This book offers 32 texts and case studies from across a wide range of business sectors around a managerial framework for Sustainable Business. The case studies are developed for and tested in executive education programmes at leading business schools. The book is based on the premise that the key for managing the sustainable business is finding the right balance over time between managing competitiveness and profitability AND managing the context of the business with its political, social and ecological risks and opportunities. In that way, a sustainable business is highly responsive to the demands and challenges from both markets and societies and managers embrace the complexity, ambivalence and uncertainty that goes along with this approach. The book presents a framework that facilitates the adoption of best business practice. This framework leads executives through a systematic approach of strategic analysis and business planning in risk management, issues management, stakeholder management, sustainable business development and strategic differentiation, business model innovation and developing dynamic capabilities. The approach helps broaden the understanding of what sustainable performance means, by protecting business value against sustainability risks and creating business value from sustainability opportunities.

The developments in our environment and society has made it clear that the way we run our businesses and govern our nations is not sustainable in the long run. This is also why more and more companies and organizations are pursuing sustainable business through various Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. However, many companies experience that although they facilitate a CSR strategy on corporate level, CSR is often not embedded in their business and/or integrated across their functions. If companies are to achieve the full business potential and performance impact of CSR, sustainability has to be operationalized, targeted and measured across the value chain through empowered employees and in alignment with the business strategy of the company. Though state-of-the-art CSR research, theories and models, the theoretical platform for sustainable business and CSR is presented in this book. However, CSR is carried out in practice, and not just in theory. This is why each chapter is supplemented with practical case examples explaining the way in which different companies and their managers have integrated sustainable business in their strategy and across the organizations’ different functions. As is evident both in theory and practice, the success of CSR integration is highly affected by industrial context, as the unique characteristics of the industry have an impact on the key sustainability challenges and business opportunities of the specific company and industry. In support of this evidence, the book also reveals how CSR can be implemented across private and public organizations as well as small & medium sized entities (SMEs).

Sustainable Business: Key Issues is the first comprehensive introductory-level textbook to address the interface between environmental challenges and business solutions to provide an overview of the basic concepts of sustainability, sustainable business, and business ethics. The book introduces students to the background and key issues of sustainability and suggests ways in which these concepts can be applied in business practice. Though the book takes a business perspective, it is interdisciplinary in its nature and draws on knowledge from socio-economic, political, and environmental studies, thereby providing a practical and critical understanding of sustainability in the changing paradigm of global business. It goes beyond the conventional theories of sustainability and addresses critical issues concerned with population, consumption, and economic growth. It discusses realistic ways forward, in particular the circular economy and Cradle to Cradle frameworks. The book is both a theoretical and practical study guide for undergraduate and postgraduate international students of broad areas of sustainability, teaching ways to recognize opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship at the intersection of environmental, economic, ethical, and social systems. It takes a strategic approach in applying the power of business methods and policy to address issues of global importance such as climate change, poverty, ecosystem degradation, and human rights. This textbook is essential reading for students of business, management, and sustainability courses. It is written in an engaging and accessible style, with each chapter including case studies, discussion questions, end of chapter summaries, and suggestions for further reading. This new edition is updated throughout, and contains an additional chapter on the circular economy.

The Business Student’s Guide to Sustainable Management has become a core textbook for business undergraduates. With a full introduction to sustainable management, the textbook covers all subject areas relevant to business students. This second edition features fully updated chapters on how to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals into accounting, marketing, HR and other subjects in management and business studies. Furthermore, this second edition offers brand new chapters on how to teach the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) in any business discipline, how to explore new business models designed to support sustainable development and how to crowdsource for sustainable solutions. The book contains over 40 ready-made seminars/short workshops which enable teachers and students to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into every discipline in business, including economics, operations, marketing, HR, and financial reporting. Each chapter follows the same easy-to-use format. The Business Student’s Guide to Sustainable Management provides a true treasure chest of materials to support staff wanting to integrate sustainability into their teaching and provides support to effectively embed sustainability in the curriculum. The chapters also offer a starting point in developing teaching units for Masters and MBA students. The material is not just useful to people in business schools, but to those involved in wider scale curriculum change, and those looking to make links between different disciplines (for example, how to teach system thinking, corporate peace-making and the crowdsourcing of sustainable solutions). Online Teaching Notes to accompany each chapter are available on request with the purchase of the book.

Businesses are grappling with a profound dilemma – the pursuit of economic prosperity versus the goal of ecological sustainability. Climate change impacts increase with each passing day, compelling industries to reconcile their operations with the urgent need for a sustainable, eco-conscious paradigm. The book, Waste Management and Life Cycle Assessment for Sustainable Business Practice, is an authoritative response to this pressing global challenge. Delving into the issues surrounding the environmental impact of economic activities, it explores the intersection where industries must navigate the delicate balance between profit-making and the preservation of our planet. This book delves into the disconcerting truth that industries are substantial contributors to the global emissions of greenhouse gases. It presents a compelling case, supported by the United Nations Environment Program’s findings, that businesses wield immense power in either perpetuating environmental degradation or steering us towards a greener, more sustainable future. Despite the growing voices for eco-friendly practices, businesses often find themselves caught in the tug-of-war between profitability and environmental responsibility. This book argues that the time for a shift towards sustainable business practices is now, offering a comprehensive guide to academic scholars, researchers, and professionals seeking to understand and implement transformative strategies.

