Product Description

Building an organization’s commitment to sustainability is not just a means to enhancing the health, diversity, and strength of the world’s ecosystems but a financially and socially sound best practice as well. The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook helps readers understand what sustainability means, and how they can implement it in their organization. Collecting the wisdom of an outstanding network of experts, the book uses models, tools, case studies, and examples from a wide range of companies to show readers how they can:

manage the transition to an eco-friendly culture • foster employee engagement • integrate sustainability into the day-to-day realities of their business • oversee both short-and long-term goals for their sustainability initiatives

Also included are metrics allowing readers to measure their efforts in promoting an environmentally responsible organization. This book provides the crucial guidance organizations need to make money and make a difference.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #487512 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780814412787
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review

“A very user-friendly and practical book on sustainability. It is well written and comprehensive, very clear, and concise in its explanations and applicable examples.” People & Strategy

"this book offers a compilation of excellent, practical resources for developing a sustainable enterprise." --Choice

About the Author

Jeana Wirtenberg, Ph.D. (Montville, NJ) is President of Jeana Wirtenberg & Associates, a consulting firm that focuses on sustainability issues.

William G. Russell (Leonia, NJ) is the Founder of SKN Worldwide-USA, a sustainability consulting company.

David Lipsky, Ph.D. (Highland Mills, NY) is a senior consultant with Conversant.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

 

Foreword

Georg Kell, Executive Head, UN Global Compact

 

Businesses are challenged as never before by the unrelenting and ever-increasing

demands posed by the global economy and the marketplace to address the concerns of

a wide range of critical stakeholders, including shareholders, customers, employees,

and communities, both locally and around the world.

 

Technology and deregulation have unleashed an unprecedented expansion of business

activities over the past quarter of a century. Many companies have gone global

while governments have remained local. Businesses, large and small, are learning to

integrate into a global marketplace that offers scale and efficiency gains.

 

New markets have been developed and much progress has been made in bringing

hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty. At the same time, poverty persists

in many parts of the world, inequity has been on the rise, and the impact of human

activities on the natural environment threatens our survival as a species.

 

We cannot predict the future, but the certainty of the major disruptive forces we are

witnessing every day makes a compelling case for us to reexamine our fundamental values,

shift our priorities, and shape a new strategic direction to create a more sustainable

world.

 

How will we master this global transformation to a sustainable future? Where will

leadership come from? Will we be able to extend the benefits of productivity gains to

those who need them most while safeguarding our natural environment? Will openness

as an economic and political idea prevail, or will we fall back into discriminatory behavior,

building walls and creating enemies? Will we be able to provide stewardship that

thrives on and cultivates the creativity of people and enterprises while safeguarding the

common good? Are we willing — and are we capable enough — to change our patterns

of consumption and lifestyles so that they meet our most basic human needs while considering

those of future generations? Can we build incentive systems that reward and

reinforce good environmental, social, and governance performance?

 

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Never before have we been so dependent on each

other.

 

There is always hope that policy-makers will eventually provide leadership. But all

too often they are concerned with territorial constituency building or the sheer desire

to maintain a hold on power. Few policy-makers are able, or willing, to take on global

perspectives or a long-term vision that goes beyond election cycles.

 

Business can hardly afford to wait for this to happen. The changing landscape has

made it imperative that business help architect and execute the solution. The notion and

practice of business responsibility and the search for practical solutions has evolved

over the past two decades. Business increasingly understands that the search for sustainability

is not just about avoiding costs; it is increasingly about creating business

value and inventing models that deliver societal and market success.

 

Clearly, the role of business is undergoing a profound transformation. The most obvious

is the need to manage risks in an interdependent world. As business has become

global, it can no longer take refuge behind one home government. It needs to learn to

deal simultaneously with different regulatory and societal realities. At the same time,

the pursuit of global integration and the sophistication of dispersed supply chains has

created new vulnerabilities — as have the scarcity of natural resources and the unfolding

of climate change–related regulatory and lifestyle changes.

 

New business models that understand how to build markets for the one billion people

that remain excluded, that thrive on energy efficiency and environmental stewardship,

and that build societal goodwill and support are likely to be the winning models

of the future. Such enterprises will not only succeed in their own right, they will also

make an enormously important contribution to the future of humanity.

