Special Issue on Sustainability Assessment: Developing ‘Green Thinking’ Towards Sustainability

During the last two decades academic and political discussions about the potential of environmental innovations to meet grand challenges have increased. With the topic's greater popularity, the discussion has become more substantial and dedicated to the elements of environmental innovations. During the 1990s one could understand environmental innovation as a new buzzword frequently referenced by politicians and scientists but hardly understood and accepted by society. Instead resistance among the population began to develop because of insufficient understanding of the discussions. From today's perspective, it seems that the 1990s and 2000s saw numerous glorious events on the theme which were frequently reported by the media; however, citizens did not appreciate the use and value of such events. Meanwhile discussion became more targeted to selected issues with a clear scope and offering the opportunity to explain the impact more understandably to citizens in the first instance. Consequently the terms 'green' and 'sustainable' received wider awareness in different context. As late as the 2000s, 'green' and 'sustainable' were considered more frequently from a systemic point of view. In other words, people began to a greater extent to examine the ideas of 'green' and 'sustainable' by looking at the fundamental interrelationships – both existing and potential – between the sustainability strategies of private sector organizations, the policies adopted by governments and other public sector entities, and the joint discussions on matters of sustainable development between NGOs, scientists and managers to tighten regulation of international corporations' activities regarding environmental safety, energy and production efficiency. In this light corporate sustainability assessment in different industries, the relative effectiveness of specific systems and structures for developing sustainability measures, and tools in various institutional contexts and stages of development are becoming increasingly important. In this