The Covid‐19 pandemic has caused a significant decline in stock markets worldwide, and organizations are experiencing serious financial problems. Protecting and preserving firm value are critical ways to help organizations survive the crisis. This study analyzes a sample of 45 firms listed on the Polish Stock Market in two periods to determine the relationship among green initiatives, the triple bottom line (TBL) perspective, and firm value in the periods before and during the crisis caused by the Covid‐19 pandemic. The results show that firms with higher green initiatives are more likely to obtain better TBL performance during the normal period. Economic and social dimensions of TBL positively influence firm value regardless of the period, but the same is not true of the ecological dimension. The Covid‐19 pandemic's negative impact on investors' perception does not translate to firm value. This study provides the first empirical evidence on the value of organizations affected by the Covid‐19 pandemic in the context of environmental management. By considering the TBL approach, this study provides a new boundary condition that explains the impact mechanism of green initiatives during a crisis.

What happens when already sceptical customers start questioning company communication? Encouraged by the vague answers to this question, our study extends existing knowledge about the effects of customers' environmental concern, scepticism and communication on green purchasing intention (GPI) and green purchasing behaviour (GPB) across environmentally controversial industries—namely, textile and clothing and food industries. Using our own primary data collected in November 2023 and covering 1001 customers in the Czech Republic, where the issue of sustainability is generally on the back burner, we show that customers' increased environmental concern can completely change the relationship between environmental scepticism and GPI, thereby leading to positive effects. What is interesting and new is the finding that trust and distrust can act as significant mediators of the relationships investigated thus far. Moreover, as soon as customers start to examine companies' practices and their credibility in more detail, the previously positive relationship between environmental communication and GPI can become negative.

Nowadays, firms have to face challenging economical cirses, like the one caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, where volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are manifested. Strategic management is seen as one of the key approaches that firms can choose to implement sustainable smart working (on the support of Internet of Things and smart technologies) and to face global competition. In this article, as a response to the current crisis, we study the influence of Smart Working on Eco-innovation within EU 28 countries. Specifically, we evaluate the relationship between Eco-innovation index for EU 28 countries and Smart Working, by using a clustering analysis. The results show that the increased labor productivity and employees’ eco-innovation are associated, to a higher extent, with the companies agreeing to a flexible and comfortable environment. These companies agree with the introduction of special programs such as working from home. We also prove that Smart Working is implemented by innovative leaders gaining economic sustainability. This study also provides several theoretical and practical contributions. We provide (i) an overview of sustainable management, including the diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives; and (ii) the recommendation of an innovation model through the bilateral collaboration for the constructs of performant sustainable strategies.