Companies around the world are embracing the need to become more ecologically sustainable. Yet, many of today's green business practices fail to result in companies that are truly green. In order to become sustainable, businesses need a fundamentally different approach to greening. Find it here. Building on its predecessor book, Green Business, the author suggests ways to achieve true ecological sustainability with a new paradigm for green business grounded science. She indicates that business exists in an ecological context and that ecological sustainability can occur when ecology and other environmental sciences are used to inform business purpose and activity.

Ethical investing is becoming increasingly attractive for investors and banks. Financial performance and reduced risk, social-ecological responsibility and a good consciousness are typically promised. However, which moral rules and considerations should actually guide an investor? This book analyses selection criteria for ethical investing and its underlying theoretical premises. It outlines the opportunities and challenges of an investment style that integrates ethical norms and values into the investment process. Investors and financial advisors will benefit from reading this book that is also a good investment for researchers and analysts in the field of sustainable investing and the ethics of finance.

While the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities of small firms have been analysed to some extent, their engagement in international networks relating to CSR is less understood. Most of these networks primarily address the needs of multinational corporations. Surprisingly, however, the number of small firms participating in such institutions has substantially increased over recent years. But what is the reason for this new interest of SME in institutional forms of CSR? Based on a qualitative empirical study of German small firms' participation in the most prominent CSR institution, the UN Global Compact, this book explores the drivers for small firm participation. The motivations are complex and do not follow the same hierarchical order associated with large business behaviour. Rather, reasons for institutional engagement suggest a heterarchical structure, where alignment is contingent upon factors such as individual CSR perception, self-conception or social environment. The book explains why small firms prefer to engage in sustainable development within institutionalised forms of CSR rather than act in isolation, and provides recommendations on how to support and thus increase SME participation in institutionalised forms of civic engagement.

It is a serious mistake to think that all we need for a just world is properly-structured organizations. But it is equally wrong to believe that all we need are virtuous people. Social structures alter people's decisions through the influence of the restrictions and opportunities they present. Does buying a shirt at the local department store create for you some responsibility for the workplace welfare of the women who sewed it half a planet away? Many people interested in justice have claimed so, but without identifying any causal link between consumer and producer, for the simple reason that no single consumer has any perceptible effect on any of those producers. Finn uses a critical realist understanding of social structures to view both the positive and negative effects of the market as a social structure comprising a long chain of causal relations from consumer/clerk to factory manager/seamstress. This causal connection creates a consequent moral responsibility for consumers and society for the destructive effects that markets help to create. Clearly written and engaging, this book is a must-read for scholars involved with these moral issues.

"Building the Responsible Enterprise" provides students and practitioners with a practical, yet academically rooted, introduction to the state-of-the-art in sustainability and corporate social responsibility.
The book consists of four parts, highlighting different aspects of corporate responsibility. Part I discusses the context in which corporate responsibility occurs. Part II looks at three critical issues: the development of vision at the individual and organizational levels, the integration of values into the responsible enterprise, and the ways that these building blocks create added value for a firm. Part III highlights the actual management practices that enable enterprises to achieve excellence, focusing on the roles that stakeholder relationships play in improving performance. The book concludes with a conversation about responsible management in the global village, examining the emerging infrastructure in which enterprise finds itself today. Throughout the text, cases exemplify key concepts and highlight companies that are guiding us into tomorrow's business environment.

21st century Western neoliberalism has seen the transformation of self-interest from an economic imperative to a centrally constitutive part of dominant modes of subjective existence. Against this celebration of competitive individualism, Emmanuel Levinas' philosophy stands as a haunting reminder of an ethics that passively disturbs the self from its egoistic slumber, awakening it to the incessant demands of the other. Ethics stands as an anxious affective state of being where one is held to account by others, each one demanding care, attention and respect. Focussing on business activities and organizations, this book explores how this ethical demand of being for the other becomes translated, in a necessarily impure way, into political action, contestation and resistance. Such a response to ethics invokes a disturbance of organizational order, including an order that might itself be labelled 'ethical'. On these grounds, the book offers an explication of an ethics for organizations which disturbs the selfishness of neoliberal morality, and can inform a democratic politics rested on a genuine concern for the other and for justice. Disturbing Business Ethics: Emmanuel Levinas and the Politics of Organization offers an unconventional and enlightening approach to ethical thinking and practice in politics and organisations, and will be of interest to students of business, management, leadership, political science and organizational theory.

