Call for paper: IIM Ranchi Journal of Management Studies (Sustainability in Organizations and Supply Chains: Technology-Enabled Transformation, Governance, Strategic Management and Accounting – And Beyond )

Background and motivation

Sustainability has become a defining agenda for organizations, regulators, investors, and communities. Firms are expected to demonstrate credible progress on decarbonization, resource stewardship, circular economy ambitions, biodiversity protection, and social sustainability, while navigating uncertainty, competing stakeholder expectations, and evolving information demands. Yet the translation of sustainability aspirations into measurable outcomes remains uneven, particularly where implementation depends on dispersed actors, contested metrics, and weak accountability across organizational boundaries.

At the same time, digital technologies are frequently positioned as accelerators of sustainable transformation. Systematic reviews highlight both the promise of AI and digital transformation for sustainability (e.g., optimization, forecasting, decision support) and the constraints (e.g., governance, adoption barriers, unintended consequences) (Nishant et al., 2020; Kar et al., 2022; Guandalini, 2022; Hellemans et al., 2022). These issues are especially salient where auditors, regulators, and stakeholders increasingly demand that sustainability information is decision-useful, accurate, and reliable, rather than merely present (COSO, 2023).

Importantly, sustainability transitions are also shaped by demand-side, policy, and financial mechanisms that extend beyond technology adoption. Marketing and consumer behavior influence whether sustainable products and practices diffuse at scale, e.g., how firms persuade customers to reduce or discard single-use plastics and switch to reusable, refill, or low-impact alternatives. Governments and supranational institutions set the enabling (and constraining) conditions through climate agreements, regulation, and policy instruments ranging from the early architecture of international commitments to today’s disclosure, carbon-pricing, and circular-economy policies. Finance likewise plays a pivotal role, as capital providers increasingly price climate risk, stewardship expectations, and transition credibility into firms’ cost of capital and access to funding, creating new performance pressures, incentives, and accountability demands (Cunha et al., 2021).

Crucially, sustainability should not be equated with technology adoption. Some of the most consequential sustainability dynamics concern governance, incentives, organizational culture, and institutional contexts, and these can be studied with or without a technology lens. Moreover, Industry 4.0 and related digitalization can produce social sustainability tensions (e.g., job quality, inequality, workplace impacts) that complicate “win–win” narratives. (Grybauskas et al., 2022). At the same time, the emerging Industry 5.0 framing complements Industry 4.0 by explicitly foregrounding sustainability, human-centricity, and resilience, repositioning digital technologies as means to deliver societal value beyond productivity alone (Breque et al., 2021; van Erp et al., 2024).

Corporate governance, performance management, and management accounting (broadly conceived) shape how sustainability is prioritized, resourced, measured, and governed. From a strategic management perspective, sustainability is increasingly framed as a source of competitive advantage when firms develop distinctive resources and capabilities to reduce environmental impacts and create stakeholder value (George, G., & Schillebeeckx, 2022). Empirical work also suggests that firms with more developed sustainability practices can exhibit systematically different organizational processes and, in some settings, superior long-run performance, though outcomes remain contingent on context and execution (Eccles et al., 2014; Orlitzky et al., 2003). In the context of climate governance and carbon-related decisions, management accounting research has highlighted the need for new information and appraisal logics to support decisions involving carbon compliance, carbon trading, and whole-of-life cost considerations (Ratnatunga & Balachandran, 2009; Christensen et al., 2022; Bai and Ru, 2024). This focus becomes even more pressing in supply chains, where sustainability outcomes are co-produced across tiers, and the credibility of sustainability claims hinges on traceability, contracting, controls, and assurance practices. Technologies such as IoT, blockchain, and digital twins are increasingly discussed as enablers of monitoring, coordination, and transparency in supply chains and organizations in general, but reviews also point to adoption challenges, governance requirements, and uneven evidence on realized outcomes (Taj et al., 2023; Paliwal et al., 2020; Kamble et al., 2022; Lee et al., 2024). Finally, SMEs merit explicit attention. The recent UCL School of Management white paper argues that SMEs face sustainability frameworks designed for large firms and often lack resources and tools to demonstrate value, advocating a shift from “reporting over action” toward more decision-relevant approaches such as “Impact Accounting” and “digital diagnostics” to support measurable sustainability. (Taticchi et al., 2025).

For these reasons, this Special Issue welcomes scholarship on sustainability in its own right, as well as research that explores how technology shapes sustainability. We explicitly invite work where technology is central, peripheral, or absent, provided the manuscript offers a clear theoretical contribution and robust empirical insight into sustainability strategy, implementation, measurement, governance, and outcomes.

Objectives and scope

This Special Issue aims to stimulate high-quality debate and evidence on:

How sustainability is strategized, implemented, and governed within organizations and across supply chains.
How sustainability is measured, controlled, assured, and made decision-useful, including the roles of accounting, controls, and internal governance.
When and how technology contributes to sustainability outcomes, including benefits, constraints, and unintended consequences.
Contextual heterogeneity, including SMEs, Global South settings, sectoral dynamics, and varied institutional/regulatory environments.
How market-facing strategies (marketing, consumer behavior), public policy, and finance mechanisms shape sustainability adoption, accountability, and outcomes.

