“The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook: When it all comes together”
edited by J. Wirtenberg with W.G. Russel and D. Lipsky, in collaboration with The Enterprise Sustainability Action Team
ISBN: 1906093091
The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook” presents the reader with a prism of viewpoints intended to discuss and suggest approaches of how corporate environments, both large and small, can embrace sustainability.
The business world cannot remain any longer ignorant to its own, and the planets and its inhabitants, long-term need for survival, just like in the 1850s the manufacturing world could not ignore the need for industrialisation.
With the need for “sustainabilisation” taken as a given, the books then sheds light onto several aspects that in research and practice have proven to be hurdles, road blocks and decisive factors on the pathway to a sustainable enterprise and marketplace.
Sustainability in this book is very broadly defined, and encompasses a varied range of issues as diverse as: health & safety at work; environmental preservation; carbon emissions and toxic waste; workforce diversity; poverty remmediation; equality in workforce and society; or healthy but limited economical growth.
The following are the main topics addressed, each of which is illustrated either with a business case or real life examples taken from corporate practises:
- The role of and the kind of leadership needed in order to succeed.
Both, characteristics of individual leadership personalities as well as the impact of leadership style onto corporate cultures and habits are examined. - Mental models that support or defy sustainable behaviours within companies.
A conceptual mental model is fleshed out by presenting several examples of concrete hands-on consequences of its dimensions. Examples are taken from engineering environments and chemicals fabrications. In addition, the civil society, and the impact its mental models onto businesses is look at separately. - Corporate strategy is where the journey starts for products as well as for all sustainability efforts:
Strategy development is the place/moment where the future of a business is being decided in more than just a single way. From products, to hiring practises, over restructuring and investments – in the end all comes down to the principles decided by the executive management. As a matter of course, this truth also extends to all efforts, principles, directions and commitments related to the sustainable behaviour of a whole corporation. Through the review of business cases the corner stones of sustainable strategies are being developed,and the process of its roll out and implementation looked at. - Road blocks and hurdles along the path to become a sustainable corporations, and the how to overcome them in course of the change management process.
When a traditional business embarks on its pathway to become a sustainable, new version of itself, change management processes immediately come to a managers mind, as do the difficulties that all changes in a corporate environment face in the beginning. Through check lists, case studies, research digests and tips and tricks from practitioners, the editors try to pinpoint where difficulties my arise, what the underlying issue is, and what to focus on in order to overcome the road blocks. - The importance of employee commitment, motivation and engagement for successfully introducing sustainable practises throughout the whole business.
A range of case studies from DuPont, Public Service Electric & Gas, Eileen Fisher, Aloca and T-Systems gives concrete examples and as well as making points in case.- Metrics and measurement systems that support management as well as employees to first monitor the change journey towards sustainability, and later to continue and optimise the quest. These metrics include among others Financial Indicators, Environmental Indicators and Productivity Indicators.
- Globalisation and the resulting needs for sustainable practises and what the role of technology in the overall picture is.
- Large transnational corporations in particular face additionally challenges on their pathway to sustainability. Among them engagement of stakeholders and networks of interests across the whole spectrum, as well as fluent, hurdle-less collaboration between their national organisations or even within them. All of these are related to the trust. Trust is shown to be a key factor beyond sustainability engagement but for the overall success of an organisation or challenging undertakings in general. The business case for trust, and how trust can actively promoted is show in theory and throw review of piratical examples and case studies.
This book is, due to it being edited rather than written by a single author, or a small group of authors, written in a clear language that does however not disguise the complexity and challenges of the issues at hand. On the one hand, most of the ideas and concepts in itself are simple enough to make sense straight away. This must though not cheat the reader into the believe that their implementation is equally straight forward, easy and automatically successful.
Very many of the suggestions revolve around the “psychological” state of an organisation. For example, employee engagement is in itself a tricky thing to address, even more so if the clear outcome of the effort should be to have a sustainability culture taking root throughout the whole of an enterprise.
The case studies are to the point and indispensable for the overall understanding of the arguments brought forward.
This said, “The sustainable enterprise fieldbook” is specifically valuable to representatives of middle and upper management, or consultants, already committed to sustainability as such, and in need of more, better, and different ideas of how to expand their commitment successful and faithful to the three bottom lines, throughout their organisation.
This book is available from your nearest book store, or online from Amazon.