Business ethics originated in the United States as an offshoot of theoretical ethics and as part of a movement in applied ethics that was initiated with medical ethics. Although a few small religious-based colleges and universities offered courses in business ethics just after the Second World War, business ethics as an academic ?eld developed most seriously in many universities in the early 1970s. The ?eld of medical ethics was well-developed by then, and it was a natural step to think about ethical issues in business as well. There was also a public reaction to a number of corporate scandals (e.g., price ?xing, the Lockheed Japanese bribery allegations, the Goodyear airbrake scandal, etc. that encouraged universities to begin teaching the subject). Business ethics as an academic ?eld was originally developed by philosophers, most of whom had come out of the analytic or Anglo-American philosophical tra- tions and who had been trained in classical ethics, on Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Bentham and perhaps Dewey. The resulting ?eld then, has been dominated by this thinking. Although to date there are over 50 textbooks in business ethics, most textbooks in business ethics do not take into account contemporary continental philosophy. Although Marxism is sometimes taught in these courses, other more contemporary continental thinkers who could contribute substantially to the ?eld have been - nored. This phenomenon is iterated in the professional journals and in theoretical books on the topic.

Women accomplish nearly two-thirds of total work around the world (including household duties), comprise one-third of the formal labor force, but women receive one-tenth of the world's income and own only one-hundredth of the world's property. Entrepreneurship is a vehicle for advancing the lives of women around the world. This book brings together 49 distinguished entrepreneurship scholars to provide a unique global vision of the wellbeing of women entrepreneurs necessary for fostering sustainable development and inclusive societies. Although gender inequality is an important issue, solutions leading to gender parity are far from reaching ideal levels in the formal workplace and globally. Meanwhile the number of women involved in entrepreneurship is growing exponentially because there are more opportunities for women to own a business and be their own boss. This offers women the most desirable and flexible working conditions that better align with women's lifestyles and multiple family responsibilities. However, entrepreneurial activities are demanding and complex; compared to men, women face special challenges that deserve close attention. This book presents research and programs to effectively support women entrepreneurs in reaching levels of wellbeing required to ensure business sustainability and personal prosperity. Offering a diversity perspectives from around the globe, The Wellbeing of Women in Entrepreneurship is of great interest to academics and practitioners working in teaching and research in disciplines including business management, entrepreneurship, oganizational change, human centered management, human resources, sustainable development, and women's studies.

This edited work expands the theory of followership by drawing on biblical examples to illustrate the role of faith in being a better follower. Building on previous scholarship, the book identifies different types of followers and explores how each type meets the needs of a leader in various scenarios. The authors analyze various principles from the lives of followers of Jesus and demonstrate how they apply to modern workplaces. Building upon the growing scholarship on workplace spirituality and organizational leadership, this book offers practical and theoretical perspectives on integrating faith at work.

This book addresses one of the core challenges in the corporate social responsibility (or business and human rights) debate: how to ensure adequate access to remedy for victims of corporate abuses that infringe upon their human rights. However, ensuring access to remedy depends on a series of normative and judicial elements that become highly complex when disputes are transnational. In such cases, courts need to consider and apply different laws that relate to company governance, to determine the competent forum, to define which bodies of law to apply, and to ensure the adequate execution of judgments. The book also discusses how alternative methods of dispute settlement can relate to this topic, and the important role that private international law plays in access to remedy for corporate-related human rights abuses. This collection comprises 20 national reports from jurisdictions in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia, addressing the private international law aspects of corporate social responsibility. They provide an overview of the legal differences between geographical areas, and offer numerous examples of how states and their courts have resolved disputes involving private international law elements. The book draws two preliminary conclusions: that there is a need for a better understanding of the role that private international law plays in cases involving transnational elements, in order to better design transnational solutions to the issues posed by economic globalisation; and that the treaty negotiations on business and human rights in the United Nations could offer a forum to clarify and unify several of the elements that underpin transnational disputes involving corporate human rights abuses, which could also help to identify and bridge the existing gaps that limit effective access to remedy. Adopting a comparative approach, this book appeals to academics, lawyers, judges and legislators concerned with the issue of access to remedy and reparation for corporate abuses under the prism of private international law.