Themes and indicative research questions (non-exhaustive)

Theme 1 — Sustainability strategy, business models, and organizational change (technology optional)

How do organizations embed sustainability into strategy, capital allocation, and operating models?
What organizational designs and cultural arrangements support sustained sustainability performance rather than episodic initiatives?
What are the dynamics of trade-offs (e.g., growth vs. emissions reduction; efficiency vs. decent work outcomes)?
What organizational structures and operating models best embed sustainability into core decision-making (e.g., sustainability committees, cross-functional ESG operating teams, CSO/CFO interface, plant- and supplier-level accountability)?

Theme 2 — Corporate governance, accountability, and ethics (technology optional)

How do boards and executives oversee sustainability commitments, trade-offs, and risk exposures?
How do governance arrangements (e.g., incentives, committee structures, stakeholder engagement) shape sustainability credibility?
How can organizations reduce “symbolic” compliance risks through stronger control environments and oversight?
How do governance design choices (committee mandates, executive roles, incentives, and reporting lines) shape the effectiveness of sustainability implementation and accountability?

Theme 3 — Accounting, performance measurement, and management control for sustainability (technology optional)

How do management accounting systems incorporate sustainability into planning, budgeting, costing, and performance evaluation?
What measurement and boundary choices shape “what counts” as sustainability performance, and with what consequences?
How do organizations develop decision-grade sustainability information and internal control systems that improve reliability and enable assurance-readiness?
How do carbon-related phenomena (e.g., carbon trading allowances, compliance costs, technology investments) reshape strategic cost management and investment appraisal?

Theme 4 — Supply chain sustainability and inter-organizational coordination (technology optional, but encouraged)

How is sustainability governed across supply chains (standards, contracting, supplier development, buyer power, trust, monitoring)?
What mechanisms enable credible upstream/downstream sustainability management (e.g., scope 3 in practice), including verification and assurance?
How do IoT and sensor-based systems reshape monitoring, coordination, and sustainability-related decision-making in supply chains?
How does blockchain relate to transparency, traceability, and accountability in sustainable supply chain management and what are the limitations?

Theme 5 — Technology as an enabler (or constraint) of sustainability (technology central)

How do AI systems influence sustainability outcomes, and through which organizational mechanisms (capabilities, governance, decision rights)?
What makes sustainability data “decision-grade” when produced via IoT, analytics pipelines, and vendor ecosystems?
How do digital twins support sustainable supply chain/manufacturing performance objectives, and what conditions enable implementation?
What social sustainability risks accompany digitalization/automation, and how are they governed (e.g., job quality, inclusion, inequality)?
How do organizations translate Industry 5.0 pillars (human-centricity, sustainability, resilience) into concrete governance, control, and investment decision processes, especially where existing digital programmes were designed under Industry 4.0 “efficiency-first” assumptions?

Theme 6 — SMEs, inclusion, and practical pathways to measurable sustainability (technology optional)

How can SMEs develop sustainability practices that are measurable, decision-relevant, and feasible under resource constraints?
What is the role of impact-oriented accounting approaches (e.g., monetization of environmental/social/customer impacts) in supporting SME decision-making and stakeholder communication?
How can advisory ecosystems, partnerships, and data systems support SMEs in moving from reporting to action?

Theme 7 — Marketing, consumer behavior, and demand-side sustainability (technology optional)

How do marketing strategies, pricing, labeling, and choice architecture influence consumer adoption of sustainable alternatives (e.g., discarding single-use plastics in favor of reusable/refill solutions)?
Which communication approaches reduce greenwashing risk while effectively shifting attitudes and behaviors (e.g., message framing, social norms, trust-building, community-based campaigns)?
How do firms manage trade-offs between sustainability, convenience, and perceived product performance in customer-facing transitions (e.g., packaging redesign, “bring-back” programs, deposit-return schemes)?

Theme 8 — Public policy, regulation, and sustainable finance (technology optional, encouraged)

How do government policies and multi-level governance arrangements (international agreements through national/local implementation) shape organizational sustainability strategy, accountability, and performance over time?
Which policy instruments are most effective in driving measurable decarbonization and plastic reduction across industries and supply chains (e.g., standards, bans, extended producer responsibility, carbon pricing, procurement rules)?
How do sustainable finance mechanisms (e.g., green/transition finance, climate-risk pricing, stewardship, disclosure mandates, carbon credits) influence firms’ investment decisions, organizational processes, and longer-run performance?

Manuscript types and methodological openness

We welcome quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method research, plus systematic literature reviews. We particularly encourage manuscripts that explicitly articulate: (i) the sustainability outcome(s) of interest; (ii) the organizational/supply chain boundary; and (iii) the governance/accounting/control mechanisms that shape implementation and credibility.

Full-length articles should be 7,500 words, including all text (main text, references, and appendices). Please allow 250 words per figure or table within this total.

We also welcome TRACKS papers: thought-provoking contributions that reflect on the present status and future prospects of the topic—these may be speculative, philosophical, and conceptually bold, while remaining well grounded. TRACKS manuscripts should be up to 5 pages in length.

Manuscript submission information

The Special Issue accepts both full-length manuscripts and TRACKS papers (up to 5 pages). TRACKS submissions follow the same double-blind peer review process, and acceptance is subject to referees’ reports.

Key dates

Submission deadline: 30 June, 2026

Publication: June 2027

Submissions should be made through the journal’s online system, selecting the Special Issue “Sustainability in Organizations and Supply Chains: Technology, Governance, and Accounting—And Beyond”.

Submit your paper here!