Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts (Business) [Hardcover]

Marc J Epstein (Author), John Elkington (Foreword), Herman B Leonard (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1576754863 | ISBN-13: 978-1576754863 | Publication Date: January 1, 2008 | Edition: First Edition, First Printing

In recent years, corporations of all sizes and orientations have become more sensitive to social issues and stakeholder concerns, and they are collectively striving to become better corporate citizens (in some cases, urged on by shareholder pressure or government regulations). The best practices in corporate sustainability are no longer the exclusive domain of companies like Ben & Jerry's or Body Shop as they were a decade ago; now, large, multi-national companies like G.E. and Wal-Mart are leading the way with significant financial and organizational commitments to social and environmental issues. To help managers and academics keep their eye on the ever-moving target of sustainability, award-winning author and academic Marc Epstein's provides an authoritative and comprehensive guide to implementing corporate sustainability initiatives and to measuring both their social and financial impacts.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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 of Capitalism at the Crossroads"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 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, 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 Family Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School/George F. Baker, Jr. Professor of Public Management, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University"Marc Epstein usefully reviews the current state of the art on how to make sustainability concerns 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 Oxford and Chairman, Prince of Wales Foundation for the Built Environment"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 --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers; First Edition, First Printing edition (January 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576754863
• ISBN-13: 978-1576754863
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Guide to the Implementation of Sustainability Principles, January 31, 2008

By 

Felipe Perez "Landser08" (Miami, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts (Business) (Hardcover)

Making Sustainability work does a significant contribution for practitioners on how to put sustainability principles and ideas into practice. We have seen in the past other important contributions about sustainability. The difference regarding this new book is in putting these ideas in a very explicit way; emphasizing on the challenges of integrating sustainability into the business strategy and in the decision-making that encompasses the implementation of successful strategies at the firm level.

The book goes further giving valuable guidelines in practical methodologies on how to measure social and environmental risks and impacts and in the implementation of systems inside the firms for permanently monitoring such impacts. This has been a weakness in some of the literature we have seen in the past. Making Sustainability Work addresses the necessary evaluation of the impacts of sustainability initiatives on the financial performance to correctly assess the convenience of implementing them in terms of the benefits to both, the firm and the stakeholders. Finally, we have in a very amenable reading style, an important guide for practitioners on how to put sustainability principles into practice.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting Brilliant Insights, February 22, 2011

By 

Frank Roettgers "Author of Going Green Together" (Frankfurt, Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts (Business) (Hardcover)

If you are looking for a book that provides you with a comprehensive understanding what sustainability in an organization is about and how other companies handled this topic, your search is hereby over. There are a few books out there which only contain the theory about the sustainability concept. Epstein's "Making Sustainability Work" provides a well balanced mix between introducing theory and examples of best practices. Covering a lot of topics such as sustainable leadership style, sustainable cultural frameworks, risks associated with sustainability, social impacts, and reporting systems Epstein touches most of the areas that either impact the sustainability of an organization or are influenced by it.

However, sometimes I had the feeling that he could have gone more into depth. E.g. in chapter five, where he covers performance evaluation and reward systems, I missed a few deeper insights into what really motivates employees and aligns them with sustainable strategies. Furthermore, I missed the part about how to market sustainability internally and externally. Nevertheless, the given advices based on Epstein's experience are reason enough to read it, not to mention the most valuable best practice examples.

- Frank Roettgers, author of Going Green Together - How to Align Employees with Green Strategies

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars oil companies and "sustainable" ?, January 27, 2008

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts (Business) (Hardcover)

Epstein's book is definitely well meaning. Directed mostly towards the field of corporate social responsibility. Attentive readers may also recall a recent Economist magazine that had its central pages devoted to this theme.

The book has numerous quotes from CEOs of large, prominent organisations, espousing how they pursue sustainable goals. Some of these include Shell and BP. Sure, the commitment is laudable. But these oil companies have been facing a shrinking in their proven oil reserves for years. If you regard sustainability in the context of this industry as maintaining or increasing reserves, then the situation is growing parlous, no matter what nice words the bosses say. Granted, the oil companies are spending billions of dollars each year in exploration and extraction. However, a cynic can question the inclusion of these companies in the book's survey.