Business Sustainability

Climate change, the resource constrained economy, and sustainability in general are amongst the hottest and most problematic topics for contemporary businesses. This book provides a comprehensive overview of how the world's sustainability challenges are affecting and being affected by business.

Environmental sustainability is increasingly important to organisations, whether for regulatory, financial or ethical reasons. Business and Environmental Sustainability looks at the environmental aspect of sustainability for all organisations pursuing competitive advantage. The book provides theoretical foundations from science, economics, policy and strategy, introduces three environmental challenges (climate change, pollution and waste) and looks at how corporate functions can address these. This textbook provides a thorough foundation by introducing readers to the science, reasoning and theory behind environmental sustainability and then delves into how these ideas translate into principles and business models for organisations to use. Next, it covers environmental challenges from climate change, pollution and waste, and then goes on to examine the different corporate functions (from supply chain management to human resources) to illustrate how environmental sustainability is managed and put into practice in organisations. Finally, a set of integrative case studies draws everything together and enables the reader to apply various analytical tools, with the aim of understanding how companies can not only reduce their environmental footprint but can positively contribute to environmental sustainability. Written by an award-winning lecturer, Business and Environmental Sustainability boasts a wealth of pedagogical features, including examples from a range of industries and countries, plus a companion website with slides, quiz questions and instructor material. This will be a valuable text for students of business, management and environmental sustainability and will also be suitable for broader courses on corporate responsibility and sustainability across environmental studies, political science and engineering.

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.

This ground-breaking Handbook uniquely focuses on the business of sustainability, offering a fresh insight and practical solutions to the challenges that businesses face in making human activity sustainable. It is organized into four distinctive themes that cut across levels of analysis and illustrate a rich set of solution contexts that will guide future research.

Forests are under tremendous pressure from human uses of all kinds, and one of the most significant threats to their sustainability comes from commercial interests. This book presents a comprehensive examination of the interactions between the forest products sector and the sustainability of forests. It captures the most current sustainability concerns within the forestry sector and various sustainability-oriented initiatives to address these. Experts from around the world analyze interconnected topics including market mechanisms, regulatory mechanisms, voluntary actions, and governance, and outline their effectiveness, potential, and limitations. By presenting a novel overview of the burgeoning field of business sustainability within the forestry sector, this book paves a way forward in understanding what is working, what is not working, and what could potentially work to ensure sustainable business practices within the forestry sector,

Get familiar with business sustainability in Asia Business Sustainability in Asia offers 12 chapters that cover different aspects of business sustainability with a keen focus on its implications in Asia. Anyone who is involved with business sustainability and corporate governance, the financial reporting process, investment decisions, legal and financial advising, assurance functions, and corporate governance education will be interested in this book. It examines business sustainability performance, reporting and assurance and their integration into strategy, governance, risk assessment, performance management, and the reporting process of disclosing governance, ethics, social, environmental, and economic sustainable performance. The book also highlights how people, businesses, and resources collaborate in a business sustainability and accountability model. • Develop an awareness and understanding of the main themes, perspectives, frameworks, and issues pertaining to corporate governance and business sustainability in Asia • Covers a variety of issues relevant to business sustainability in Asia • Authored by an expert who has written extensively on the subject • Understand why organizations worldwide recognize the importance of sustainability performance If you’re a business leader, executive, auditor, or student looking to familiarize yourself with this emerging subject, Business Sustainability in Asia has you covered.

This book provides an approach to sustainable decision-making rooted in financial and economic literature. Financial economic techniques have the power to frame the discussion of sustainability to explain who, how, and why sustainability is a growing phenomenon in business and investing. Financial concepts in a sustainable framework provide a theoretical basis to approach research and business questions on sustainability. The framework provides for a better understanding of the different definitions of sustainability and the role those differences have on decisions that will lead to the future of sustainable business. A future which relies on growth driven by expanding its markets’ reach (demographics), its innovation or creation of new products, and its capital structure (leverage). Third party certification and governmental regulation become the constraints on that growth as well as the proof of sustainable growth. Finally, the ability and methods for investors to support sustainable growth is addressed in a modern portfolio theory analysis.

Given the emergence of sustainability as the defining issue of our time, it is essential for university graduates, and especially business and economics students, to have a fundamental grasp of the key issues in this emerging multidisciplinary field of study. Nemetz provides a comprehensive, detailed overview of the interlinked economic and ecological concepts central to this new discipline. Accompanying the introduction of the underlying theory is a broad array of real-world supporting data from Asia, Europe and North America. This volume also features a chapter on the threat of emerging pandemics and their significance for the achievement of a truly sustainable world. This book accentuates the value and importance of a strong sustainability approach in an age of climate change emergency. It is an ideal companion for instructors and students of sustainability in business, economics, and related disciplines such as geography and political science.