This practical, easy-to-understand book sets a path to successfully building a culture for sustainability in today's global marketplace, providing "best practice" case studies from industries and sectors including manufacturing, business-to-business, hospitality, consumer products, telecommunications, and professional services. In their own words, leaders, managers, and employees from nine global companies explain how they are turning their visions into reality. Sustainability and human resources expert Jeana Wirtenberg describes how these companies are transforming challenges into opportunities by opening their minds to the megatrends that will define the future. The vast majority of today's CEOs consider sustainability essential to their company's success, yet most do not know how to embed it into their company and its culture. This book guides firms of all types and sizes—from those organizations just starting their journey to sustainability, to those seeking to accelerate their positive impact on people, reduce their negative environmental impact, and improve their bottom line. Wirtenberg shows readers how extraordinary results are possible by engaging the hearts and minds of employees throughout the organization.

This is a ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ for the 21st century: an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of what’s wrong with our societies, organizations, ideologies, worldviews and cultures – and how to put them right. The book covers the finance system, agriculture, design, ecology, economy, sustainability, organizations and society at large.

Companies that have integrated a contribution to society into their business models are more likely than others to succeed for the long term. This book provides you with information, tips, and tools to assess and strengthen your company for ongoing success. Through the use of case studies, the book describes the leaders’ journeys – the mistakes they made, the successes they achieved, and the lessons they learned. Some are certified as Benefits Corporations (B Corps) because they have incorporated a clear societal purpose into their missions and they are able to demonstrate positive social impact. Others, while not certified B Corps, are at various stages in their commitments to society. The book is for leaders at many levels, including CEOs, senior leaders, and managers, as well as those without formal positions of authority but who can influence others and contribute to a sustainable culture.

Meeting the aims of sustainability is becoming increasingly difficult; at the same time, the call for culture is becoming more powerful. This book explores the relationships between culture, sustainability and regional change through the concept of ‘territorialisation’. This new concept describes the dynamics and processes in the context of regional development, driven by collective human agency that stretches beyond localities and marked-off regional boundaries. This book launches the concept of ‘territorialisation’ by exploring how the natural environment and culture are constitutive of each other. This concept allows us to study the characterisation of the natural assets of a place, the means by which the natural environment and culture interact, and how communities assign meaning to local assets, add functions and ascribe rules of how to use space. By highlighting the time-space dimension in the use and consumption of resources, territorialisation helps to frame the concept and grasp the meaning of sustainable regional development. Drawing on an international range of case studies, the book addresses both conceptual issues and practical applications of ‘territorialisation’ in a range of contexts, forms, and scales. The book will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduates in sustainable development, environmental studies, and regional development and planning.

This practical, easy-to-understand book sets a path to successfully building a culture for sustainability in today's global marketplace, providing "best practice" case studies from industries and sectors including manufacturing, business-to-business, hospitality, consumer products, telecommunications, and professional services. In their own words, leaders, managers, and employees from nine global companies explain how they are turning their visions into reality. Sustainability and human resources expert Jeana Wirtenberg describes how these companies are transforming challenges into opportunities by opening their minds to the megatrends that will define the future. The vast majority of today's CEOs consider sustainability essential to their company's success, yet most do not know how to embed it into their company and its culture. This book guides firms of all types and sizes—from those organizations just starting their journey to sustainability, to those seeking to accelerate their positive impact on people, reduce their negative environmental impact, and improve their bottom line. Wirtenberg shows readers how extraordinary results are possible by engaging the hearts and minds of employees throughout the organization.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Series introduction -- Notes on contributors -- Foreword -- 1 Introduction -- PART I Contextual perspectives -- 2 Design research: contents, characteristics and possible contributions for a sustainable society -- 3 Distributed systems and cosmopolitan localism: an emerging design scenario for resilient societies -- 4 Social ecologies of flourishing: designing conditions that sustain culture -- 5 The idea of simplicity as a pathway to cultural sustainability -- PART II Environments -- 6 Housing culture, residential preferences and sustainability -- 7 Designing a sense of place -- PART III Products and cultures -- 8 The importance of culture in design for sustainable behaviour research -- 9 The social construction of child consumers: transmedia toys in light of Slavoj Žižek's notions of pleasure and enjoyment -- 10 Contemporary vernacular Inuit clothing as sustainable fashion -- 11 Fit in ready-to-wear clothing: why people dispose garments before they are worn out -- PART IV Design education for citizenship -- 12 Developing holistic understanding in design education for sustainability -- 13 Rethinking consumption culture: educating the reflective citizen -- 14 Persuasion and play: crafting a sustainable culture -- 15 Teaching cultural sensitivity at architecture schools for more sustainable buildings: lessons from reconstruction -- Index

Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing: Theories, Histories and Policies examines and assesses the interdependence between sustainability and wellbeing by drawing attention to humans as producers and consumers in a post-human age. Why wellbeing ought to be regarded as essential to sustainable development is explored first from multifocal theoretical perspectives encompassing sociology, literary criticism and socioeconomics, second in relation to institutions and policies, and third with a focus on specific case studies across the world. Wellbeing and its sustainability are defined in terms of biological and cultural diversity; stages of advancement in science and technology; notions of citizenship and agency; geopolitical scenarios and environmental conditions. Wellbeing and sustainability call for enquiries into human capacities in ontological, epistemological and practical terms. A view of sustainability that revolves around material and immaterial wellbeing is based on the assumption that life quality, comfort, happiness, security, safety always posit humans as both recipients and agents. Risk and resilience in contemporary societies define the intrinsically human ability to make and consume, to act and adapt, driving the search for and fruition of wellbeing. How to sustain the dual process of exploitation and regeneration is a task that requires integrated approaches from the sciences and the humanities, jointly tracing a worldwide cartography with clear localisations. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers interested in sustainability through conceptual and empirical approaches including social theory, literary and cultural studies, environmental economics and human ecology, urbanism and cultural geography.