We are in an increasingly disruptive context, in an Era in which the world presents challenging and growing levels of uncertainty, unpredictability, and complexity. As a result, society is facing, at all levels and in all areas, more and more global challenges, challenging its stability and prosperity, whether at a technological, economic, social, environmental, or educational level. The new Era, Era 5.0, which places the human being at the center of innovation and technological transformation, can and must make its contribution to improving the quality of life, solving social problems, and human well-being, with the support of technology. Thus, this work intends, based on a systematic review of the literature, to analyze the challenges of Era 5.0 and its impacts on industry, society, and education as engines and promoters of the path to sustainable development. The results of this work show that the challenges for industry and education on the road to a “new” society are immense, in order to achieve a more humanistic society, centered on human beings, quality of life, and sustainability. We believe in contributing to the state of the art in Era 5.0 and providing an analytical reflection in the field of education and industry, on the path towards a society that places the human being at the center of innovation and technological transformation.

The concept of sustainable development (SD) was introduced in the “Our Common Future” report, launched in 1987, which influenced the emergence of many studies related to the role played by organizations as actors supporting SD. SD is a consolidated concept; however, since 1987, many political, social, and natural events have occurred on our planet, which have impacted companies’ behaviors. However, the diversity of research from different fields has provoked, among the academic community, a lack of clarity surrounding “sustainability” (S), “corporate sustainability” (CS) and “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) concepts. This lack of clarity can also be identified in companies, which have referred to “sustainability” only in the environmental field. Recently, increased discussions related to corporate sustainability metrics have shed light on the ESG criteria (environmental, social, and governance), increasing misperceptions associated with the concept. Ambiguous definitions and constructs may prevent managers from identifying sustainability goals for their companies. Therefore, literature reviews as a research method are more relevant than ever. Thus, in this work, we aim to answer the following question: How should we integrate different perspectives on corporate sustainability, in order to broaden the understanding of the concept? In this study, we conducted a focused bibliographic review and revisited the papers that most influenced the construction of the concepts. The information in this paper is helpful to improve the understanding of CS; to provide specific insights into the studies that have investigated this field; to help managers and entrepreneurs who are improving CS actions in their companies; and to support academia by putting together a large amount of information about this theme in one paper.

Intellectual capital (IC) has become one of the most valuable resources of an organisation. Along with the increasing concerns for sustainable practices, a new concept has emerged: Sustainable IC (SIC). However, research on SIC is scarce, especially when addressing its relationship with sustainable organisational performance. Through a case study conducted on a small- and medium-size industrial orthopaedic footwear organisation, we aimed to assess how an organisation’s internal stakeholders perceive the concepts of SIC, sustainability, and sustainable performance and to comprehend better the effect of SIC on the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable organisational performance. Evidence suggests that the stakeholders were not familiar with the SIC concept and overemphasised the environmental dimension when referring to both sustainability and sustainable performance concepts. Furthermore, it was found that the organisation’s sustainable performance was affected by all its SIC components (human, structural, and relational). This study contributes to the development of two different but complementing areas of research: IC and sustainability. It also provides important managerial implications for industrial organisations concerned with their performance. Finally, generalisation for other situations should only be conducted in a theoretical fashion.

Purpose: This study aims to explore the firm’s and country-level institutional forces that determine banks’ CSR reporting diversity, during the recent global financial crisis.Design/methodology/approach: Specifically, this study assesses whether economic and institutional conditions explain CSR disclosure strategies used by 30 listed and unlisted banks from six countries in the context of the recent 2007/2008 global financial crisis. The annual reports and social responsibility reports of the largest banks in Canada, the UK, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal were content analyzed.Findings: The findings suggest that economic factors do not influence CSR disclosure. Institutional factors associated with the legal environment, industry self-regulation and the organization’s commitments in maintaining a dialogue with relevant stakeholders are crucial elements in explaining CSR reporting. Consistent with the Dillard etal.’s (2004) model, CSR disclosure by banks not only stems from institutional legitimacy processes, but also from strategic ones.Practical implications: The findings highlight the importance of CSR regulation to properly monitor manager’s’ opportunistic use of CSR information and regulate the assurance activities (regarding standards, their profession or even the scope of assurance) to guarantee the proper credibility reliability of CSR information.Originality/value: The study makes two major contributions. First, it extends and modifies the model used by Chihet al.(2010). Second, drawn on the new institutional sociology, this study develops a theoretical framework that combines the multilevel model of the dynamic process of institutionalization, transposition and deinstitutionalization of organizational practices developed by Dillardet al.(2004) with Campbell’s (2007) theoretical framework of socially responsible behavior. This theoretical framework incorporates a more inclusive social context, aligned with a more comprehensive sociology-based institutional theory (Dillardet al., 2004; Campbell, 2007), which has never been used in the CSR reporting literature hitherto.