Corporate sustainability has garnered increasing attention within the business community as corporations communicate to influence their stakeholders to build sustainable relationships. There has been a surge in research exploring its connection to firm performance, but existing studies lack a cohesive and concentrated approach. The aim of this study is to explore the trends of growth of publications; gauge the annual growth rate, annual ratio of growth, relative growth rate, doubling time, and scientific production index; predict future production levels; and look at the relationship between corporate sustainability and firm performance by analysing the literature as well as identifying clusters and links with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The top countries contributing to the research were China, India, and the United States, accounting for over 45% of the global publications. The study analysed a focused corpus of 65 documents from the Scopus database on specific subfields of corporate sustainability and firm performance, identifying five main thematic clusters related to environmental performance, financial performance, corporate sustainability reporting, corporate social performance, and green supply chain management, with significant citations related to 17 SDGs. The annual growth rate (AGR) of publications was found to be −2.88%, with an average of 4.06 publications per year. The relative growth rate (RGR) decreased from 0.69 in 2010 to 0.36 in 2023, and the doubling time (Dt.) increased from 1.00 in 2010 to 1.93 in 2023. Employing structured methods and the PRISMA protocol, this scientifically rigorous study points towards identification of research themes linking sustainability practices to firm performance. Exponential smoothing (Holt’s linear trend model) is employed to project future research output within the field. The significant trends include an increase in publication frequency since 2017, indicating a growth phase in the research field. The findings highlight the need for greater investigation from developing countries and the importance of integrating sustainability considerations into business strategies.

How brands interact with their audiences has been completely transformed by the emergence of social media platforms and the widespread use of digital technologies. Generation Z is a crucial group for brand engagement since they are a cohort that is heavily involved in digital ecosystems. Generation Z exhibits distinct behavioral patterns and preferences, desire for social consciousness, inclusivity, and authenticity in branding. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the dynamics of digital branding about Generation Z, focusing on how social media tools influence their attitudes, perceptions, and brand loyalty. Digital branding demands a paradigm change from conventional marketing strategies to ones that are dynamic, interactive, and value-driven. Brands may establish deep and enduring relationships by utilizing social media tools and adjusting their branding tactics to reflect their ideals. In addition to providing practical advice for practitioners negotiating the intricacies of digital branding in the twenty-first century, this chapter aims to advance scholarly discussion.

This chapter, The Gen AI Playbook: Redefining Responsible Consumer Engagement Strategies, examines how Gen AI is changing brand-consumer interactions. Gen AI technologies including huge language models, GANs, and diffusion models are examined and compared to marketing AI applications. A strategic five-pillar Gen AI Playbook—Discover, Design, Deliver, Delight, and Decide—guides marketers through insight generation, co-creation, personalization, and real-time optimization. The use cases in retail, FMCG, healthcare, and education show how Gen AI scales hyper-personalized, multi-modal interaction. Ethics, regulation, and AI-generated material overuse are all discussed in the chapter. In conclusion, it predicts Gen AI's use in market research, branding, and consumer interaction.

This study examines how corporate governance influences firms’ strategic emphasis following the adoption of takeover regulations in India. Specifically, it investigates whether a reduction in the threat of hostile takeovers affects the relative emphasis that firms place on short-term value appropriation and long-term value creation. Drawing on agency and stewardship perspectives, the study conceptualises advertising expenditure as an indicator of value appropriation and research and development (R&D) expenditure as an indicator of value creation. Using firm-level data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Prowess database for Indian firms over the period 2000–2024, this study examines changes in advertising and R&D intensity following the 2011 takeover regulation reform. The analysis employs panel-data techniques, including dynamic estimation, to assess the relationship between takeover-law adoption and firms’ strategic emphasis while accounting for firm- and industry-level characteristics. The findings indicate that weakening the threat of a hostile takeover is associated with greater emphasis on value appropriation, as reflected in advertising expenditure, providing support for the managerial-entrenchment perspective. In contrast, the evidence does not provide consistent support for the shareholder-interest perspective that reduced takeover pressure would encourage greater investment in long-term value creation through R&D. The findings suggest that changes in the corporate control environment can influence how managers allocate resources between immediate market-oriented activities and longer-term investments. The study contributes to the corporate governance literature by providing evidence from an emerging-market context and by highlighting strategic emphasis as an important mechanism through which takeover regulation may shape managerial resource-allocation decisions.