Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes original research papers and case studies

Climate change and environmental deterioration have been recognized as global drivers of change, and the shift to the “greener” economy is the key to sustainable development. The green economy is a priority field for developing and developed economies. However, as the authors of the publication have realised, there is no consensus about the meaning of the green economy and “green” jobs, that is why an uncertainty as in measurement of economic trends and an impact of it, as well as in what skills and competencies should be assigned to the “green” ones, arises. The new “green” processes and technologies are arising in a progressive trend, that is why it is important to ensure there are properly skilled candidates with appropriate “green” skills and competencies on the labour market, as well as to prepare fresh graduates with the “green” skills that will meet requirement of both, the recent and the future companies, especially operating in the “green” sector. In the framework of “SB Bridge” project an online survey was conducted by interviewing the “green” companies to identify which skills and competencies are needed for “green” jobs recently, and whether candidates and fresh graduates are enough with the “green” skills and competencies for fruitful engagement to “green” jobs. As the survey identified, fresh graduates and candidates for “green” jobs lack technical and (or) mechanical knowledge, IT skills, as well as experience and ability to work independently and in the team to resolve arising problems.

Greenwashing in environmental, social, and governance reporting poses a significant threat to corporate accountability and stakeholder trust. This article provides a comprehensive synthesis of existing research to evaluate the role and effectiveness of sustainability assurance as a primary mechanism to combat greenwashing and proposes a framework for it. Based on a systematic literature review, this paper consolidates empirical findings indicating that sustainability assurance has a significant inhibitory effect on corporate greenwashing and is positively valued by capital markets, as evidenced by lower equity capital costs. However, the analysis also reveals that the effectiveness of assurance is not uniform; it is moderated by contextual factors such as the strength of the national legal environment and, in particular, regulatory environments, which can be exploited to legitimize overstated disclosures. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for anti-greenwashing assurance that integrates five interconnected pillars (regulatory, stakeholder engagement, third-party verification, corporate culture and internal controls, and technologies), forming a synergistic ecosystem of deterrents which collectively shape the integrity and credibility of sustainability reporting practices. To enhance the effectiveness of greenwashing mitigation, the proposed framework must be further strengthened by integrating the core principles of transparency, materiality, and verifiability across all its pillars.

The current study examined the impression management gap between sustainability and management reports, which in this study serves as a proxy for greenwashing in sustainability reporting. The study sample comprised 192 reports from 24 companies, covering the period 2020–2023. Impression management gaps were estimated across four dimensions—tone, analytical thinking, authenticity, and clout—using textual analysis with the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count software. Our findings reveal significant impression management gaps for tone, clout, and analytics dimensions throughout the entire research sample, confirming a more pronounced use of impression management techniques in sustainability reporting. Despite increasing regulatory pressure during the study period, the calculated gaps did not show signs of decreasing. The results further indicate a high likelihood of greenwashing in the Services and Manufacturing sectors, and a lower likelihood in the Utilities sector. Such gaps risk misleading stakeholders by shaping perceptions that diverge from a company’s actual sustainability practices. Our findings suggest that greenwashing can be effectively detected through textual analysis of disclosures, particularly when conducting comparative studies between different reports. Building on these results, we argue that targeted reporting standards, advanced assurance methodologies, and clearer boundaries for impression management are essential to curbing greenwashing and strengthening the integrity of sustainability communication.

Theoretical approach on the Green Technologies Development