Drawing on contributions from more than thirty scholars and experts in the field, this book examines the role of business as an enabler, as an inhibitor, and ultimately as a co-actor in global sustainability transformations expected over the next few decades. The Role of Business in Global Sustainability Transformations employs several theoretical perspectives and provides abundant examples and cases to discuss a variety of emerging concepts, phenomena, and trends shaping business sustainability. Weaving through the chapters, the editors present core tensions and sources of inertia towards transformative change, and acknowledge that envisioning multiple solutions and pathways are possible and desirable. They advocate for the need to align visions, actions and time horizons between policy, society and business in addressing the interlinked socio-ecological challenges that our society currently faces. This book will be an important resource for scholars and professionals working in the field of sustainability and sustainable business, and a vital educational text for students interested in this discipline.

Business Models for Sustainability breaks new ground by combining three important insights. First, achieving sustainability requires socio-technical transitions that entail new technologies, production processes, lifestyles, and consumption patterns. Second, firms play crucial roles in mediating between sustainable production and consumption. Third, radical innovations require organizational innovations and new business models. Peter Wells successfully combines these big picture ideas with rich in-depth case studies drawing on years of accumulated expertise. Highly recommended. Frank W. Geels, University of Manchester, UK and Chairman of the Sustainability Transitions Research Network With increasing awareness that innovative technology alone is insufficient to make sustainable lifestyles a reality, this book brings into sharp focus the need to create radical new business models. This insightful book provides a theoretically grounded but also realistic account of how the design of business models can be a critical component in the overall transition to sustainability, and one that transcends the usual focus on innovative technology. Weaving together key principles and components for business sustainability, the book highlights five very different pathways to the future for sectors ranging from microbreweries and printing through to clothing, mobility and plastics. Business has only just started the first few tentative steps towards a very different approach to creating and sustaining value, but this book concludes that enormous opportunities will emerge alongside new ways of creating and capturing value. Academics and postgraduate students in the fields of sustainable business, business organisations and industrial ecology will find this book brings a greater understanding of business strategy and structure to the discipline. While traditionally referenced and structured, this academic book is accessibly written with key principles that may also appeal to the consultant community.

Interconnecting the concepts of sustainability, innovation and transformation, this book explains how organizations have successfully transformed themselves and wider society to foster a more sustainable future, and identifies the difficulties and challenges along the way. Part of the Principle of Responsible Management Education (PRME) series, the book promotes a strong voice for meeting sustainability challenges for transformative change in a globalized world through business education and practice. A transition to a more sustainable way of doing business can only be attained by combining technology with profound system innovations and lifestyle changes. The chapters in the book, each written by a strong and well-recognized team of researchers in the field, open up the discussion about a new partnership between sustainability, innovation, and transformation that includes the global society (big world), the biosphere (small planet), and also requires a deep mind shift. The book presents cases from business (including Ikea and Eataly) and other service networks including the Base of the Pyramid (BoP), and illustrates how these organizations have transformed themselves for a sustainable future. The research perspectives are macro (policies and legislation), meso (institutional practices) and micro (business practices and individual behavior). This book is where research meets real-world business and societal practice. The chapters are grounded in business research, specifically the interdependencies between sustainability, innovation, and transformation, which makes for a robust basis for describing, explaining, and understanding the complex challenges faced by business and society in the 21st century. The book is intended for graduate- and postgraduate-level students and executive education with implications for practitioners. Furthermore, it contributes to multidisciplinary research in the field of interaction between business and society with a view to extending the firm-centric view to encompass a broader, systemic, and dynamic understanding of business and societal transformation.

A comparison of how societal actors in different geographical, political and cultural contexts understand agents and drivers of sustainability transformations.

The aim of this edited book is to provide a comprehensive overview of the opportunities and challenges related to innovation for sustainability. Combining work from both emerging and established scholars in different academic fields, this book provides an integrated understanding of the topic from four perspectives. First, the big picture: frameworks, types, and drivers; second, strategy and leadership; third, measurement and assessment and fourth, tools, methods and technologies. Chapter 11 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com. The editors donate their remuneration for this book to conservation organisation the WWF.

This book sheds new light on the role businesses can play in contributing to sustainability objectives, and how governance actors can better encourage their contributions. Jean-Pierre Imbrogiano introduces and empirically investigates the concept of sustainability performance in businesses, which reveals how achieving social and environmental objectives is experienced within business organizations. He focuses on supply chain management as a key part in this process and looks at how this has evolved to become a vital sector in the global business landscape. He further considers the current practices of governance actors which aim to enable sustainability performance in businesses. Labelled as a ‘sustainability service industry’, these actors include international, national, and industry sustainability initiatives, sustainability standard setters, business consultancies and rating agencies, as well as sustainable supply chain managers in corporations. Overall, this book calls for a conceptual reorientation in business sustainability scholarship, and points towards a challenging agenda for change in the sustainability service industry. Understanding Sustainability Performance in Business Organizations will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable business, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, sustainable supply chain management, and sustainability governance.

The introduction of Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has traced a path for private and public entities interested in pursuing sustainable development. This handbook identifies the recent challenges in accounting research and the SDGs by exploring the evolutionary pathways and future direction of sustainability reporting. It explores the role of businesses as contributors to Agenda 2030 by assuming a multidisciplinary approach and provides a measure of organisations' contributions to the SDGs through the understanding of business strategies and policies on Agenda 2030 integration. The book represents a substantial and multi-faceted contribution to the debate on SDGs accounting by assembling international scholars and practitioners to effectively explore the practice and theory revolving around the current state of the art and highlight future research pathways. By providing a comprehensive evaluation of accounting for the Sustainable Development Goals, this volume will appeal to a wide variety of readers, from students, scholars, researchers, practitioners and policymakers interested in increasing their awareness of Agenda 2030 and offers a significant contribution to the evolution of accounting practices.