About this Research Topic

Background

Social sustainability is often defined as identifying and managing organizations’ (civil society, corporate, and public sector) impacts, on society in general. Organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the expectations of them to be responsible for their actions, to be transparent, behave in an ethical manner and uphold values in business especially towards their employees, customers, and citizens. For decades, there has been a pressure to provide products and services that do not cause harm neither to the environment nor to peoples’ health. Prudent management recognize that their social sustainability efforts could bring lasting success, but it must be built on credible organizational practices and the prevention of such activities as human capital or social exploitation.

In some countries, the prerequisites for socially sustainable work including management and governance, resources, and responsibilities have been subjected to regulations and voluntary agreements. In other countries such regulations and agreements play a lesser role. Regulations are, at best, good, but they might not be enough since there is a challenge of how to put the principles into practice, i.e. how to manage social responsibility effectively and efficiently in an ongoing business.

This present Research Topic: (1) collates discussions regarding the management of social sustainability in relation to the human and social resource of organizations; (2) explores if and how social sustainability is addressed in the business model (or equivalent for non-profit organizations); and (3) highlights some of the contributions from stakeholders for e.g., managers’ social responsibilities and the management of these responsibility.

Any organization (civil society, corporate, and public sector) may claim to follow a “standard” and, even further, may subsequently establish a certification/marking/labelling scheme that demonstrates conformance to the standard. However, not all standards are created equal. To achieve social sustainability, it is necessary for an organization’s management to be coherent with their strategies, business models, accounting, management control, governance, and other systems, as well as the organizations’ basic values.

Consequently, this Research Topic aims to make contribution by:

• Bringing together scholars of different disciplines, and perspectives on the management of human and social resource sustainability with special focus on the work environment and occupational health and safety.

• Stimulating research interest in the stakeholder perspective concerning their participation and involvement which might help us better understand (a) how stakeholders’ demands evolve, (b) factors that shape inclusion of stakeholders at multiple levels (e.g., individual, group, organization), (c) how participation influence the management of and the business model for social sustainability and occupational health and safety management performance.

• Initiating reflection about some of the key elements to be considered in developing conceptual frameworks that embed occupational health and safety, economic and societal values, but can influence existing organizational management models regarding human and social resource sustainability.

This Research Topic aims to open the ‘black box’ that contains many different aspects of human and social resource sustainability practices inside organizations and their relationships to the work environment, OHS, and with stakeholders. We invite manuscripts on the following topics, but not limited to:

• Working environment (physical, organizational, and psychosocial characteristics) and OHS management

• Sustainable business models addressing working environment and OHS management including but not limited to stakeholder perspectives

We welcome theoretical and empirical papers, as well as critical and alternative approaches that discuss the assumption that stakeholder value demands need to be coherent with the internal management processes. The papers may differ with respect to theoretical perspectives.

Keywords: Working environment management, Occupational health and safety management, Social responsibility management, Civil society, corporate, and public sector organizations, Business models for social sustainability, Stakeholder perspective

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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