Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts - Hardcover

Epstein, Marc J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1906093059 ISBN 13: 9781906093051

Publisher: Routledge, 2008

Synopsis

The best practices in corporate sustainability performance are no longer the exclusive domain of companies like Ben & Jerry's or The Body Shop, as they were a decade ago; now, large, multinational companies like G.E. and Wal-Mart are leading the way with significant financial and organizational commitments to social and environmental issues. However, good intentions aren't enough. Whether motivated by concern for society and the environment, government regulation, stakeholder pressures, or economic profit, managers and strategists need to continue making significant changes to more effectively manage their social, economic, and environmental impacts – and to remain competitive. The guidance they need to do that is in this book.

Marc Epstein has produced the ultimate "how-to-do-it" guide for corporate leaders, strategists, academics, sustainability consultants, and anyone else with an interest in actually making sustainability work for organizations. With a growing number of corporate leaders asking for urgent help in "getting this done," the timing of the book could not be better.

About this title

From the Publisher:

* A comprehensive guide to implementing and evaluating corporate sustainability initiatives
* Combines a thorough grounding in the latest research with the best practices of 100 organizations worldwide, including prominent companies such as Canon, Coca-Cola, Dell, FedEx, General Mills, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Starbucks, Warner Brothers

The best practices in corporate social responsibility (CSR) are no longer the exclusive domain of companies like Ben & Jerry's or the Body Shop; now even companies like GE and Wal-Mart are making significant financial and organizational commitments to social and environmental issues. But senior executives are realizing that implementing sustainability is particularly challenging. While a lot has been written on ethical and strategic factors, there is a dearth of information on the practical nuts and bolts of implementation and virtually nothing on how to measure the results.

In Making Sustainability Work, Marc Epstein builds on his influential and highly respected previous work to produce the ultimate how-to guide for corporate leaders, strategists, academics, sustainability consultants, and anyone else with an interest in actually putting sustainability ideas into practice.

Drawing on the latest research and the best practices of 100 companies worldwide, Epstein provides an extraordinarily complete model for implementing sustainability initiatives. He covers the role of senior managers and corporate boards in leading and governing sustainability activities; organizational design issues that can improve sustainability; integration of social risk factors into capital investment, costing, and risk management systems; incentives and rewards to improve sustainability performance; identification and measurement corporate social, environmental, and economic impacts; and much more.

Many books have been published that describe the need for improved corporate citizenship, but Making Sustainability Work is the first truly thorough guide to going from intention to reality.

"Moves CSR from the theoretical to the practical, offering real-life tools, processes, and metrics for creating a true corporate framework for sustainability."
--Brad Shaw, Senior Vice President, The Home Depot

About the Author:

Marc J. Epstein is Distinguished Research Professor of Management at Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He recently was Visiting Professor and Wyss Visiting Scholar in Social Enterprise at Harvard Business School. Prior to joining Rice, Dr. Epstein was a professor at Stanford Business School, Harvard Business School, and INSEAD (European Institute of Business Administration). Dr. Epstein has extensive academic and practical experience in the implementation of corporate strategies and the development of performance metrics for use in these implementations. He has extensive industry experience and has been a senior consultant to leading corporations and governments throughout the world for over 25 years. In many recent articles and books Epstein shows how the use of new strategic management systems can help companies focus strategy, link to performance metrics, and drive improved performance in organizations. He has focused extensively on sustainability and corporate social responsibility for most of his career and was in at the beginning of the development of the corporate social audit and the measurement of corporate social, environmental, and economic impacts. In both academic research and managerial practice, Dr. Epstein is considered one of the global luminaries in the areas of corporate sustainability, governance, and accountability. His 18 authored or co-authored books include many award-winners such as Measuring Corporate Environmental Performance: Best Practices for Costing and Managing an Effective Environmental Strategy; Counting What Counts: Turning Corporate Accountability to Competitive Advantage; and a recently published four-volume series, The Accountable Corporation, with a focus on corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, business ethics, and business-government relations.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1906093059
• ISBN 13: 9781906093051
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288