creation, Strategic Management and Sustainable Business. It is particularly suitable for second-year MBA students, participants in entrepreneurship specialisation courses, early-stage entrepreneurs associated with business incubators and participants in executive development programmes focused on venture planning and impact entrepreneurship.
Abhinav Singh, V. Shukla, Abhijeet Singh· The CASE Journal· 0 citations
The sustainability of buildings and the built environment extends beyond energy and environmental performance to circular resource use, health and safety, digital infrastructure, and stakeholder collaboration. This exploratory integrative literature review examines how these established but insufficiently connected domains reshape business models in the built environment. Since the built environment is a major source of global carbon emissions and waste, a primary research stream concerns the transition toward circular economy principles beyond traditional profit-maximization logics. The literature also highlights the potential of health- and safety-oriented innovations to reduce risks and improve indoor environments. Other studies highlight the potential of digital innovations to improve life-cycle management, resource efficiency, and risk mitigation. However, their widespread adoption faces systemic barriers, including data interoperability and cybersecurity issues, implementation costs, skills shortages, organizational resistance, and regulatory and governance challenges. The literature often emphasizes technical potential while paying less attention to value-capture mechanisms and the allocation of costs, risks, benefits, and responsibilities among the actors involved. Integrating sustainable practices, digital infrastructures, circular-economy principles, and collaborative governance is therefore essential to develop economically viable, organizationally feasible, and ethically responsible business models for the built environment, across the building life cycle and among public and private stakeholders.
P. Bonifaci, Armand Vokshi, Siarhei Manzhynski et al.· Buildings· 0 citations
This study investigates how sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) controversies influence firms' sustainability practices. It explores the moderating roles of value-creating (R&D) and value-appropriating (advertising) resource investments, as well as environmental turbulence, in shaping these relationships.
Drawing on stakeholder theory, the resource-based view (RBV) and contingency theory, this study employs archival firm-level data to examine how SSCM controversies interact with resource investments and environmental conditions to influence sustainability practices.
SSCM controversies have varying impacts on sustainability practices, contingent on the strategic resources firms allocate and the degree of environmental turbulence.
This study contributes to the research on SSCM by highlighting the critical roles of strategic resources and environmental contexts. It provides actionable insights for managers to develop tailored SSCM strategies, enhancing their ability to navigate today's complex and dynamic supply chain environments.
Amir Naderpour, Gregory V. Frazier· International Journal of Phy...· 0 citations
Corporate sustainability research is rich but fragmented where influential frameworks illuminate important aspects of sustainability dynamics, yet they are often used in parallel rather than connected through a shared explanatory logic of change. This paper addresses that corporate sustainability puzzle through a targeted literature review and critical synthesis of a 44‐source clean‐fit subset within a bounded conceptual corpus of 114 contributions organised into five approach families: responsibility taxonomies, strategy‐oriented lenses, maturity and stage models, process‐change perspectives and paradox/tension perspectives. Across these families, this study found that motives are often treated as separable rather than interacting, engagement is more often progressive than reversible, outcomes are under‐specified or weakly integrated and time and context are acknowledged more readily than embedded in the framework's change logic. Building on these findings, the study develops the dynamic sustainability system (DSS), a five‐dimensional, feedback‐driven conceptual architecture linking concurrent and interacting motives, reversible engagement, dual outcome reservoirs, explicit time horizons and internal and external conditioning contexts. The DSS explains how acceleration, plateauing and reversal may emerge in corporate sustainability trajectories and offers a more disciplined basis for longitudinal analysis, future empirical testing and context‐sensitive diagnostic interpretation by scholars, managers and policy actors.
Omaima A. G. Hassan· Business Strategy and the En...· 0 citations
Amid intensifying environmental pressures and recurring supply chain disruptions, firms increasingly seek to align sustainability with resilience. Drawing on the practice‐based view and dynamic capabilities theory, this study examines how sustainable operational practices (SOP) and sustainable managerial practices (SMP) differentially influence economic, environmental, and social performance, and whether supply chain resilience (SCR) mediates these relationships. Survey data from 147 senior and middle managers in Taiwanese manufacturing firms were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results reveal asymmetric sustainability pathways. SMP exerts strong and consistent direct effects across all performance dimensions, whereas SOP directly affects economic and environmental performance but not social performance. Crucially, SCR selectively mediates the effects of SOP—partially for economic and environmental outcomes, and fully for social performance—while playing no intermediary role for SMP. These findings identify SCR as a selective transmission mechanism linking operational sustainability to holistic performance and position SOP as routine‐level inputs relying on SCR as an adaptive buffer to safeguard social commitments.
S. Lo, Thi Phuong Pham· Corporate Social Responsibil...· 0 citations
The Netherlands is one of the frontrunners in green concrete with innovative pilot projects and institutional settings (e.g. concrete agreement). However, mainstreaming green concrete needs to further overcome economic, institutional, technical and social barriers. Especially, demand-side organizations can play a critical role by setting environmental standards and project prioritization. In this regard, this study aims to understand how demand-side organizations can stimulate green concrete adoption in the construction sector by using the multi-level perspective (MLP) framework.
The MLP framework was chosen to understand the dynamics between socio-technical elements that shape the transition. This research uses a qualitative research approach by interviewing 12 key experts in the Dutch concrete industry based on their expertise and experience. Interviewees were identified based on the snowballing technique. Subsequent thematic analysis reveals strategies for accelerating green concrete adoption.
Key findings emphasize the need to promote diverse cement types tailored to specific applications, accelerate the development of alternative supplementary cementitious materials (SCM), create aggregate demand for near-mature innovations and provide large-scale testing for radical innovations.
This research provides construction stakeholders with a framework for identifying leverage points where policy alignment and market demand can jointly drive innovation diffusion.
This study highlights the necessity of integrating incremental and radical innovations to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets.
This study contributes to the construction management field by translating transition theory into operational insights for project-based organizations and demand-side actors.
Muhammad Artono, Yirang Lim, Guang Ye et al.· Built Environment Project an...· 0 citations
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