An economy low in carbon and high in life satisfaction will require thousands, if not millions of exceptional leaders. This book is the first to bring together sustainability knowledge with the leadership skills and tools to help you become one of those leaders. In it you will find everything you need to get started straight away, and to grow your effectiveness, even in a world that remains perversely intent on the opposite. Whether you are new to the whole idea of sustainability, or reasonably well informed but not entirely confident about what to do for the best, this guide will help you 'do' sustainability. Free of checklists and policy recommendations, the focus is on you, and on developing your capacity to identify the right thing to do wherever you are and whatever your circumstances. This is essential reading for those in or aspiring to sustainability-literate leadership, and a must for all those teaching leadership and management.

After a catastrophic start to the 2020s, empathetic influence is set to be this decade’s most critical human skillset. In her new book Softening The Edge, Mimi Nicklin explains why.

With the Covid pandemic “accelerating the future”, the need for authentic human connection, and meaningful relationships with colleagues, employees and clients, has never been greater. Empathy is the key to making this happen, a trait of understanding and hope that has the power to not only change our business environments, but to change the shape of our world.

Nicklin draws from her eye-opening true-life business journey to present the case for empathy, and bolsters the argument with comprehensive scientific data. As a Millennial, she straddles the generational gap between the up-and-coming Gen-Zs and the established captains of industry, a much-needed conduit between the two.

A genuinely insightful book, Softening the Edge will inspire and challenge you in equal measure. It will show you how to successfully harness your emotional intelligence to authentically connect with and influence people on a deeper level, and it will ultimately help you to evolve and future-proof the way you do business and live your life.

Growing social and environmental concerns have exerted pressure on businesses to act responsibly. This timely book is the result of systematic, integrated and concerted efforts by prominent scholars to contribute new ideas and original research on social responsibility issues in international business. Offering an insightful collection of global investigations of critical and thought-provoking issues, the chapters investigate unique social responsibility issues across different countries and international business contexts. Bringing together renowned researchers in the field, this book provides state-of-the-art knowledge on a wide array of issues relating to social responsibility and highlights future trajectories for the development of socially-responsible international business strategies. Featuring innovative research and incisive conclusions, this book is critical for international business researchers seeking new avenues for investigation. Postgraduate students at all levels will also benefit from this book's strong inventory of contemporary knowledge, as well as its wide variety of research methods.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Its Nature, Antecedents, and Consequences examines the vast amount of work that has been done on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in recent years as it has increasingly evoked interest among researchers in organizational psychology. No doubt some of this interest can be attributed to the long-held intuitive sense that job satisfaction matters. Authors Dennis W. Organ, Philip M. Podsakoff, and Scott B. MacKenzie offer conceptual insight as they build upon the various works that have been done on the subject and seek to update the record about OCB. Key Features: Explores how OCB translates into objective measures of efficiency, profitability, customer satisfaction, and other criteria of organizational functioning Examines how important OCB is in other societal cultures and correlates findings from North American studies Addresses the relative importance of individual personality as a factor in determining OCB OCB has become a foundation for concepts in Organizational Studies. This book provides an all-encompassing resource for students, scholars, and practitioners looking for a comprehensive understanding on this key topic. It is an excellent textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying organizational behavior or organizational psychology in courses such as Strategic Human Resource Management, Measurement of Work Performance; Behavioral Organization Theory; and Social Psychology of Organizations.

