Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable management and marketing in emerging economies brings together two themes that are likely to prove crucial to continuing development agendas worldwide, but especially in Asian markets.

Emerging economies face a multitude of challenges in a globalizing world, with an emphasis on securing their development but also ensuring that it is sustainable and meets many of the pressures experienced in developed economies (Jayanti and Gowda, 2014; Pop, 2013). They must meet these challenges in the face of established competition from the developed world, adopting, predominantly, developed-world conceptions of environmental sustainability that invite newcomers to the market to bear costs and pay prices that their predecessors did not have to (Fuller, 1999; Boudreau et al., 2008; Garg, 2015). Resources are depleted at increasing rates, especially nonrenewables, and negative spillovers proliferate. Many of the resources that emerging economies seek for their development, especially in energy production, are precisely those resources that bear the highest future costs and are associated in their source countries with concerted social efforts to minimize their extraction, use, and export.

In terms of management and policy agendas, emerging economies are more likely to continue to experience traditional public administration well after their developed counterparts. There has been no impetus to develop the kind of skill sets and perspectives that developed economy managers, public, private, and not-for-profit, have come to see, with varying degrees of acceptance, as necessary to their own tasks as managers and as marketers. This dimension of skill acquisition is especially difficult in view of the lead times associated with both the learning of professional skills and education of the wider public for acceptance of new approaches to sustainability. Skill acquisition remains essential for the sustainability agenda (Ferdous, 2010; Sheth, 2018).

Asian markets feature some of the most important markets for the future and also present some of the most challenging problems of sustainability. Markets that already exist must be accessed and, where possible, further market opportunities, such as ‘green’ marketing (Saxina and Khandelwal, 2010), need to be identified. This will allow emerging-market transnational enterprises to participate as investors, driving change in economic growth, labor force productivity, and infrastructure development (Hendriks, 2017).

However, the other face of that marketing development is sustainability, in resources and in markets themselves, and for this to be achieved, sustainability behavior must be promoted. In this, management has a crucial role to play in the formulation and implementation of appropriate policies and managerial behaviors across sectors and levels (e.g., Ehrgott et al., 2011). Such sustainability behavior is not optional (Nkamnebe, 2011).

There are opportunities globally for knowledge sharing and experiential learning, especially where lessons emerge from other regions from other developing economies (e.g., CIMA, 2010).

This Special Issue calls for papers that contribute to addressing the following areas, but not limited to these. The papers could be conceptual or empirical, quantitative or qualitative or case studies, as long as they address business practices related to sustainability.

• What is understood by management and marketing sustainability in emerging economies?
• What is the interface between drivers of sustainability and the management and promotion of sustainability in the corporate agenda?
• What policy agendas will need to be addressed in emerging economies if they are to embrace the sustainability agenda?
• How do public agencies and private firms define their sustainability agenda and embed the skills to design and promote sustainability practices?
• What challenges do emerging economies uniquely face that developed economies have transcended in their sustainability goals?
• What examples of business sustainability practices have had a positive impact in ameliorating climate change, long term poverty, improved agriculture, reduced the impact of humans on tourism sites, etc.?
• What is the relationship between sustainable management and marketing and corporate social responsibility, business performance, branding, and market access?
• How has the sustainability agenda impacted the poor and underprivileged,e., those at the bottom of the pyramid?
• Long term benefits of building organizational resilience through sustainable business practices
• Enablers and barriers to organizational adoption of sustainable business practices
• Developing typologies for business sustainability
• The role of developed country NGOs in supporting sustainability initiatives in emerging economies
• Business practices that support the development of sustainable value chains
• Enablers and barriers to sustainable consumption in emerging economies
• Sustainable entrepreneurship

Review and Submission Processes

The co-editors will be ready to answer any of your queries. All manuscripts submitted to the Special Issue will be reviewed by experts in sustainability in marketing, management, emerging (developing) economies, and related agenda management.

The papers will then go through two rounds of blind review with at least two reviewers for each paper.

References

Boudreau, M.-C., Chen, A., & Huber, M. 2008. Green IS: Building sustainable business practices. Information Systems: A global text, 1-17.

Chartered Institute of Management Accountants [CIMA]. 2010. Sustainability in emerging markets: Lessons from South Africa. London. At https://www.cimaglobal.com/Documents/Thought_leadership_docs/Sustainability_emerging_markets.pdf

Ehrgott, M., Reimann, F., Kaufmann, L., & Carter, C.R. 2011. Social sustainability in selecting emerging economy suppliers. Journal of Business Ethics, 98: 99-119.

Ferdous, A.S. 2010. Applying the Theory of Planned Behavior to explain marketing managers’ perspectives on sustainable marketing. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 22(4): 313-325.

Fuller, D.A. 1999. Sustainable Marketing: Managerial-ecological issues. Thousand Oaks, CA (etc.): SAGE Publications.

Garg, A. 2015. Green marketing for sustainable development: An industry perspective. Sustainable Development, 23(5): 301-316.

Hendriks, G. 2017 (2018 revised). The sustainable development effects of investment by emerging market multinationals: Shaping beneficial outcomes for home and host country. Transnational Corporations, 24(3): 73-88.

Jayanti, R.K., & Gowda, M.V.R. 2014. Sustainability dilemmas in emerging economies. IIMB Management Review, 26(2): 130-142.

Khan, S. 2005. Exploring the concept of sustainability in emerging markets: Eveidences from the Indian pharmaceutical industry. Oikos PhD Summer Academy, at https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/78d9/e2cc6549e56b0ed18bcabc7660a7d9d0cf3b.pdf

Martin, D., & Schouten, J. 2013. Sustainable Marketing. Pearson New International Edition.

Nkamnebe, A.D. 2011. Sustainability marketing in the emerging markets: Imperatives, challenges, and agenda setting. International Journal of Emerging Markets, 6(3): 217-232.

Pandey, R., Kumari, S., Shrivastava, P., & Rai, U.K. 2012. Sustainable marketing practices: A potential strategy for sustainable development in emerging economies. New Delhi: Excel India Publishers. See https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2232169

Pop, D.S. 2013. Emerging economies and sustainable development. Cross-Cultural Management Journal, 15(3): 283-291. Also SEA – Practical Application of Science, 1(2-2): 232-240.

Saxina, R.P., & Khandelwal, P.K. 2010. Sustainable development through green marketing: The industry perspective. The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability, 6(6): 59-79. Also at https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1131&context=dubaipapers

Sheth, J.N. 2018. Impact of emerging markets on marketing: Rethinking existing perspectives and practices. Journal of Marketing, 75(4): 166.182.

Prof. Dr. Haywantee Ramkissoon
Prof. Dr. Felix Mavondo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.