International Journal of Management and Sustainability Practices

The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are one of the key pillars in Indian economy contributing 30% to GDP, 36% to manufacturing output and nearly 46% to total exports employing over 250 million people. However, 2022 statistics show that the sector is still largely reliant on fossil fuels — with a total emissions output of around 135 MtCO₂e/year. Green technologies — ranging from energy-efficient equipment and rooftop solar, to waste recycling systems and cleaner alternative fuels — not only save substantial costs (up to 30% in electricity bills) but also help meet India's national climate pledges of reaching net-zero by 2070 as well as a 45% reduction in carbon intensity over the decade (by 2030). However, even with federal stimulus schemes like the MSE-GIFT scheme, ZED certification, MSE-SPICE and the RAMP programme, uptake has remained dismally low across MSME. Major barriers include the high upfront capital cost, limited access to institutional finance, low levels of technical know-how among owner-managers, resistance to change within organisations and weak enforcement of regulations. The current paper performs an exploratory conceptual and thematic review of academic studies, which includes government reports and policy documents mapping the existing situation of green technology adoption among Indian MSMEs. Using the Technology Organisation Environment (TOE) framework and entrepreneurship skill development theory, it explores the main barriers and enablers of adoption alongside assessing their potential for scaling green transitions. The paper suggests that green entrepreneurship Modules should be incorporated into existing MSME Skill development programmes (through cluster-based ESCO models, awareness campaigns and enhanced concessional finance) to accelerate adoption. Findings that are of interest to policy makers, educators, financial institutions and to MSME owner–managers working to realise sustainable industrial transformation.

Amid a rising tide of unethical organizational behavior and declining employee confidence in management's integrity, Authentic Leadership (AL) is now being studied as a theoretical construct that could support ethically driven leadership focused on employees' identities. Although scholars are increasingly interested in this area, there remains a significant lack of understanding of how AL leads to positive organizational outcomes. This conceptual paper proposes a new comprehensive framework that links AL which includes characteristics such as self-awareness, relationship transparency, balanced processing, and internalization of a moral perspective with four organizational outcome measures (employee job satisfaction, employee work engagement, employee Organizational Citizenship Behaviour [OCB], and employee well-being), and links both to two mediation variables: psychological empowerment (PE) and Trust In Leadership (TL). Further, the proposed framework introduces organizational culture and employee personality as theoretically motivated moderator variables. Based on theories including Self-Determination Theory, Social Learning Theory, Positive Psychology, and Person-Environment Fit Theory, this model offers six formally stated propositions and responds to recent calls for process-based authentic leadership theorising.

The abrupt transition to remote and hybrid work has fundamentally changed the boundaries of work-life in highly tech-based sectors such as Information Technology (IT). While remote work is marketed to be a flexible and empowering solution for women, the recent research indicates that there are complex and gendered impacts of remote work on women professionals. The review examines the latest literature (2023-2025) to understand the question of work-life integration of women in the IT sector in the transition to remote work. Based on the theoretical frameworks such as the Boundary Theory, the Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory and the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, the review identifies five emerging trends, including the flexibility-intensification paradox, the persistence of a gendered division of unpaid work, the blurring of boundaries and technostress, the well-being-performance paradox, and the failure of gender-neutral remote work policies. The findings suggest that remote work does not necessarily reduce work-life conflict; rather, in the absence of policies to reduce it at an institutional level in terms of workload management, right-to-disconnect norms, and gender-biased HR policies, remote work has the potential to reinforce structural inequalities. The review expands the argument that work-life "mix" for women in IT is not an individual coping strategy but an organisational and a socio-cultural issue. This paper synthesises disjointed empirical evidence to propose the need for structural rethinking of remote work design in sustainable, gender-sensitive integration practices in digital workplaces.