Sustainable Value Creation In The European Union

The European Union Treaty after Lisbon emphasises the overarching objectives of sustainable development and a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment, high levels of environmental protection and social progress. Yet, in 2022, it is clear that these ambitions have not been fully achieved. The ongoing pandemic, the continuing fall-out from Brexit and the resulting economic damage, a Grexit avoided, and potential other exits from the EU, have come to undermine the political consensus of the idea of a European Union. Amidst these challenges, the debates on how to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals have turned towards demanding more sustainable economic policies, financial investments and business actions. The present volume provides a much-needed space for in-depth discussion of the concept of sustainable value creation and how it can be achieved within the ecological limits of our planet, through the prism of an interdisciplinary concept of sustainability.

The European Union Treaty after Lisbon emphasises the overarching objectives of sustainable development and a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment, high levels of environmental protection and social progress. Yet, in 2022, it is clear that these ambitions have not been fully achieved. The ongoing pandemic, the continuing fall-out from Brexit and the resulting economic damage, a Grexit avoided, and potential other exits from the EU, have come to undermine the political consensus of the idea of a European Union. Amidst these challenges, the debates on how to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals have turned towards demanding more sustainable economic policies, financial investments and business actions. The present volume provides a much-needed space for in-depth discussion of the concept of sustainable value creation and how it can be achieved within the ecological limits of our planet, through the prism of an interdisciplinary concept of sustainability.

This book provides insight into the Life Cycle Management (LCM) concept and the progress in its implementation. LCM is a management concept applied in industrial and service sectors to improve products and services, while enhancing the overall sustainability performance of business and its value chains. In this regard, LCM is an opportunity to differentiate through sustainability performance on the market place, working with all departments of a company such as research and development, procurement and marketing, and to enhance the collaboration with stakeholders along a company’s value chain. LCM is used beyond short-term business success and aims at long-term achievements by minimizing environmental and socio-economic burden, while maximizing economic and social value.

This book brings together the work of researchers in Eastern and Western Europe, who analyze competitiveness, social exclusion and sustainability from a range of perspectives. It examines the key challenges faced by the EU in its efforts to establish a socially inclusive and greener path to growth and develops policy recommendations to simultaneously achieve the EU 2020 agenda’s long-term goals and address the current economic crisis in Europe.

Combining theory, empirical data, and policy this book provides a fresh analysis of sustainable finance. It explains the sustainability challenges for corporate investment and shows how finance can steer funding to certain companies and projects without sacrificing return, speeding up the transistion to a sustainable economy.

Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Value Creation provides a detailed and insightful exploration of both the possibilities and the challenges that accompany widespread Artificial Intelligence

Sustainability requires radical change. It needs to involve all levels of government, all social forces, and every single business and citizen. This report considers the vital question: How can business become an active and constructive participant in the achievement of sustainability? The CEPS Task Force considers business as a key participant in any radical process of change, either pro-actively or as the object of regulation of its own activities and those of its customers. Our ability to harness this force will be a make-or-break condition for a true sustainability.

This book aims to advance the discussion on concepts such as value, wealth and richness, both from a country and a corporate perspective. Buying junk food, the consumption of legalized drugs such as tobacco, or even the compulsive purchasing of new models of smart phones, the second or third car bought by a city dweller or any other tangible property characterized by a short transient joy, compute positively in the GDP calculation. However, all of these have no, or almost non-existent, marginal utility, for the person who obtains them. The GDP approach does not consider the harmful effects on physical and mental health, on the environment, and the legacy to future generations that these consumptions bring about. At a corporate level, to secure a long-lasting achievement, companies must pay attention to the wide sphere of stakeholders relating to them - employees, customers, suppliers, financial partners, State, local authorities and public administration, natural environment and local communities - in addition to shareholders only. The validity of the corporate sustainable approach is empirically analyzed in this book through an analysis of a sample of European listed companies.

Sustainable value management reveals a new space for studying business models. The traditional approach is based on the assumption that the goal of any business is to make money. All decisions regarding supply and production should be made to maximize profit. The discrepancy in creating non-economic value is sometimes the result of separating ownership from control over an enterprise. Although shareholders are interested in maximizing profit, management that actually makes decisions can also pursue other goals. In addition to economic aspects, the management intentions of modern managers are also influenced by factors arising from the organizational culture built, co-created within the organization and sometimes with the participation of external actors such as suppliers and customers. The sources of the creation of social values will be the management intentions of top management, often initiated by the adopted values and rules on the basis of which resources are bound within the structure of the business model. The value of sustainability is based on the identification of those creative sources that relate to economic and social value. Economic value is created through social value and vice versa. This allows the complementarity of the value created to be mutually supportive. The business model that integrates both of these values should be more resistant to crises than the one that is oriented only toward producing economic value. Concurrent implementation of economic and social goals increases resilience and affects the success of modern business models. This is due to the specificity of the business ecosystem that is built as part of the business model, which, in essence, is based on the use of social factors to merge the business model into a complex ecosystem capable of producing value.

The ecological, social and technological challenges of the Anthropocene require developing and implementing new economic, business, and financial models to create sustainable value for a wide range of stakeholders including nature, society, and future generations. This book defines ‘sustainable value creation’ as bringing forth products, services, organizational forms, processes, actions, and policies which satisfy real social needs and contribute to the ecological regeneration of nature. The book collects and analyzes innovative economic, business, and social models of sustainable value creation globally. It critically examines the existing mainstream models of business and financial value creation. In reviewing both traditional and sustainability-oriented models, it focuses on both the challenges and opportunities inherent in a possible shift from models based on single-stakeholder wealth creation to models that propagate multidimensional value creation. Part of the Palgrave Studies in Sustainable Business in Association with Future Earth series, this book aims to engage academics, and business and civil society practitioners to discuss innovative value creation models for a sustainable world. Interdisciplinary and intercultural exchange will be facilitated to inspire and cross-fertilize different knowledge and action fields as well as to promote intergenerational dialogue about the prospects of the human-earth system.