Companies know how to meet the demands of shareholder value: years of managerial excellence testify to this achievement. Many also know how to create stakeholder value – through traditional approaches such as CSR and philanthropy which predictably lead to trade-offs and added costs. What remains elusive is discovering is how to meet both shareholder and stakeholder requirements in the core business – without mediocrity and without compromise – creating value for the company that cannot be disentangled from the value it creates for society and the environment. What if sustainability was embedded into the DNA of your organization? How can you incorporate environmental, health and social value into its very core? Many companies, despite their best intentions, "bolt on" sustainability as an afterthought to their core strategies. They trumpet green initiatives and social philanthropy which lie at the margins of the business, with symbolic wins that inadvertently highlight the unsustainability of the rest of their activities. Today's ecological and social pressures require a different business response – one that existing strategy frameworks fail adequately to address. In Embedded Sustainability, authors Chris Laszlo and Nadya Zhexembayeva explain and predict how companies can better leverage global challenges for enduring profit and sustained growth. They introduce the marquis concept of embedded sustainability: the incorporation of environmental, health, and social value into the heartbeat of the product life-cycle with no trade-off in price or quality – no social or green premium. This book helps readers to comprehend and implement the notion of embedded sustainability. At its best, embedded sustainability is invisible, similar to quality. In addition to delivering socially and environmentally conscious products for consumers, it is capable of considerably motivating employees. Most of all, it enables smart companies to create even more value for both their shareholders and stakeholders.

Companies know how to meet the demands of shareholder value: years of managerial excellence testify to this achievement. Many also know how to create stakeholder value – through traditional approaches such as CSR and philanthropy which predictably lead to trade-offs and added costs. What remains elusive is discovering is how to meet both shareholder and stakeholder requirements in the core business – without mediocrity and without compromise – creating value for the company that cannot be disentangled from the value it creates for society and the environment. What if sustainability was embedded into the DNA of your organization? How can you incorporate environmental, health and social value into its very core? Many companies, despite their best intentions, "bolt on" sustainability as an afterthought to their core strategies. They trumpet green initiatives and social philanthropy which lie at the margins of the business, with symbolic wins that inadvertently highlight the unsustainability of the rest of their activities. Today's ecological and social pressures require a different business response – one that existing strategy frameworks fail adequately to address. In Embedded Sustainability, authors Chris Laszlo and Nadya Zhexembayeva explain and predict how companies can better leverage global challenges for enduring profit and sustained growth. They introduce the marquis concept of embedded sustainability: the incorporation of environmental, health, and social value into the heartbeat of the product life-cycle with no trade-off in price or quality – no social or green premium. This book helps readers to comprehend and implement the notion of embedded sustainability. At its best, embedded sustainability is invisible, similar to quality. In addition to delivering socially and environmentally conscious products for consumers, it is capable of considerably motivating employees. Most of all, it enables smart companies to create even more value for both their shareholders and stakeholders.

Embedding Sustainability is a practical, solutions-focused guide for sustainability managers and leaders to embed sustainability in organizations and drive improved performance. For organizations to truly embody sustainability, it must infuse all operations. Sustainability change agents need to be the conductors of the orchestra, making sure everyone has the same objective, is working with the same goals and is moving at the same pace. Embedding Sustainability charts the journey from purpose, scope and assessment to strategy, implementation and integration. It outlines the steps required to engage and commit employees to deliver to the same goals, creating a workplace where success is achieved through collective effort. Drawing on impressive experience, the authors share valuable tools and tips, lessons and coaching, factoring in different organizational maturity levels, international contexts and cultural differences and stakeholder mapping. It explores leadership principles, values, culture, strategies and engagement methods. Embedding Sustainability provides mid-senior sustainability professionals with guidance and encouragement to continue with their work and avoid common mistakes, while also prioritizing their own wellbeing. It will help sustainability change agents navigate the unique challenges of this role, find solutions to problems and maintain a positive outlook.

Support in higher education is an emerging area of great interest to professors, researchers and students in academic institutions. Sustainability in Higher Education provides discussions on the exchange of information between different aspects of sustainability in higher education. This book includes chapter contributions from authors who have provided case studies on various areas of education for sustainability. - Focus on sustainability - Present studies in aspects related with higher education - Explores a variety of educational aspects from an sustainable perspective

Increasingly, business leaders are tasked with developing new products, services, and business models that minimize environmental impact while driving economic growth. It's a tall order—and a call that is only getting louder. In Can Business Save the Earth?, Michael Lenox and Aaron Chatterji explain just how the private sector can help. Many believe that markets will inevitably demand sustainable practices and force them to emerge. But Lenox and Chatterji see it differently. Based on more than a decade of research and work with companies, they argue that a bright green future is only possible with dramatic innovation across multiple sectors at the same time. To achieve this, a broader ecosystem of players—including inventors, executives, customers, investors, activists, and governments—all must play a role. The book outlines how and the extent to which each group can serve as a driver of green growth. Then, Lenox and Chatterji identify where economic incentives currently exist, or could exist with institutional change, and ultimately address the larger question of how far well-coordinated efforts can take us in addressing the current environmental crisis.

