Business Visions For Sustainable Development

Effective leadership-or lack of it-makes a critical difference in the conception, implementation, and endurance of community endeavors. In his travels as an environmental consultant and lecturer, Chris Maser has seen the dilemma many times: "I have taken part in so-called community visioning processes, in which it was patently clear that the people conducting the process knew nothing about a vision, or how to create one. "It has been my experience that the vast majority of people cannot lead because they do not know what the inner qualities of leadership are..." Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Development explores the seldom-considered philosophical basis behind the models and methods of leadership, pointing the way to the essential qualities it takes to establish a shared vision of community life. Divided into two parts-shared vision and leadership-Maser explores numerous issues and considerations to cultivate well-rounded leadership, and provide a more substantive blueprint for local activism. As with the previous and forthcoming volumes in the Sustainable Community Development series, Maser recognizes the increasing importance of local communities to take charge of the issues most directly affecting the environment.

Report by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

"Brings the business planning process alive to help today's agriculture entrepreneurs transform farm-grown inspiration into profitable enterprises. Sample worksheets illustrate how real farm families set goals, research processing alternatives, determine potential markets, and evaluate financing options. Blank worksheets offer readers the opportunity to develop their own detailed, lender-ready business plan and map out strategies" --back cover.

This book offers a unique insight into the corporate health of energy companies in an evolving landscape of deregulation. Cutting across both historical and present-day situations, it demonstrates important elements vital to the success of energy companies coming out of a safe regulated structure and dealing with a new competitive environment. Targeted at corporate executives, energy professionals, the financial and investment communities, strategic planners and regulators, readers will find this resource helpful to understand how energy companies can meet the challenges of a competitive environment, what it will take to evolve into healthy energy companies, the impacts of deregulation and assessment of successful and unsuccessful strategies for energy companies, the role of technology in business/product reinvention and a successful business model, and the differences and similarities of electricity to other commodities-the challenges to generation, power delivery, environmental science and end-use sectors of the business.

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 book explores the current state of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from an international perspective, the goal being to share ideas and visions for a sustainable future and to provide useful guidelines for academics, practitioners and policymakers in the context of the 2030 “Agenda for Sustainable Development” released by the United Nations. Research on CSR has evolved considerably over the last three decades. However, there are still many unanswered questions concerning the sustainability of business in an increasingly changing world, for example: If most companies consider CSR to be valuable to their organizations, why do only 15% of them systematically implement Social Responsibility initiatives? If CSR has been found to be profitable for companies, why are they so reluctant to develop an active, internal CSR policy? Why are there such significant differences in CSR adoption from country to country? Why does it take a huge crisis to make politicians react and regulate certain core CSR issues? This contributed volume answers these questions, presenting a wealth of case studies and new approaches in the process.

This book provides a comprehensive understanding of the linkages between business and society by addressing key issues in corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability, ethics and governance. Thanks to the different visions and perspectives offered by a global group of authors with a broad range of expertise, the book offers a full spectrum of theoretical and practical approaches. Further, it combines the latest theoretical thinking with reviews of frameworks, cases and best practices from various industries and nations. In particular, the book offers a historical perspective on the origins of CSR and discusses CSR in relation to sustainability and management, with a special focus on CSR in Asia.

The Shared Value Debate. Academic Visions on Corporate Sustainabilityis the first issue of the Enel Foundation series ŇAcademic VisionsÓ. Sixteen scholars, belonging to universities and research centres located in different countries around the globe, are the authors of short papers that resume their findings and visions on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The volume offers a view on the current academic debate, increasingly focused on the new role that corporate dynamics play in the global scenario, and allows the emergence of the wide variety of perspectives on the core set of issues brought up by the shared value logic. The authors, aware of the growing importance and influence of these issues on future society, deal with key concepts and ideas on the role that Environmental, Social and Governance principles and actions have in shaping the new business model for the incoming years. Reflecting both scientific interests and geographical peculiarities, every article will introduce the readers to a specific issue and peculiar point of view on CSR debate. In the resulting picture, the shared value logic appears as a powerful combination of conceptual wisdom, albeit not all generated by its proponents, and managerial insight, that contributes to diffuse and evolve a new way of conceiving the business enterprise.