Vol. 3 No. 2 (2025): Business and Organization Studies e-Journal

The discourse on sustainability has matured considerably over the past decade, moving from the margins of corporate social responsibility departments to the strategic core of organizational decision-making. Yet the term itself remains contested. For some, sustainability denotes environmental stewardship and the reduction of ecological footprints. For others, it signals the durability of business models, the resilience of supply chains, or the long-term viability of enterprises operating under conditions of resource constraint and market volatility. This issue of the Business Administration and Organization Studies e-Journal embraces this conceptual plurality. The five studies collected here examine sustainability not as a singular objective but as a multidimensional imperative that shapes how organizations innovate, digitize, strategize, market, and educate.

What unites these contributions is a shared recognition that sustainability in business and administration is fundamentally about adaptive capacity—the ability of firms, institutions, and individuals to navigate change without sacrificing long-term viability for short-term gain. Whether the unit of analysis is a technology startup, a non-banking financial company, a small or medium enterprise, a mobile commerce platform, or a professional review center, the underlying question is the same: What conditions enable organizations to sustain themselves and their stakeholders in environments marked by disruption, competition, and resource limitations?

This issue is particularly enriched by contributions from our partner institution, Kalinga University in Raipur, India, whose faculty have collaborated on research examining the digitalization of financial services and the transformation of consumer behavior in India's rapidly evolving m-commerce ecosystem. This partnership reflects our journal's commitment to comparative and cross-contextual scholarship, recognizing that sustainability challenges manifest differently across national and institutional settings while sharing common structural features.

The first study explores how digital transformation enables startups to embed sustainability into their operational and strategic architectures. Drawing on survey data from entrepreneurs and expert interviews, it demonstrates that digital strategy adoption exerts the strongest effect on both sustainable business performance and market-driven business model innovation. The findings suggest that sustainability is not merely a compliance requirement for early-stage ventures but a source of competitive differentiation when integrated with digital capabilities. The study also identifies persistent barriers—infrastructure costs, digital literacy deficits, and scalability constraints—that temper the transformative potential of technology, particularly for resource-constrained startups.

The second study turns to non-banking financial companies in India, examining the barriers and enablers of digitalization in a sector positioned at the intersection of financial inclusion and technological disruption. The analysis reveals that workforce skill deficits and technology acquisition costs constitute the primary structural barriers to adoption, while system compatibility and data security emerge as dominant operational concerns. These findings underscore a critical dimension of sustainability: the capacity of financial institutions to adapt to technological change is not simply a matter of strategic will but is conditioned by human capital, infrastructure, and regulatory environments.

The third study investigates the relationship between strategic management, innovation capability, and firm performance among small and medium enterprises in a Philippine provincial context. The study finds that strategic management is the dominant, context-invariant driver of SME performance, while innovation capability functions as an independent enabler rather than a moderating condition. This finding challenges the assumption that innovation capability amplifies the effects of strategic orientation; instead, it suggests that strategic management and innovation capability operate through parallel pathways to performance. The pronounced divergence between innovation culture and innovation resources within the sample reveals a structural tension that many SMEs face: the motivation to innovate often outpaces the capacity to actualize innovation.

The fourth study synthesizes the literature on mobile shopping applications and women's buying behavior toward ready-made garments in India. The review identifies six enabling factors (convenience, price competitiveness, product variety, ease of comparison, delivery logistics, and personalization) and two primary inhibiting factors (security concerns and the sensory deficit of virtual evaluation). The study maps the competitive landscape of leading platforms and proposes a research agenda for underexplored dimensions of female m-commerce. From a sustainability perspective, this study highlights how digital platforms can sustain consumer engagement only when they address trust deficits and replicate, as far as possible, the sensory and relational dimensions of physical retail.

The fifth study applies conjoint and cluster analysis to examine the preferences of social work graduates for board examination review centers. Affordability emerged as the most important attribute, followed by conduciveness, reviewers, track record, and review materials. Cluster analysis identified three distinct market segments, with the majority of respondents classified as price-sensitive. The study's findings have implications for the sustainability of educational service providers: review centers that fail to align their offerings with the price sensitivity of their target market may struggle to maintain enrollment, even if their instructional quality is high.

Taken together, these five studies demonstrate that sustainability is not a static attribute but a dynamic capability. It requires organizations to integrate digital technologies without losing sight of human capital. It requires financial institutions to pursue inclusion without compromising security. It requires SMEs to develop innovation resources that match their innovation aspirations. It requires digital platforms to build trust alongside convenience. And it requires educational service providers to balance quality with affordability.

The Business Administration and Organization Studies e-Journal remains committed to publishing research that advances both theoretical understanding and practical guidance on these challenges. We thank the authors, reviewers, and editorial team for their contributions to this issue, and we extend our particular appreciation to our partners at Kalinga University for their continued collaboration. We invite readers to engage critically with these studies and to join us in the ongoing pursuit of sustainable business and administrative practice.