Organizing For Sustainable Development

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognize the increasingly complex, interdependent nature of societal and environmental issues for governments and business. Tackling such "grand challenges" requires the concerted action of a multitude of organizations and multiple stakeholders at different levels in the public, private, and non-profit sector. Organizing for Sustainable Development provides an integrated and comparative overview of the successes and failures of organizational efforts to tackle global societal issues and achieve sustainable development. Summarizing years of study by an interdisciplinary board of authors and contributors, this book provides readers with an in-depth understanding of how existing businesses and new hybrid organizations can achieve sustainable development to bring about an improved society, marking a key contribution to the literature in this field. Combining theoretical views with empirical approaches, the chapters in this book are highly relevant to graduate and undergraduate (multidisciplinary) programs in sustainable development, organization studies, development economics, development studies, international management, and social entrepreneurship.

Based on rich empirical data about cases of organizations working to build a more sustainable future, this volume tests the applicability of the formal knowledge base about management and organizations, while refining, modifying and extending it to increase its usefulness in addressing the challenges of organizing for sustainable effectiveness.

This upper-level Open Access textbook aims to educate students and professionals on how to develop business models that have a positive impact on people, society, and the social and ecological environment. It explores a different view of how to organize value creation, from a focus on an almost exclusively monetary value creation to one that creates positive impact through multiple values. The book offers students and entrepreneurs a structured approach based through the Business Model Template (BMT). It consists of three stages and ten building blocks to facilitate the development of a business model. Users, be they students or practitioners, need to choose from one of the three offered business model archetypes, namely the platform, community, or circular business models. Each archetype offers a dedicated logic for vale creation. The book can be used to develop a business model from scratch (turning an idea into a working prototype) or to transform an existing business model into one of the three archetypes. Throughout the book extra sources, links to relevant online video clips, assignments and literature are offered to facilitate the development process. This book will be of interest to students studying the development of business models, sustainable management, innovation, and value creation. It will also be of interest executives, and professionals such as consultants or social entrepreneurs seeking further education.-- Provided by publisher.

This book is the first to combine the much talked about topics of leadership and sustainability, and provides readers with a comprehensive overview and pragmatic approach to leading sustainable organizations. Chapters include discussions, case examples, steps, and useful tools centred on the components of the Leading the Sustainable Organization model. This model provides managers with a pragmatic, end-to-end framework for creating (in the case of new entities) or shifting (in the case of existing firms) their organizations’ workforces to a sustainability focus. Leading the Sustainable Organization is the perfect tool for executives and managers in small, medium, and large companies, and in all industries, to assist with the difficult and confusing topic of leading sustainability efforts. This book will be of great interest to students and academics who want to learn more about corporate sustainability.

"The role and meaning of sustainable development have been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. However, there has recently been a dynamic increase in interest in the subject, which results in numerous, in-depth scientific research and publications with an interdisciplinary dimension. This edited volume is a compendium of theoretical knowledge on sustainable development. The context analysed in the publication includes a multi-level and multi-aspect analysis starting from the historical and legal conditions, through elements of the macro level and the micro level, inside the organization. Organizing Sustainable Development offers a systematic and comprehensive theoretical analysis of sustainable development supplemented with practical examples, which will allow obtaining comprehensive knowledge about the meaning and its multi-context application in practice. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest to students at an advanced level, academics, and reflective practitioners in the fields of sustainable development, management studies, organizational studies, and corporate social responsibility"--

Provocative new management principles and practices that create effective organizations for shareholders and society Management experts Lawler and Worley have developed a set of management principles that enable organizations to be both successful and responsible. Existing command & control and high-involvement management styles depend too much on stable conditions and focus too narrowly on economic outcomes. They convincingly argue that we need to "reset" our approach to management to one that fits today's demanding business environment. Starting with a change in how success is measured and a more realistic view of risk, Lawler and Worley take us through how strategy, governance, organization structure and talent should be managed. The result is an organization that can reliable produce financial, social, and ecological results. Includes illustrative lessons from Microsoft, Cisco, Netflix, DaVita, Starbucks, Nokia, and the U.S. Secret Service Offers clear prescriptions for managers who want to organize for sustainable performance effectiveness Lawler and Worley are the authors of the bestselling Built to Change Lawler and Worley outline why and how the current practice of management must change in order for organizations to achieve sustained organizational effectiveness.

An increasingly competitive environment can lead to considerable problems for many organizations as they struggle to adapt to change. As a result, they fail to create the conditions that can lead to sustainable development over the long term, thus affecting the capabilities of employees. This book provides a fresh perspective on sustainable change and development in organizations, as well as a critical perspective on lean implementation, work environment and sustainability. The expert contributors address the development in, and of, organizations, as well as the development process between organizations, such as in networks or clusters. They discuss topics, such as the role of customers in the development of public organizations; developing knowledgeable practice at work; exploring evidence-based practice and the challenge of regional gender contracts. Undergraduates and postgraduates in different management fields including organizational theory, innovation, human resources, quality development and entrepreneurship will find this book to be of interest. The empirical results and interdisciplinary approach will appeal to practitioners and policy-makers at national, as well as international levels.

The response of the international community to the pressing socio-ecological problems has been framed around the concept of ‘sustainable development’. The ecological pressure, however, has continued to rise and mainstream sustainability discourse has proven to be problematic. It contains an instrumental view of the world, a strong focus on technological solutions, and the premise that natural and human-made ‘capitals’ are substitutable. This trajectory, which is referred to as ‘weak sustainability’, reproduces inequalities, denies intrinsic values in nature, and jeopardises the wellbeing of humans as well as other beings. Based on the assumptions of strong sustainability, this edited book presents practical and theoretical alternatives to today’s unsustainable societies. It investigates and advances pathways for humanity that are ecologically realistic, ethically inclusive, and receptive to the task’s magnitude and urgency. The book challenges the traditional anthropocentric ethos and ontology, economic growth-dogma, and programmes of ecological modernisation. It discusses options with examples on different levels of analysis, from the individual to the global, addressing the economic system, key sectors of society, alternative lifestyles, and experiences of local communities. Examining key topics including human–nature relations and wealth and justice, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental and development studies, ecological economics, environmental governance and policy, sustainable business, and sustainability science.