One major means to address corporate sustainability practices in organisations are sustainability-oriented innovation practices, which tend to result in significantly improved products, services, processes or even management systems. Prior research has widely discussed the relevant issues about integrating sustainability aspects into innovation process; however, little empirical research has been conducted to analyse the link between sustainability-oriented innovation practices and the overall organisational performance. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the underlying structure of sustainability-oriented innovation practices as well as their effects on the particular performance dimensions (i.e. economic performance, quality performance, innovation performance, environmental performance and social performance). The large-scale web-based survey yielded 266 usable responses encompassing both the manufacturing and service industries across 5 countries: Germany, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia and Spain. The results of the regression analysis demonstrate that sustainability-oriented innovation practices are positively related with the overall organisational performance. The empirical evidence suggests that when organisations strongly emphasise sustainability practices, they can improve both economic and non-financial performance. From a practical perspective, the findings of the study may provide a clue regarding how organisations can embed sustainability aspects in their innovation processes with the aim of improving their performance.

Purpose: – The purpose of this study is to clarify the relation between sustainability practices and financial and market performance, and also, the role of non-financial performance outputs in this relation. Corporate sustainability is a growing area of importance for organizational development. Managing sustainability practices successfully is an imperative in achieving competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach: – Using empirical data based on a large-scale survey among organizations in five countries (i.e. Germany, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia and Spain), this paper utilized mediation analysis to estimate and test the mediated effects in a multiple mediator model. As such, the sizes of indirect effects of sustainability practices on financial and market performance through potential mediators were estimated. Findings: – The results showed that innovation performance exerts a mediation effect in the relation between sustainability practices and financial and market performance. The main conclusion is that a greater engagement in sustainability practices leads to an increased innovation performance, which in turn leads to financial and market performance. Originality/value: – This paper is one of the first attempts to empirically validate sustainability exploitation and sustainability exploration practices. Besides, the analysis of the direct and indirect effects of sustainability exploration and sustainability exploitation practices on financial and market performance has not been yet addressed to a great extent.

Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of maintenance in improving company's competitiveness and profitability. In the first part the paper aims to discuss the potential improvement areas from the company perspective. Second part of this paper examines maintenance impact on company's business. Design/methodology/approach: – An empirical case study was utilized aiming to provide an understanding of the role of maintenance in improving company's business. The empirical data for this study were collected from a Slovenian textile company. A gap analysis was used in order to address the research problem and to identify potential improvement areas. Findings: – Based on the gap analysis, the results suggest that from respondents’ points of view, maintenance practices related to condition-based maintenance approach represent the highest opportunity for improvement. The most notable empirical results of the case study showed that around 3 per cent of additional profit could be generated at weaving machine, especially if all unplanned stoppages and loss of quality due to decrease in the productivity would be prevented. Practical implications: – This paper demonstrates to managers the potential benefits of maintenance policy in terms of productivity, quality and profitability. In this regard, this paper builds on a premise that company can gain higher performance benefits using more effective maintenance policy. Originality/value –: The proposed conceptual model contributes to the existing literature by showing the interactions between maintenance and company's competitiveness and profitability. Empirical findings of this study therefore, acknowledge maintenance's potential of increasing the overall profit. In addition this study advances prior studies by utilizing a gap analysis which is rare in this type of research.

This article is aimed at exploring the relationship between physical asset management (PAM) practices and sustainability performance. A framework of interrelated constructs was developed based on the existing literature and consequently tested through empirical study. Survey data were collected from organizations operating in six European countries (i.e., Greece, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Turkey) and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Path Modeling (PLS-PM). The results offer support for the proposed hypotheses, showing that PAM practices positively influence the sustainability performance outcomes, namely economic, environmental, and employee-related social performance. Overall, this study demonstrates that a PAM framework can be conceptualized by four sub-constructs, namely physical asset risk management, physical asset performance assessment, physical asset lifecycle management, and physical asset policy and strategy. Finally, this study brings to light some theoretical and managerial implications as well as directions for future research. The findings of the study underscore PAM areas in which managers should focus on in order to optimize costs, performance, and risk exposures concerning the physical assets, and therefore enhance sustainability performance.