A small but influential group of mainstream global industry leaders are now reinventing the role of business in society. They are shifting the focus away from minimizing negative impacts to offering new solutions to global problems that the public sector has been unable to tackle alone. In this new competitive environment, societal challenges such as climate change or the alleviation of global poverty are not only risks, but huge business opportunities, not only for niche players, but for mainstream business. These leaders are creating "Sustainable Value". They are creating it through the provision of value to both their shareholders and their stakeholders – an ever-growing list of diverse constituents impacted by the social, environmental, and financial performance of global business. In short, they are doing well by doing good. In this outstanding book, Chris Laszlo defines, illustrates, and shows how business can action 'Sustainable Value' in three profoundly different ways. First, a management fable looks at the experiences of a dynamic business leader as she grapples with the new business realities of managing stakeholder, as well as shareholder pressures. Second, with the real thing – inside stories from some of the largest corporations in the world that are successfully integrating sustainability into their core activities, not only from a sense of moral correctness, but because it makes good business sense. And, finally, with frameworks, tools, and methods that will make sustainable value creation concrete for business practitioners everywhere. This book is a masterful synthesis – part novel and part executive briefing – a refreshing kind of prophetic pragmatism, helping leaders anticipate and see the future in the context of the actual. In Sustainable Value Chris Laszlo speaks with resounding clarity to the living challenges, the real dilemmas, and haunting questions of CEOs everywhere.

With "Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation," first and second-year college students are introduced to this expanding new field, comprehensively exploring the essential concepts from every branch of knowldege - including engineering and the applied arts, natural and social sciences, and the humanities. As sustainability is a multi-disciplinary area of study, the text is the product of multiple authors drawn from the diverse faculty of the University of Illinois: each chapter is written by a recognized expert in the field.

As CEOs and business leaders navigate a world of complex global challenges, sustainability is no longer optional but a business imperative. In this book, two sustainability leaders with decades of experience – Henrik Henriksson, CEO of Scania and Elaine Weidman Grunewald, Co-founder of the AI Sustainability Center, and former Chief Sustainability & Public Affairs Officer at Ericsson – offer a simple but powerful three-step model for leading an organization on a sustainability transformation journey that aims at big, audacious, world-changing goals. Honest about the dilemmas but bullish on the opportunities, the authors advise leaders on how to accelerate sustainability in their organizations told through a Swedish lens, where the country’s values and culture permeate the boardroom and the C-suite, bringing a unique clarity and conviction to leading with integrity. In practical insights gleaned from the authors’ own experience, the book takes leaders through the three phases of sustainability leadership: from establishing a solid foundation rooted in purpose, culture, values, principles and consistent, credible leadership, to integrating sustainability into the core business, and then to executing a vision that not only shifts the direction of the company but can change an entire industry, and even the world. Throughout the book, more than 25 interviews with other leading CEOs of Swedish companies as well as successful start-ups, investors, economists, and other experts illuminate the path to sustainability leadership from different perspectives. These are complemented by case studies describing how companies got it right – or turned themselves around after getting it very, very wrong. With this hands-on insiders’ guide, CEOs and C-suite leaders can take sustainability to the next level. This is the encouragement and inspiration business leaders need to move past incremental improvement at a time when exponential, world-changing action is more urgent than ever.

This encyclopedia is the most comprehensive and up-to-date source of reference for sustainability in business and management. It covers both traditional and emerging concepts and terms and is fully international in its scope. More than 700 contributions of internationally renowned experts provide a definitive access to the knowledge in the area of sustainable and responsible management. All actors in the field will find reliable and up to date definitions and explanations of the key terms and concepts of management in this reference work. The Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management represents all aspects of management and business conduct. It takes sustainability as a management concept that gives due credit to the complexity and diverging constraints in which businesses and corporations act today, and it emphasizes and focuses approaches that help ensure that today's management decisions and actions will be the basis for tomorrow's prosperity.

To reclaim a sense of hope for the future, German activists in the late twentieth century engaged ordinary citizens in innovative projects that resisted alienation and disenfranchisement. By most accounts, the twentieth century was not kind to utopian thought. The violence of two world wars, Cold War anxieties, and a widespread sense of crisis after the 1973 global oil shock appeared to doom dreams of a better world. The eventual victory of capitalism and, seemingly, liberal democracy relieved some fears but exchanged them for complacency and cynicism. Not, however, in West Germany. Jennifer Allen showcases grassroots activism of the 1980s and 1990s that envisioned a radically different society based on community-centered politicsÑa society in which the democratization of culture and power ameliorated alienation and resisted the impotence of end-of-history narratives. BerlinÕs History Workshop liberated research from university confines by providing opportunities for ordinary people to write and debate the story of the nation. The Green Party made the politics of direct democracy central to its program. Artists changed the way people viewed and acted in public spaces by installing objects in unexpected environments, including the Stolpersteine: paving stones, embedded in residential sidewalks, bearing the names of Nazi victims. These activists went beyond just trafficking in ideas. They forged new infrastructures, spaces, and behaviors that gave everyday people real agency in their communities. Undergirding this activism was the environmentalist concept of sustainability, which demanded that any alternative to existing society be both enduring and adaptable. A rigorous but inspiring tale of hope in action, Sustainable Utopias makes the case that it is still worth believing in human creativity and the labor of citizenship.