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

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

by Marc J . Epstein (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2008

    $3.35
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.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 284
 Publisher: Greenleaf Publishing
Published: 14 Jan 2008
ISBN 10: 1906093059
ISBN 13: 9781906093051
Book Overview: Making Sustainability Work 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 Marc Epstein gives a fascinating and comprehensive overview of one of the most important issues on today's corporate agenda - making businesses more sustainable. While there are now signs of a much greater willingness to try to do something, knowing what to do and how to do it remains a challenge. It is here that Marc Epstein provides an extremely helpful guide to the current state of the art on how to make sustainability a part of corporate life. In a highly readable way he shows how words and intentions can be translated into real actions. We should be queuing up to read it. -- Anthony Hopwood, Former Dean and American Standard Professor, Said Business School, University of Ox While many have focused on what 'sustainability' means for business strategy, precious few have paid attention to actually making it happen inside large corporations. In this new book, Marc Epstein shines the guiding light for those charged with implementing sustainability - the necessary structures, systems, metrics, and performance measurements. If your challenge is to overcome the corporate 'antibodies' to drive innovation through sustainability, this is a must-read. -- Stuart L. Hart, S.C. Johnson Chair of Sustainable Global Enterprise, Cornell University, and author Marc Epstein is a successful, proven navigator in these complex new risk and opportunity spaces. Fasten your safety belts - and make sure your CEO and board have copies of this invaluable guide ready to hand. -- John Elkington, Founder and Chief Entrepreneur, SustainAbility Marc Epstein has been teaching and writing around corporate sustainability and reporting issues for decades, long before they became trendy. This book is a very readable and easy-to-use compilation of his experience and research. I highly recommend it for practitioners in all levels of management or for stakeholders who should understand what the company on the next block is or is not doing right. -- Joan Bavaria, President, Trillium Investment and Co-Chair and Founder, Ceres Epstein engages the issues at the frontier of CSR today - the practical questions of how to make it work in practice, in detail, day in and day out - so that what the firm wants its CSR policies to achieve actually turns out to be what the firm is accomplishing. -- Herman B. Dutch Leonard, Co-Chair of the Initiative on Social Enterprise and Eliot I. Snider and F Epstein provides a comprehensive guide to the implementation of sustainability strategies in organizations. Executives and managers interested in sustainability will benefit greatly from this book's rich examples and insightful analysis. -- Srikant M. Datar, Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor, Senior Associate Dean, Harvard Business School

Media Reviews

They are realising they must effectively manage their social and ecological impacts in order not just to excel, but to survive. With stakes so high, the question on every corporate leader's mind is how to make CSR a reality.

In Making Sustainability Work, Marc Epstein firstly acknowledges somewhat reassuringly the difficult nature of putting these step changes in place. This book spells out the plan to make sustainability happen, with practical day-to-day, results-oriented sense. This is not just a how to do guide but very much a how to get it done bible. Epstein crucially includes instructions on how to measure the results of CSR initiatives, which is notably lacking in previous texts. Drawing on research into best practices of 100 companies worldwide including Starbucks, Dell and Coca-Cola, the book puts forward a model for implementing sustainability initiatives. Although vast, the topics covered revolve around the following critical areas:* The role of executive management in leading sustainability activities* How organisational design can improve sustainability* Integration of social risk factors into investment, costing and risk* Improving sustainability performance through incentives and rewards* Measuring corporate social, environmental and economic impactsMaking Sustainability Work successfully translates the strategic rhetoric of CSR initiatives into practical, real-life use. Epstein provides and explains tools, processes and metrics to produce and monitor true corporate sustainability. This insightful guide will appeal to corporate leaders, strategists, academics, sustainability consultants, and anyone else with an interest in actively practicing sustainability. http://www.lmcuk.com/book-review/making-sustainability-work - London Management Centre

As a practitioner's guide, Epstein's book offers several virtues not found in other similar sustainability works for managers. First and foremost, his language is the language of business ... Second, sustainability impacts are described using quantitative measures based on Epstein's extensive experience across decades of work with companies. Third, the challenge of sustainability is framed in terms of structures, systems, and procedures ... Fourth, a range of management techniques is offered, including scenario planning to assess future trends. Fifth, the work is peppered with relevant examples to illustrate key points ... And sixth, Epstein does an elegant job in providing a broad strategic vision of the role of global corporations in today's world - a role in which innovation and profit are consistent with addressing sustainability challenges for society and the environment ... Epstein has done a remarkable job of taking the existing methods of management and expanding them to include environmental and social impacts that, until now, were externalized or relegated to the business fringe. Armed with the insights and techniques in this book, practitioners will be able to tackle the sustainability challenges of their organizations in ways that can make them and their companies more successful.Read the full review (PDF) - Chris Laszlo, visiting professor at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Manageme

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Author Bio
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.