The confluence of different factors is creating a closer approach of enterprises to society. On the one hand, the business’s need to establish permanent channels with consumers requires companies to become open systems and, with that, the assumption of civic obligations towards society. On the other hand, the Earth’s crazy situation is generating a general danger alarm that urgently appeals to social agents’ collaboration and commitment, especially productive organizations.

To achieve this, powerful approaches such as social responsibility and sustainability are being implemented, created to generate a productive transition that is beneficial for everyone, society, companies and the environment. The action plan is already in place, with a pact approved by the UN General Assembly (2030 Agenda), with a consistent business governance pattern (ESG) and with realistic objectives (SDGs). This orderly and firm tour allows us to match the conservation of the planet, with the quality of life and social well-being of its people.

As States point out in the resolution of the 2030 Agenda, “we are determined to end poverty and hunger around the world by 2030, to combat inequalities within and among countries, to build peaceful, fair and inclusive societies, to protect human rights and promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, and to ensure a lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources”.

The main objective is to implement a new sustainable society that solves the serious problems that industrial society has brought us to. A fair and supportive community society that considers the health and concordance of humanity and its living environment. Ultimately, a society that uses freedom for people’s growth, equality to recognize each other as peers, and fraternity to care for each other.

We start with the Brundtland Report’s (1988) definition of the concept of sustainability to analyze key aspects and look at the essence of human nature. We realize that the way to meet people’s needs is key to optimizing their quality of life, integrating us back into nature and achieving the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The strategy that must be followed is the cooperation between the interested parties by bringing the places of residence, work and consumption closer to being able to have meeting spaces in the proximity of neighborhoods, but also within companies, public administrations and non-profit entities. Given that the purpose is to meet basic human needs in the consumer society we have built, we identify the quality of life indicators that allow us to analyze the sustainability of organizations and products throughout their lifecycle. The application of the quality of life indicators can be essential in our individual and collective decisions of everyday purchasing, both public and private, to raise awareness and to build a strong path towards sustainability. It will also help us design sustainable public policies, including public procurement.

Diversity and inclusion remain issues in the agendas of today’s organizations. Despite significant advances in managing workforce differences, there are still challenges to face in order to truly achieve fully inclusive organizations. Diversity management is set up as the key success factor in recognizing and integrating employee differences, so it is particularly relevant for companies to become aware of the need to improve their management capability in this area. This article provides a literature review of the terms diversity and inclusion, the analysis of the main effects they have and their management and the specific case study of functional diversity. A conclusion section is provided in the last section of the article.

Since Mark Zuckerberg announced in September 2021 the change of Facebook’s name to Meta and presented his vision of the Metaverse, there has been no end to speculation in the marketing world about its impact and brands have been announcing their reactions in the media. The perception of the impact as a disruption in the customer-company relationship makes companies want to be present in the race to be pioneers in this new virtual reality.

Although gamification has been a marketing technique of recurrent use in the 21st century, it has been somewhat relegated to the advertising field in the gaming industry. However, the Metaverse is presented as a holistic view of life, where through his or her avatar, the protagonist consumer discovers new needs in a virtual and parallel world modelled on his or her whim.

This means that the Metaverse is much more than an incubator of marketing ideas for brands. The conception of a new universe is a world of speculation where states, countries and communities are for sale, cities are to be built and where, in Zuckerberg’s vision, society will be able to invent, build or reproduce its reality. That is, to relate, buy and work, in short, to live.

As in any technological paradigm, companies are facing a new transformation. Without concluding the change of Customer Centricity, 100% digital customer and with the imminent reality of 5G and IoT, the Metaverse is another reality that implies for companies the conception of the customer under multiple personalities, as many as metaverses, new products, channel integration, new currencies, new legislations, new and multiple sources of decentralized data, etc.

This new scenario requires urgent research, which, although brands can face with more or less difficulty, in the field of research is complex given that the advances and incursions of companies are still incipient and there is no data on social and consumer behaviour in the Metaverse. For this reason, this article aims to be a holistic compilation of what the metaverse is, its background and consequences on behaviour in the purchase decision process. Its conclusions will allow us to delimit specific areas of research on consumer behaviour patterns in this new virtual reality.

The health emergency caused by COVID-19 has reopened, with particular vigour, the debate surrounding the impact of teleworking on working conditions, as well as on the possibilities it offers for conciliation. Given the high level of telework among women, it is necessary to reflect on the impact that the use of this mode of productive work may have on them and on other aspects of daily life. The extent of teleworking implies a threat to women in the sense that teleworking can have a particularly negative impact on women’s work, and this, in turn, would put at risk the progress made during the last few years in the area of gender equality. The regulation of telework is necessary to prevent it from turning into a trap that places the burden of conciliation on women.

Over the last decade, the business world has experienced abrupt changes due to the irruption of the platform economy. E-commerce giants and application-based business models have become key spaces in the economy, facilitating consumption in terms of convenience, immediacy, and availability. However, these new ways of organizing services, while easing the consumer experience, have controversial effects on the organization of work. This article provides a critical reflection on the newly emerging jobs in the platform economy sector. It will highlight the importance of the imaginary of consumption as a key enabler of these changes in employment.

After the increase in teleworking due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations have seen the potential of this way of working and wish to initiate or advance its implementation in a planned way. To this end, it may be useful to develop the capacity of their managers or professionals to be smart working agents, in order to promote the implementation of a form of flexible teleworking that makes good use of technological tools and that favours the best working conditions. After defining smart working, this article presents a competency framework for the role of a smart working agent focused on three key competencies: understanding the context, facilitating implementation, and leading in a digital environment.

The article first describes the different meanings given to the expression “new ways of working” in recent decades. It highlights its link to flexibility in the relationship between the employer and the workforce, with increasing emphasis on the separation from full-time, permanent employment conducted on company premises. This is followed by an introduction to the contributions included in this monograph, which offer a broad overview of the current new ways of working, paying particular attention to telework and presenting a critical view of the impact of platform work and telework.

This paper offers a description of the new forms of work, with special emphasis on the advantages and disadvantages that they involve for both employees and employers. From the perspective of Human Resources, these new models, and their coexistence with more traditional forms of employment, present challenges for the conventional management of functions such as planning, performance evaluation, or managing professional careers. Since the advantages that these new forms of work provide are evident, and their expansion is inevitable, all that remains is to minimize some implicit risks for both the employer and the employees.

The trend toward (new) ways of working in Spain after the Covid-19 pandemic shows a deployment of extensive organizational flexibility for dealing with any environment. The focus is on project-based organization, workers’ overall health, implementing systems to monitor performance and two pending tasks: innovation and digitalization. The article describes a study by the Spanish Association of People Management and Development (AEDIPE) during the last quarter of 2021 and the first of 2022, gathering the opinion of 527 CEOs and Human Resources managers of prominent Spanish companies. The results show eight main ideas that enable companies to develop flexibility and reorganization as a means for their stability. 1) More than 35% of workers will consolidate their partial work from home. 2) Companies are looking for performance monitoring tools that give them support for control and trust. 3) The wellbeing of employees is central in the post-Covid-19 era. 4) Innovation and digitalization continue to be pending issues. 5) There are significant differences between the coping strategies of large and small companies. 6) Workspaces tend to become collaborative and sustainable. 7) Project management displaces departmental management in organizational structures. 8) Recruitment and selection are of increasing concern to human resources professionals.