 

We are called to support and promote business efforts that embrace sustainability

strategies as a modus operandi. Many small and large innovations and alterations are

needed to bring about a change on the scale required to safeguard our future. Human

creativity and the will to shape the future are our best hope. This Fieldbook opens the

door for business leaders and managers to the most appropriate and practical pathway

for themselves and their enterprises to forge a more sustainable future. It takes us on a

thoughtful journey through the eyes of 29 passionate, experienced practitioners inspiring

us all to step up to the plate, create a plan, and move forward with velocity, intention,

and commitment. It provides the tools, cases, best practices, learnings, and understandings

— at once profound and practical — to equip and enable every manager and

leader to play a role in the reinvention of the world.

 

 

 

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Customer Reviews

Great resource for sustainability professionals
Theres a lot of books on sustainability out there now - which is great - but most of them stay on the surface. They simply tell interesting stories and review green business theories. This book digs deeper, going into the nuts and bolts and tells you how to develop and implement green business best practices. Its not for beginners! The level of detail is intense. But for you professionals who've tasted the gold in green business and are ready to develop a comprehensive program, this book is a great resource.

The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook
"The boss came back from a seminar and said we need to be sustainable", "our green team needs to make the next step", "I need to provide better documentation to justify our sustainability efforts", are all statements that I hear routinely in presentations or as a part of general calls that come into the agency. This book provides a valuable resource as it serves admirably as a primer for the unintiated, a problem solver for the overwhelmed and a tool chest for the seasoned practitioner.

There are very few books that I will recommend when asked where to start, simply because organizations moving to the sustainability path are starting from such different places. This book provides a range of information to satisfy those diverse needs. It has all of the earmarks for being one of the books on your shelf with folded corners, highlights and tabs for the "go to" locations helping your organization explore, implement and share sustainable practices.

A Pragmatic Holistic Approach to Sustainability
As a leadership development consultant and executive coach, I'm constantly on the lookout for good resources to help deepen my knowledge base around sustainability. A Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook is a welcome addition to more than a score of books on my growing sustainability shelf. Written by a collection of 29 authors, "The Enterprise Sustainability Action Team," with the shaping hand of editor Jeana Wirtenberg (with William Russell and David Lipsky), this learning community created a five part approach: 1) an introductory context setting overview, 2) the foundations of sustainable enterprises, 3) embracing and managing change sustainably, 4) connecting, integrating and aligning toward the future, and 5) when it all comes together - a concluding synthesis chapter. Within these five parts I found rich, pragmatic strategies that helped sharpen my own approaches for integrating sustainability into my professional work.

I also appreciated the visual denotations found throughout the collection of writings, indicating an Activity, Case example, or Tool. A glossary of terms in the appendix along with a healthy bio on each contributor rounded out a deeply accessible, user-friendly resource.

Each chapter within those five parts offered grounded strategies, intellectual provocations, social learning ideas, and an invitation to play - in order to address the historical global challenge of sustainability. What draws me to and keeps me engaged with a book on sustainability is an on-going experience of something new popping up and feeling immediately usable. In the first week after picking up TSEF, it bore the marks of a dog-eared reference book - with much underlining, margin notes, sticky tags, and newly sparked idea notations on the white pages at the end of the book. If my creativity is set in motion by models, case studies, and other concepts and information, then the book has been worth the investment - a threshold that was hit early on.

A macro conceptual underpinning of TSEF is the paradigm shift that the sustainability effort straddles. Going from global corporate capitalism's unsustainable way of producing and living to one that is more locally and democratically based, and putting nature in the center as a primary partner, locates this book as a timely bridge in a high stakes transition period of history. In this period of great challenge, there is also great anxiety. We have the choice of turning towards the challenges and transforming them into what is needed, or turning away and burying our heads. This book gives us the tools and concepts for turning towards and finding our whole selves and world in the process. As professionals and citizens, we need all the ideas we can muster, models, and case studies we can share to help us intelligibly navigate from a mindset built around scarcity and fear to one built around sufficiency and sustainability. It is in that sweet spot of possibility and concrete action that The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook generously contributes its value, page after page.