Case Studies in Sustainability Management and Strategy


Book Description

A collection of case studies on sustainability management explores both the opportunities and pitfalls companies and NGOs face in targeting sustainability issues and how their values and core assumptions impact their business strategies.




Case Studies in Sustainability Management and Strategy


Book Description

With the rapidly growing importance of sustainability and corporate responsibility in a globalised world, management schools are increasingly integrating long-term economic, environmental and social issues into their teaching and research. Climate change, poverty, labour standards and human rights are among the many topics that future decision-makers will need to face in their careers. Business education needs to reflect this new reality and provide a broadened understanding of value creation in order to create economic capital while developing social and preserving natural capital. Many sustainability trends also offer interesting new business opportunities that are ripe for entrepreneurial thinking. Case studies can be important tools for creating learning processes on different levels - students are forced to struggle with exactly the kinds of decisions and dilemmas managers confront every day. In this reflection of reality, the values and goals of the student are systematically challenged. This can be especially valuable in the context of sustainability and strategy - organisations are now continually forced to value the different aspects of sustainability and their interrelations: How do social issues impact the economic bottom line? How can an environmentally sound strategy create a positive impact on employee motivation and thus have measurable impact on economic performance? What comes first and why? But excellent case studies for management education in the field of sustainability management and strategy are rare. This innovative collection has been produced to fill this gap. It is based on the winning cases of an annual competition organised by oikos - the international Student Organization for Sustainable Economics and Management. So what makes an excellent case in sustainability management? These cases have been highly praised because they provide excellent learning opportunities, tell engaging stories, deal with recent situations, include quotations from key actors, are thought-provoking and controversial, require decision-making and provide clear take-aways. These cases explore both the opportunities and pitfalls companies and NGOs face in targeting sustainability issues and how their values and core assumptions impact their business strategies. They deal with a myriad of issues including supply chain management, stakeholder dialogue, social entrepreneurship, sustainable marketing, ethics, governance, the business case for sustainability, partnerships, purchasing and climate change. Case Studies in Sustainability Management and Strategy is an essential purchase for educators and is likely to be a widely used as a course textbook at all levels of management education. Online Teaching Notes to accompany each chapter are available on request with the purchase of the book.




Winning Sustainability Strategies


Book Description

Despite recent optimism and global initiatives, the implementation of corporate sustainability programs has been slow at best, with less than a third of global companies having developed a clear business case for their approach to sustainability. Presenting numerous award-winning cases and examples from companies such as Unilever, Patagonia, Tumi, DSM and Umicore alongside original ideas based upon 20 years of consulting experience, this book reveals how to design and implement a stronger sense of focus and move sustainability programs forward. This proven combination of purpose, direction and speed is dubbed “Vectoring”. Based upon practitioner cases and data analysis from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, Vectoring offers a plain-spoken framework to identify the relative position of companies compared to their peers. The framework and its 4 archetypes deliver insights for practitioners to locate inhibitors and overcome them by providing practical suggestions for process improvements. This includes designing and executing new sustainability programs, embedding the SDGs within company strategy and assessing the impact of sustainability programs on competitiveness and valuation. Offering directions for CFOs to shift companies from integrated reporting to integrated thinking in order to accelerate their sustainability programs, Winning Sustainability Strategies shows how to achieve purpose with profit and how to do well by doing good.




Leadership for Sustainability


Book Description

Solving today’s environmental and sustainability challenges requires more than expertise and technology. Effective solutions will require that we engage with other people, wrestle with difficult questions, and learn how to adapt and make confident decisions despite uncertainty. We need new approaches to leadership that empower professionals at all levels to tackle wicked problems and work towards sustainability. Leadership for Sustainability gives readers perspective and skills for promoting creative and collaborative solutions. Blending systems thinking approaches with leadership techniques, it offers dozens of strategies and specific practices that build on the foundation of three main skills: connecting, collaborating, and adapting. Inspiring case studies show how the book’s strategies and principles can be applied to diverse situations: Coordinating the activities of widely dispersed individuals and groups who may not even know they are connected, illustrated by the work of urban planners, local businesses, citizens, and other stakeholders advancing ambitious climate action goals via a Community Energy Plan in Arlington County, Virginia Collaborating with diverse stakeholders to span boundaries despite their differences of opinion, expertise, and culture, as illustrated by the bold actions of a social entrepreneur who transformed the global food service industry with the “plant-forward” movement Adapting to continuous change and confounding uncertainty, as a small nonprofit organization mobilizes partners to tackle poverty, water scarcity, sanitation, and climate change in rural India Readers will come away with a holistic understanding of how to lead from where they are by applying leadership principles and practices to a wide range of wicked situations. While the challenges we face are daunting, the authors argue that these situations present opportunities for creating a more just, healthy, and prosperous world.




