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Introduction
Today, integrating sustainability into the corporate strategy is an important driver for the corporate world. Development of sustainable business not just by focussing on economic performance but also by delivering on environmental and social performance has become imperative for businesses across the world (Van Marrewijk, 2003). Businesses are under immense pressure from various stakeholders to address the issues of sustainability and incorporate triple bottom line approach (Adams and Frost, 2008). Numerous studies emphasising the role of corporate sustainability for achieving sustainable development (Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002; Salzmann et al., 2005; Weber et al., 2008) appeared since the turn of the century. The banking industry plays a crucial role in promoting sustainable development as an important driver for inclusive economic growth in the country, (Jeucken and Bouma, 1999; UNEP FI, 2016). Banks are moving beyond traditional banking and increasingly adopting sustainable practices by integrating environment, social and governance (ESG) criteria into their core strategy (Hermes et al., 2005). In the past two decades, various sustainability codes of conduct have been developed which are widely used by the organisations to improve their social and environmental performances, these are Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), UNEP FI, United Nation Global Compact (UNGC) principles, ISO 14001-26000, Equator principles (Isaksson and Steimle, 2009; Gupta and Mohanty, 2014; Mitra and Schmidpeter, 2017). Many studies have been conducted in the field of sustainable banking in developed countries (Jeucken, 2001; Amacanin, 2005; Scholtens, 2009; Roca and Searcy, 2012; Weber, 2016; Carè, 2018a), but there is scant literature available on developing countries (Khan et al., 2011) and rather unexplored in Indian context (Prakash et al, 2018). Most of the studies were focussed on the role of adoption of green banking for internal environmental management and CSR activities of the banks in India. Sahoo and Nayak (2007) concluded not many initiatives have been taken by the Indian banking sector with regards to sustainable banking. The green banking practices of most of the banks in India were limited to paperless banking, internet banking, ATM, installation of solar panel, etc. (Biswas, 2011). Rajput et al. (2013) concluded the Indian banking sector has been slow in adopting sustainable banking practices, and banks are ill prepared for addressing the issues of sustainable banking. Some kind...