Sustainable Transformation Strategy

This casebook demonstrates how companies can design and execute corporate sustainability strategies into their overall business strategy to achieve sustainable transformation. It offers a set of case studies from different industrial sectors such as aerospace and defence, beauty, energy, engineering and construction, fashion retail, financial services, food and hospitality, life sciences, motorsports, pharmaceutical, software, toy production. Each story presents practical and concrete actions taken by companies to develop their sustainability strategies, as well as challenges and issues faced during the process. Concluding with best practices emerging from the cross-case analysis, this book is beneficial for sustainability and management professionals, students and scholars.

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.

The Sustainability Transformation is a must-read for anyone trying to make sense of what is happening to our world – and wanting to change it for the better. Renowned consultant and communicator Alan AtKisson, author of the sustainability classic Believing Cassandra, cuts through the jargon and illuminates the essentials in this highly readable and motivational work. The Sustainability Transformation covers theory and practice, tools and strategies, the opportunities and the obstacles, illustrated with in-depth case studies and poignant personal anecdotes. AtKisson's aim is to empower the reader and to help grow a global 'army of change agents,' working effectively to overcome the great challenges of our times. At the heart of the book is AtKisson's potent ISIS Method, used by business, governments, and organizations around the world. ISIS - Indicators, Systems, Innovation, Strategy - helps professionals, students, and amateurs alike to put sustainability to work and accelerate change, even when facing difficult circumstances. AtKisson also introduces the reader to many inspiring people, unsung heroes whose success stories provide a solid foundation for hope. Previously published in hardcover as The ISIS Agreement.

Building better organisations, with a clear sense of purpose, is a common challenge faced by many entrepreneurs and executives in industry. A fully integrated corporate sustainability strategy can help organisations to better manage risks, to win business opportunities and to ultimately strengthen reputation. Building on the experience of renowned strategists, sustainability, finance and academic experts, this book offers practical tools and approaches that can be used to develop and implement fully integrated corporate sustainability strategies.

Sustainability is one of the key issues in today’s society, as confirmed by the increasing attention of governments, media, academia and the industry. In the context of sustainable development, businesses that are often referred to as part of the problem can become part of the solution. This book presents the state of the art of sustainability in corporations from a number of perspectives, which include: economy, finance, measurement and reporting, organizing for sustainability, green products, green buildings and IT. The individual chapters provide valuable insights for pursuing future research and define a proper research agenda for the years to come. Further, the relevance of the topics addressed makes the book essential reading for academics, practitioners, consultants and more generally, for all those interested in business evolution and sustainability. The book was written by prominent researchers from Italy, India, the USA and the UK.

We are at the beginning of the sustainability era. The biggest challenge of our generation is to reach the Sustainable Development Goals. For this we must be willing to understand and change the root causes that create these challenges in the first place. The system itself needs to change. But how to do that? This ground-breaking book Changing the Game reveals the missing insights and strategies to actually achieve system change. The authors Lucas Simons and André Nijhof bring decades of real life and academic experience, and state that most of the sustainability challenges are actually caused by the same system failures, every time. Therefore, the way to accelerate and manage system change is also similar every time – if you know where to look and how to act. The theory of sustainable market transformation and system change is described in a compelling and easy to understand eight-step approach applied to eight different sectors. The authors, together with respected sector experts, describe the drivers, triggers and dominant thinking in each of these sectors as well as the strategies needed to move towards higher levels of sustainability. This book is highly accessible and engaging, and is perfect for use by professionals, leaders and students for understanding how to move markets to a more sustainable future.

A comparison of how societal actors in different geographical, political and cultural contexts understand agents and drivers of sustainability transformations.

Campus leaders describe how community colleges, publicly funded universities, and private liberal arts colleges across America are integrating sustainability into curriculum, policies, and programs. In colleges and universities across the United States, students, faculty, and staff are forging new paths to sustainability. From private liberal arts colleges to major research institutions to community colleges, sustainability concerns are being integrated into curricula, policies, and programs. New divisions, degree programs, and courses of study cross traditional disciplinary boundaries; Sustainability Councils become part of campus governance; and new sustainability issues link to historic social and educational missions. In this book, leaders from twenty-four colleges and universities offer their stories of institutional and personal transformation. These stories document both the power of leadership—whether by college presidents, faculty, staff, or student activists—and the potential for institutions to redefine themselves. Chapters recount, among other things, how inclusive campus governance helped mobilize students at the University of South Carolina; how a course at the Menominee Nation's tribal college linked sustainability and traditional knowledge; how the president of Furman University convinced a conservative campus community to make sustainability a strategic priority; how students at San Diego State University built sustainability into future governance while financing a LEED platinum-certified student center; and how sustainability transformed pedagogy in a lecture class at Penn State. As this book makes clear, there are many paths to sustainability in higher education. These stories offer a snapshot of what has been accomplished and a roadmap to what is possible. Colleges and Universities Covered Arizona State University • Central College, Iowa • College of the Menominee Nation, Wisconsin • Curriculum for the Bio-region Project, Pacific Northwest • Drury University, Missouri • Emory University, Georgia • Florida A&M University • Furman University, South Carolina • Green Mountain College, Vermont • Kap'olani Community College, Honolulu, Hawaii • Pennsylvania State University • San Diego State University • Santa Clara University, California • Slippery Rock State University, Pennsylvania • Spelman College, Georgia • Unity College, Maine • University of Hawaii–Manoa • University of Michigan • University of South Carolina • University of South Florida • University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh • Warren Wilson College, North Carolina • Yale University