Case Studies in Sustainability Management


Book Description

With the rapidly growing importance of sustainability and corporate responsibility in a globalised world, management schools are increasingly integrating long-term economic, environmental and social issues into their teaching and research. Climate change, poverty, labour standards and human rights are among the many topics that future decision-makers will need to face in their careers. Business education needs to reflect this new reality and provide a broadened understanding of value creation in order to create economic capital while developing social and preserving natural capital. Case studies can be important tools for creating learning processes on different levels - students are forced to struggle with exactly the kinds of decisions and dilemmas managers confront every day. In this reflection of reality, the values and goals of the student are systematically challenged. This can be especially valuable in the context of sustainability management - organisations are now continually forced to value the different aspects of sustainability and their interrelations: How do social issues impact the economic bottom line? How can an environmentally sound strategy create a positive impact on employee motivation and thus have measurable impact on economic performance? What comes first and why? This third collection of oikos case studies is based on the winning cases from the 2010 to 2013 annual case competition. So what makes an excellent case in sustainability management? These cases have been highly praised because they provide excellent learning opportunities, tell engaging stories, deal with recent situations, include quotations from key actors, are thought-provoking and controversial, require decision-making and provide clear take-aways. These cases are clustered in three different sections: "Large Corporations and Corporate Sustainability Dilemmas" , "Managing Stakeholder Relations" and "Sustainability as a Source of Differentiation Strategies". Case Studies in Sustainability Management will be an essential purchase for educators and is likely to be a widely used as a course textbook at all levels of management education. Online Teaching Notes to accompany each chapter are available on request with the purchase of the book.




Handbook of Sustainability-Driven Business Strategies in Practice


Book Description

Sustainability is a top priority for organizations and a key strategy in corporate agendas, but the effective deployment of any strategy demands that the strategy is consistent, functional, and aligned. This Handbook advocates sustainability strategies that encompass environmental, social, and economic dimensions at department-level.




New Horizons in Management, Leadership and Sustainability


Book Description

Drawing upon research and practitioner narratives from management, leadership, organizational studies, entrepreneurship and sustainable business domains, this book explores the many pathways that enable emerging countries to transform knowledge into action to achieve economic and sustainable development. The authors take a holistic approach to ‘transforming knowledge’ that goes beyond the mere ‘application of knowledge’ to include the assimilation, adaptation, and contextualization of knowledge to suit the unique contexts, needs and conditions existing in emerging countries. They then presents success stories and case studies comprising innovative solutions for emerging economies that practitioners can utilize. Current research in management is highlighted by bringing together academics, practitioners, policy-makers and interest groups from diverse regions and perspectives.




Managing the Business Case for Sustainability


Book Description

The difficulties in moving towards corporate sustainability raise the question of how environmental and social management can be integrated better with economic business goals. Over the last decade, the relationship between environmental and economic performance, and more recently the interaction between sustainability performance and business competitiveness, have received considerable attention in both theory and practice. However, to date, only partial aspects of the relationship between sustainability performance, competitiveness and economic performance have been studied from a theoretical as well as an empirical perspective. And, to date, no unique relationship has prevailed in empirical studies. A number of explanations have been put forward to explain this, including methodological reasons, such as the lack of statistical data, the low quality of that data, or the fact that such data is often available for short time periods only. Other theoretical explanations have been developed, such as the influence of different corporate strategies or the relatively small influence of environmental or sustainability issues as one factor among many on the economic or financial success of firms. So, how should the business case for sustainability be managed? This is the starting point for this book, which compiles insights on a large number of aspects of the link between sustainability performance, business competitiveness and economic success in an attempt to provide a comprehensive and structured view of this relationship. The book provides an unrivalled body of knowledge on the state of theory and practice in this field and identifies prospective future fields of work. The book includes: conceptual frameworks for the interaction of social, environmental and economic issues in business environments; case studies of companies that have successfully integrated social, environmental and economic issues; analyses of the causal and empirical relationship between environmental and/or social performance, business performance and firm-level competitiveness; concepts and tools useful for improving business value with proactive operational strategies; assessment of the factors influencing operational sustainability strategies and their economic impact; and comparisons of interactions between sustainability performance and firm competitiveness across industry sectors and countries. Managing the Business Case for Sustainability is the definitive work in its field: the most comprehensive book yet published on the theory and practice of managing sustainability performance, competitiveness, environmental, social and economic performance in an integrated way. It will be essential reading for managers, academics, consultants, fund managers, governments and government agencies, NGOs and international bodies who need a broad and comprehensive overview of the business case for sustainability.




Strategy and Sustainability


Book Description

Business and environmental sustainability are not natural bedfellows. Business is about making money; sustainability is about protecting the planet. Business is measured in months and quarters; sustainability often requires significant short term costs to secure a sometimes uncertain long-term benefit. To some activists, all executives are exploitative, selfish “1 percenters”. To some executives, all activists are irresponsible, unyielding extremists. And yet engaging with the issue isn’t optional – all businesses must have a strategy to deal with sustainability and, like any strategy, this involves making choices. Strategy and Sustainability encourages its readers to filter out the noise and make those choices in a hard-nosed and clear-eyed way. Rosenberg’s nuanced and fact-based point of view recognizes the complexity of the issues at hand and the strategic choices businesses must make. He blends the work of some of the leading academic thinkers in the field with practical examples from a variety of business sectors and geographies and offers a framework with which Senior Management might engage with the topic, not (just) to save the planet but to fulfil their short, medium, and long-term responsibilities to shareholders and other stakeholders.“/p>




Business Strategies for Sustainability


Book Description

Business Strategies for Sustainability brings together important research contributions that demonstrate different approaches to business strategies for sustainability. Many corporate initiatives toward what firms perceive to be sustainability are simply efficiency drives or competitive moves – falling far short of actual strategies for ecological sustainability. To suggest true ecological sustainability strategies, this new research anthology adopts an interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary, approach to discern what business strategies might look like if they were underpinned by environmental and ecological science. The 23 chapters in this anthology reflect five main topic sections: (a) delineating sustainability challenges and visions; (b) contradiction, integration and transformation of business and sustainability logics; (c) innovating and developing strategic capabilities for sustainability; (d) assessing and valuing sustainability; and (e) toward multi-level engagement and collaboration.