sustainable business Articles
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Businesses and Sustainability - The First Leg is Financial
Whether we are talking about what keeps your doors open, or how to lower the environmental footprint of your business to make it more sustainable, you must be financially sound. Entrepreneurs are generally well-versed in the practice of frugality, but may forget some simple tactics for handling cash flow effectively, and giving attention to timely and accurate financials. Why do I write this? ...
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Why Sustainability rankings don’t matter (yet)!
As an investor, a business owner, and a consumer, I recently decided that I wanted to fully support businesses embracing sustainability. I didn’t know how best to go about this, so I decided to find out who the ‘100 most sustainable companies’ are. I was intrigued and overwhelmed by the number of lists out there, as well as the different approaches, evaluation criteria, and definitions for ...
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Removing Obstacles to Better, More Sustainable Business Decisions
The Monetization Working Group in Action June was a very active month for the Monetization Working Group (MWG), which included participation in the 3rd Biennial Water Funds conference in Bogota, Colombia along with working sessions and a full MWG meeting hosted by FEMSA at their offices in Mexico City. Both of these events played an important part in helping the Group advance its purpose of ...
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The practice of sustainable business: a New Zealand perspective
The paper outlines the business decision making paradigm that prevailed in the 20th century and how the resultant business decisions revealed deficiencies in that paradigm. However, it recognises that some powerful forces in society wish to retain the 20th century model; there is much available evidence to demonstrate the dangers inherent in such a strategy. Those engaged in business decision ...
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Cleantech Niche Development: a small business perspective on climate change
The mitigation of climate change enables and requires a number of new companies and businesses to emerge. This paper investigates what it takes for a niche company in these emerging cleantech businesses to be able to act and grow using transition theory. A company that manages to perform successful Cleantech Niche Development (CND) will be able to have an environmentally and financially ...
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Exiting in a State of Grace: can death be sustainable?
By August 2007, Deborah Cairns and Fran Reilly had been in business just a year and their alternative, family-directed funeral business had already won a regional sustainable business award. Based in Auckland, New Zealand, State of Grace offered clients socially and environmentally friendly alternatives including involving families where possible in keeping the deceased at home without embalming, ...
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Does the business size matter on corporate sustainable performance? The Australian business case
While a growing majority of research studies have concentrated on triple bottom line public reporting in large organisations, the review of past research suggests there seems to be limited support and importance given to small and medium sized businesses. This paper attempts to examine whether business size matters when it comes to corporate sustainability. To achieve this, we have conducted an ...
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Integrating sustainability into business continuity planning
Recently, natural and human-enabled disasters have caused many high profile events that resulted in significant losses of life and property, and that have highlighted business vulnerabilities to environmental factors. In response, many organisations have implemented business continuity plans and adopted more sustainable business processes. Business continuity and sustainability have long and ...
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Sustaining trade with Saudi Arabia: an analysis of exporting as an alternative
Over the past decade, world trade has almost doubled from $7 trillion to more than $13 trillion, and Saudi Arabia is by far the largest trading country in the Middle Eastern region, with total trade volume in excess of $102 billion. This paper reviews the economic structure of Saudi Arabia. While Saudi Arabia has been one of the fastest growing nations in the region, it has been only since 2000 ...
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The sustainable corporation: lessons from Avatar
This article uses the fictitious company RDA from the movie Avatar as a textbook case of corporate non–sustainability. We provide a list of mistakes RDA made and provide parallel corporate examples in our own society in the areas of stakeholder analysis, corporate governance and systems thinking using the triple bottom line. For each area we present a framework that companies could use to operate ...
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Understanding Chinese management needs through ancient Chinese philosophy
Relevant intellectual and human capital growth in China is necessary for sustainable business development and to achieve China's ambition for global leadership. This can only be achieved through fundamental improvements in the management education system. This is difficult to manage because a history of family, friends and party membership were more relevant to ones career than a sound education. ...
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Educating for sustainability: A double-edged sword?
Evidence from three sections of an undergraduate Business, Government and Society (BG&S) core course suggests that heightened awareness of corporate and executive wrong-doing vis-a-vis the natural environment, and/or emphasis on the business case for greener business practices, may contribute to student cynicism regarding the normative value that business executives place on environmental ...
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A framework for supporting the management of technological knowledge
Technology is a key driver for innovation and sustainable business growth. Whilst industrial interest in the area is growing, from an academic perspective the conceptual basis of the subject of technology management is fragmented and poorly defined. This paper describes a framework that has been developed to support practical and theoretical understanding of the management of technological ...
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Sustainable strategic management in an emerging market economy: the case of Romanian women entrepreneurs
For decades the field of strategic management has been dominated by research on developed economies, especially those of USA and Europe. Emerging markets, such as the former Soviet bloc countries, have largely been ignored. These countries have experienced, in varying degrees, major political, economic and social changes that have had a major impact on their current entrepreneurial climate. Based ...
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The new corporate social responsibility: a call for sustainability in business education
Researchers have studied the role of social responsibility in organisations for decades. Despite this extensive work, the teaching of corporate social responsibility in the classroom across the business curriculum remains somewhat limited. In order for educators in business to catch up with corporations who are increasingly focusing on issues and stakeholders beyond the bottom line, there must be ...
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Circular economy - Sustainable business framework for growth
What is the circular economy / sustainable business framework? In short, the circular economy (or closed loop) is a generic term for an industrial economy where materials flow in continuous cycles: either a biological cycle (via composting) or a technical cycle, where materials retain their high quality for the manufacturing of new (upgraded) products over and over again. Essentially eliminating ...
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Education for environmentally responsible behaviour in business
The aim of this study was to explore the possibility of teaching the subject of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to higher education students. Increasingly, business activity is recognised as impacting, often negatively, on the environment. Calls to mitigate this result in a response usually called CSR. CSR may be regarded as the means by which businesses deliver sustainable development. ...
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Embedding eco-industrialism into local economies: the search for sustainable business and policy paradigms
This paper seeks to integrate several diverse literatures as the basis of an innovative approach that embeds eco-industrialism in local economies. Emergent business models provide the micro-economic basis of embedded eco-industrialism, while the eco-industrial park provides potential foundations for regenerative eco-localism. The paper then seeks insights offered by critical theorists and ...
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Sustainable Business Model Innovation: A Brief Overview
For years, the business sector and the government have shared a co-dependent relationship. To put it more precisely, almost all countries decided to adopt a capitalistic model while they were designing their economic structures, which automatically elevated the importance of organizations, businesses, industries, and enterprises. The growth and development of society are highly dependent on the ...
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What is sustainability?
The goal of this paper is to provide a definition of the concept of sustainability with the level of rigor and clarity of neoclassical theory, based on two axioms that ensure equal treatment of the present and the future introduced by the author. We discuss applications to markets, business strategy and public policy. The approach is anchored on the concept of satisfying the basic needs of the ...
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