The basic function of companies is to add value to society. Profits are a means to an end, not an end in itself. The ability of companies to innovate, scale and invest provides them with a powerful base for positive change. But companies are also criticized for not contributing sufficiently to society’s grand challenges. An increasingly VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world creates serious governance gaps that not only require new ways of regulation, but also new ways of doing business. Can companies effectively contribute to sustainable development and confront society’s systemic challenges? Arguably the most important frame to drive this ambition was introduced and unanimously adopted in 2015: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDG-agenda not only defines a holistic set of global goals and targets, but also foundational principles to guide meaningful action to their achievement by 2030. Multinational companies have signed up to the SDGs as the world’s long-term business plan. Realizing the SDGs provides a yearly $12 trillion investment and growth opportunity, while creating hundreds of millions of jobs in the process. But progress is too slow – witnessing society’s inability to deal with pressing human, ecological, economic and health crises – whilst the vast potential for societal value creation remains underutilized. This book provides a timely account of the systemic, strategic and operational challenges that need to be addressed to enhance the effectiveness of corporate involvement in society, by using the SDGs as the leading principles-based framework for actionable, powerful and transformative change. Principles of Sustainable Business is written for graduate and postgraduate (executive) students, policymakers and business professionals who want to understand the complex challenges of global sustainability. It shows how companies can design and implement SDG-relevant strategies at three levels: the macro level, to assess whether the SDGs present wicked problems or opportunities; the micro level, to develop and operationalize innovative business models, design new business cases and navigate organizational transition trajectories; and the meso level, to develop fit-for-purpose cross-sector partnering strategies. Principles of Sustainable Business presents innovative tools embedded in a coherent sequence of analytical frameworks that can be applied in courses for students, be put into practice by business professionals and used by action researchers to help companies contribute to the Decade of Action.

The field of sustainability continues to evolve as a discipline. The world is facing multiple sustainability challenges such as climate change, water depletion, ecosystem loss, and environmental racism. The Handbook of Sustainability will provide a comprehensive reference for the field that examines in depth the major themes within what are known as the three E’s of sustainability: environment, equity, and economics. These three themes will serve as the main organizing body of the work. In addition, the work will include sections on history and sustainability, major figures in the development of sustainability as a discipline, and important organizations that contributed or that continue to contribute to sustainability as a field. The work is explicitly global in scope as it considers the very different issues associated with sustainability in the global north and south

Miami University in Oxford, Ohio offers a course entitled "Sustainability Perspectives," based on this text. The course was awarded "The Instructional Innovation Award" at the 1996 annual meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute, an association of Decision Science professionals headquartered at Georgia State University in Atlanta. The 1990s have seen the development of important new approaches to sustaining corporate development and protecting the environment. Corporations are beginning to realize their responsibilities for a healthy environment. Sustainable development is viewed as an integrated, ecological, economic, and social system in which both economic growth and quality-of-life improvements can occur in a unified system complementary to the maintenance of natural capital. Sustainability Perspectives for Resources and Businesses shows the reader that a sound understanding of the concepts involved in sustainable development is beneficial to businesses, natural resources, and the population in general. This textbook was written to help students and professionals involved in business, science, or engineering to understand the changes occurring in the workplace. It serves as a step toward understanding how business and science, as professional communities, are adapting to new information about risks to the environment. Various chapters are devoted to resources, values, and valuation systems. Each section develops principles such as resilience and integrity in the economy and the environment.

Sustainable Self-Governance in Businesses and Society offers a sound introduction to Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) and clarifies its relevance to support organisational sustainability and self-governance. While the VSM has been known since the early 1980s, it hasn’t been always easy to understand and to apply. It explains the self-transformation methodology to analyse the way organisations manage (or not) their complexity and govern themselves. The work is supported by multiple examples of application in organisations of all scales – from small to multi-national corporations and from organised social networks to communities and national organisations. It clarifies the relevance of Beer’s theory to support systemic learning and change in organisations, and to coach them to self-organise and self-govern. Readers interested in further understanding insights from complex systems and cybernetics theories for designing and transforming organisations will benefit from this book, as it works to offer very detailed insights on how to put the VSM theory into practice. It clarifies how it improves adaptive capabilities, agile and self-regulated structures, more capable of fully implementing corporate sustainability strategies and self-governing themselves. The chapters provide key reading for managers, consultants, practitioners, and post-graduate students working in organisational transformation, governance, and sustainability.

sectors including offices, retail and manufacturing. It explainsthe facilities manager’s role in incorporating sustainabilityinto the whole life-cycle of a building – from initialbriefing to final disposal. The book takes a structured approach: • masterplanning and real estate (acquisitions anddisposals) • design • construction and commissioning • refurbishment, fit-out and project management • maintenance • operation • occupant satisfaction. Sustainable Practice for the Facilities Manager fills a the gapbetween the policy-level sustainability books and the detailedtechnical documents by focusing on the ‘what’ and‘how’ of planning and implementing sound environmentalmanagement practices in the context of FM operations. It covers policy and trends on global, European and UK levelsaffecting businesses; compliance requirements for organisations -including some sector-specific areas; and best practice, with goodand bad case studies showing the business benefits of incorporatingsustainable practice into day-to-day activities. The book is for: • facilities management professionals • public and private organisations owning properties • property companies • institutional investors • building services or supplier organisations and will help you deliver an improved operationally performingfacility. Sunil Shah – Technical Director and Head of Sustainability,Jacobs Sunil has over eight years consultancy experience within the builtenvironment, reviewing lifecycle environmental and social impactsfrom facilities. He has experience in a number of sectors,providing strategic consultancy support for clients includingGlaxoSmithKline, BP, BAA, HM Prison Service, Pfizer and London FireBrigade. Sunil has most recently been involved in supporting theinclusion of facilities management within the DTI’sSustainable Construction Strategy.