In an age when most business plans extend only to the next quarterly reporting period, the authors of this book propose an audaciously longer view of future planning. Reaching beyond the modern five or ten-year strategic plan, the authors take a cue from Kongo Gumi, a Japanese construction company launched in 578 AD that managed to thrive as a family-owned business for nearly 1500 years. With the 2010 publication of an international standard on social responsibility (ISO 26000), and increased attention to sustainability and sustainability reporting, many organizations today are heeding the call to operate with this standard in mind. However, once the guidelines are understood and the gaps measured, these same organizations often struggle during implementation. Leveraging many decades of combined experience in Quality Management and Product Development, the authors of this seminal book provide a proven solution to help you turn information into action. Defining exactly what social responsibility means, A Six Sigma Approach to Sustainability introduces SOFAIR, a six-step methodology for achieving sustainability through social responsibility performance improvement. This rigorous methodology uses Six Sigma, and other process improvement methods, as a basis for maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of your organization's social responsibility performance improvement effort. The book explains and demonstrates the meaning of CISR (R) - continual improvement for social responsibility - and illustrates the six-step SOFAIR methodology with many examples. The authors explain how your existing organizational continual improvement efforts can be adapted to also focus on sustainability. Four case studies are provided that demonstrate the application of the methodology in manufacturing, healthcare, business processes, and everyday personal life. Finally, the authors provide 10 things you can do today as social responsibility action. Kongo Gumi represents the author's goal of sustainability, and prompts the question, "What will your organization look like, not in 5-10 years, but in fifteen centuries?" This book provides a way for you to take action to create a more sustainable environment where your customers, suppliers, employees, and communities are available for your organization for decades, and even centuries, to come. About the Book's Cover: The six hands of many colors encircling the globe represent the diversity of stakeholders engaged in the six-step SOFAIR Process, and the global impact of CISR (R). CISR (R) is a registered trademark and can be used with permission for non-commercial use. Contact: www.SherpaBCorp.com

Five Steps to Strengthen Ethics in Organizations and Individuals draws on research and history to present effective tools to strengthen organizational ethics. Focusing on key topics such as the planning fallacy, moral disengagement, moral courage, the illusion of ethical superiority, confirmation bias, groupthink, whistleblowers, mindfulness and mindlessness, making authentic apologies, and more, this book discusses specific positive actions that get results and avoid common pitfalls. Research findings and examples from organizations-including missteps by the Veterans Administration, Penn State University, the APA, General Motors, Enron, and Wells Fargo-inform the strategies this book presents and highlight lessons in organizational ethics. Scholars, researchers, professionals, administrators, students, and others interested in organizational studies and ethics will find this unique book essential in training and practice.

Getting business on board is essential if we want to achieve the United Nations' goal of building a better future for people and planet by 2030. But much of the sustainable business agenda falls woefully short of what is needed, with some practices even accelerating the problems they're trying to solve. In Urgent Business Ian Thomson and Dominic Bates, a business school professor and a former journalist, combine their expert insight to challenge five common myths that trap businesses in an unsustainable black-hole and offer a manifesto for change. Combining cutting-edge research - from AI and systems theory to climate science and behavioural economics - with fascinating real-world examples, the authors highlight the practical and holistic steps all businesses can take to play their part in addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. .

Ethical Branding and Marketing: Cases and Lessons provides current perspectives on fascinating global cases focusing on the specific combination of the two fields of "ethics" and "branding," on their relationship, and on how that joint perspective shapes brands, companies, business strategies, and the market itself. In a contemporary environment of "truthiness" and fake news, it is more important than ever to review core principles of ethics and to reassess how these principles apply to today's branding and marketing practices. This book addresses practices in ethical branding and corporate culture. It includes such topics as truth, integrity, value, vulnerability, and differentiation. Collectively, these cases provide a contemporary overview of intriguing scenarios and best practices in ethical branding. The book provides the reader with real, updated insight into ethical decision making; helps students integrate ethics, branding strategy, and real life, complex situations into an effective learning process; and provides the reader with up-to-date ethical branding cases from around the world.

This book explores the role of HRD professionals in ethical and legal decision making in the workplace. While previous books have described the need for ethics in HRD, this book presents ways that HRD scholars and professionals can influence, through collaborative relationships, effective implementation of ethical policies and legal standards in the workplace. The ethical policies of an organization provide a key insight into its values, and this book shows the relationship between those values and HRD practices, such as training and development, career development, and organization development. Exploring such topics as protected classes, diversity intelligence, employee rights, and employee privacy, this book will inform HRD scholars and professionals on researching and enhancing ethical and legal decision making in the workplace.

