The first book to distill the best of the forward-looking ideas of socially responsible policies emerging from the corporate world. By following the suggestions detailed here, individuals can institute similar programs in their own companies--because it's the right choice to make, and the smart one.

A pragmatic new business model for sustainability that outlines eight steps that range from exploring a mission to promoting innovation; with case studies. Many recent books make the case for businesses to become more sustainable, but few explain the specifics. In this book, Francisco Szekely and Zahir Dossa offer a pragmatic new business model for sustainability that extends beyond the traditional framework of the triple bottom line, describing eight steps that range from exploring a vision and establishing a strategy to implementing the strategy and promoting innovation. Szekely and Dossa argue that businesses and organizations need to move away from the business case for sustainability toward a sustainable business model. That is, businesses should go beyond the usual short-term focus on minimizing harm while maximizing profits. Instead, businesses on the path to sustainability should, from the start, focus on addressing a societal need and view profitability not as an end but as a means to support the sustainable organization. Szekely and Dossa explore key problems organizations face when pursuing a sustainability agenda. Each chapter presents one of the eight steps, describes a business dilemma for sustainability, provides a theoretically grounded strategic framework, offers case studies that illustrate the dilemma, and summarizes key findings; the case studies draw on the experiences of such companies as Tesla Motors, Patagonia, TOMs, and Panera. The book emphasizes leadership, arguing that leaders who question the status quo, inspire others, and take risks are essential for achieving sustainable business practices.

This is the first book to distill the best of the forward-looking ideas of socially responsible policies emerging from the corporate world. By following the suggestions detailed here, individuals can institute similar programs in their own companies—because it's the right choice to make, and the smart one. Something new is happening in the business world. Determined to stay competitive in an era of downsizing, companies are making a surprising discovery: Practices that benefit employees, communities, and the environment aren’t just good deeds—they’re also good business. The leaders of this new business vision include household names like Honeywell, Stride Rite, Hasbro, Reebok, and Levi Strauss & Co. These and other American companies have discovered that in order to create and sustain economic opportunity and reap the rewards of a good reputation, they must put their policies where their principles are in such diverse areas as work and family life, community welfare, and ecology. Whether you run a company or just work for one, you’ll find here abundant inspiration and examples of how businesses can safeguard the environment and improve the lot of their employees, their communities, and the world beyond while ensuring their own long-term profitability.

Quarter examines business owners who use their firms as laboratories for social innovation. After providing an introduction to this phenomenon in an historical perspective and discussing the 19th-century British industrialist Robert Owen, he provides ll case studies of contemporary innovators from six countries-the UK, US, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, and New Zealand. The case studies fall into two broad groups. The first involves business people who promote innovative ownership and decision-making strategies such as donating their shares to a trust and thereby creating a company without shareholders so that employees can assume greater control; creating a worker co-operative; and transferring ownership to employees through an employee stock ownership plan. The second group of case studies involves innovative efforts at changing the relationship to the surrounding community through creating socially and environmentally responsible businesses. Quarter concludes by looking at the potential and limitations of this phenomenon for building a social movement. A provocative look at the social organization of work that will be of interest to scholars and researchers of industrial organization and to business leaders examining innovative ownership arrangements.

From the back cover: Subject to shifts of political mood, portrayed by the media as lazy and incompetent, hobbled by central agency regulations, criticized by auditors general, public service managers have a tough time of it....Is the good manager one who follows the rules, or the one who ignores lines of authority to get things done? Is the official who stays within the budget but doesn't deliver the program a better manager thlan the one who blows the budget but provides the public with a needed service? This book, one of very few on public sector management, suggests how to improve the system and foster management excellence.

'The Triple Bottom Line' - which delivers simultaneous social, financial and environmental benefits - is a rallying cry for business sustainability. This text examines the implications of the idea, showing what has already been achieved.

In an incisive examination of the cliché that schools should be more businesslike, the author demonstrates why no one has shown that a business model can be successfully applied to education.