What would a new approach to tackling urgent global issues like poverty, pollution, habitat loss and climate change look like? How can each of us make the most of the opportunities already present in our rapidly changing world?With a focus on the roles of knowledge-building and knowledge traditions - the ways we think -, we get closer to what is intrinsic in the functioning of our world and of ourselves.Topics covered include ecological business and marketing, ecological accounting; changing values in UK businesses; new business models for sustainability in Indian agriculture; sustainability in Latin America, Russia and Vietnam; mobilising the masses through dynamic citizenship in Sweden and Sarajevo; an investigation of the role of artistic collectives for sustainability in Brazil; developing Nairobi in accordance with a Triple Top Line Approach; an examination of two theoretical cultures in Europe and Africa; the emerging Chinese Eco-civilisation; and educating for sustainability in Singapore and Tasmania.

Globalisation of the market, law and politics contributes to a diversity of transnational sustainability problems whose solutions exceed the territorial jurisdictional limits of nation states in which their effects are generated or occur. The rise of the business sector as a powerful global actor with a claim to participation and potential contributions as well as adverse impacts sustainability complicates the regulatory challenge. Recent decades' efforts to govern transitions towards sustainability through public or hybrid regulation display mixed records of support and results. In combination, these issues highlight the need for insights on what conditions multi-stakeholder regulation for a process that balances stakeholder power and delivers results perceived as legitimate by participants and broader society. This book responds to that need. Based on empirical experience on public-private regulation of global sustainability concerns and theoretical perspectives on transnational regulation, the book proposes a new theory on collaborative regulation. This theory sets out a procedural approach for multi-stakeholder regulation of global sustainability issues in a global legal and political order to provide for legitimacy of process and results. It takes account of the claims to participation of the private sector as well as civil society organisations and the need to balance power disparities.

In the context of growing public interest in sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has not brought about the expected improvement in terms of sustainable business. Self-regulation has been unable to provide appropriate answers for unsustainable business frameworks, despite empirical proof that sustainable behaviour is entirely in corporate enlightened self-interest. The lack of success of the soft law approach suggests that hard law regulation may be needed after all. This book discusses these options, alongside the issue of shareholder primacy and its externalities in corporate, social, and natural environment. To escape the "prisoner's dilemma" European corporations and their global counterparts have found themselves in, help is needed in the form of EU hard law to advocate sustainability through mandatory rules. This book argues that the necessity of these laws is based on the first-mover's advantage of such corporate law approach towards sustainable development. In the current EU law environment, where codification of corporate law is sought for, forming and defining a general EU policy could not only help corporations embrace this self-enlightened behaviour but could also build the necessary "EU corporate citizenship" atmosphere. Considering the developments in the field of CSR as attempts to mitigate negative externalities resulting from inappropriate shareholder primacy use, the book is centred around a discussion of the shareholder primacy paradigm, its legal position and its (un)suitability for modern global business. Going beyond solely legal analysis, juxtaposing legal principles and argumentation with economic theoretic approaches and, more importantly, real-life examples, this book is accessible to both professionals and academics working within the fields of business, economics, corporate governance and corporate law.

Research on happiness has steadily increased over the last decade, with different streams of inquiry converging into what has come to be known as 'modern happiness studies' (MHS). In this book, Alejo Jose G. Sison draws on the latest research in economics and psychology as well as Aristotelian virtue ethics to show why happiness is the ultimate value proposition for business. Using non-technical language and a number of illustrative vignettes, he proposes ways for businesses to cultivate the virtues, providing advice on production and service enhancement, customer satisfaction, employee well-being and overall organizational wellness. This book will appeal to a wide readership, including graduate students and researchers in business ethics, moral philosophy and positive psychology.

In The Green Leap to an Inclusive Economy, two leading thinkers, Stuart L. Hart and Fernando Casado Caneque, challenge head on the two biggest issues facing humanity and the planet today: Inequality and Environmental Degradation. They present the new design thinking required for a more inclusive and sustainable economy which respects both people and planet. Far from simply presenting the problems, this book offers insightful case studies that showcase the challenges and opportunities of base of the pyramid venturing in different geographical and cultural contexts, as well as providing a detailed description of the tools that have been proven to enhance the innovation of business models to address the issues. Through telling these stories, the authors provide a roadmap for how to make an inclusive and sustainable economy a reality, where opportunity and prosperity are available to more of the people that participate in the economy as workers, consumers, owners and the wider community, whilst addressing the risks to the natural capital we all depend on. This book is essential reading for anyone looking to accelerate the development of an inclusive business for the benefit of society and the planet, as well as those involved in the study and research of the base of the pyramid and sustainable business solutions.