Business leaders need to embrace sustainability in order to ensure the lasting success of their organizations. Co-authors Suhas Apte and Jagdish Sheth bring their expertise from practice and from academic to illustrate how business leaders can embed sustainability in a truly holistic and transformative way. Through an examination of such companies as Walmart, AT&T, IKEA and the Tata Group, Apte and Sheth have developed a proven and actionable framework rooted in the real world success of these companies. The case studies reveal how business leaders proactively engage, energize and promote market sustainability to all of their stakeholders including customers, employees, suppliers, investors and the government. The Sustainability Edge enables companies to critically engage their stakeholders and influence them to accept sustainability as part of their core mission.
ISBN-13: 9781442650688 Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Publication date : 12/30/2016
Series : Rotman-UTP Publishing – Business and Sustainability Series
Pages : 224
Product dimensions : 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Companies can administer a Sustainability Audit Survey among its stakeholders to evaluate where they stand on their sustainability journey.
Individuals can also independently take the survey as a stakeholder of a company.
The survey is free and provides insight to companies to improve their sustainability profile with stakeholders. Over time, an analysis (normative data) will be made available so companies can understand how they stack up versus relevant competitors.
“The Sustainability Edge is loaded with real-world examples of sustainability delivering competitive advantage. It shares the responsibilities of individual businesses, employees, suppliers, consumers, government and NGOs in developing lasting environmental and business solutions. Unlike other sustainability books which are preachy and lack substance, The Sustainability Edge gives a roadmap for success.”
Robert Abernathy, CEO – Halyard
“If you are convinced that Sustainability is a top issue for your organization, you will often be perplexed about what you can do about it. The Sustainability Edge is a terrific guide for the such perplexed. The book synthesizes practical responses to the complex and nuanced challenges of Sustainability, to drive fundamental transformation. Read the book even if you are not convinced about the critical importance of Sustainability, you will get convinced.”
Anurag Behar, Chief Sustainability Officer of Wipro
Limited and CEO for Azim Premji Foundation
“The Sustainability Edge is a must-read for today’s business leaders. It shares best practices and practical examples of how leaders could embrace sustainability working with key stakeholders to grow their business.”
Mindy Lubber, President & CEO – CERES
“Businesses have to be financially viable and technologically competitive. That they have to be ecologically sustainable as well, is an idea whose time has come. Jagdish Sheth and Suhas Apte have written a seminal book which makes a persuasive case for viewing ecological sustainability as an integral part of corporate strategy and demonstrate vividly that it makes eminent business sense to do so. They discuss numerous examples of companies that have embraced this new thinking to their advantage and to that of their stakeholders. This is a book that CEOs all over the world will find very useful as they reorient their businesses to be anchored in ecological sustainability.”
Jairam Ramesh, Member of Parliament and former Cabinet Minister India.
“Apte and Sheth have produced a compelling framework combining big-picture insights with practical how to guidance. A valuable, inspiring read for business students and seasoned executives alike.”
P.J. Simmons, Author and Chair – Corporate Eco Forum
“The new frontier in marketing is certainly sustainability. Sheth and Apte have charted a roadmap to help business leaders gain a competitive edge based on creating sustainable value for all of the firm’s stakeholders – not just its shareholders. The Sustainability Edge encourages business leaders to integrate business and sustainability strategies, creating value and a better world.”
Ralph de la Vega, Vice Chairman of AT&T Inc. and CEO of AT&T Business Solutions and AT&T International
“The expectations of business – from consumers, employees, communities, and other key groups – are growing daily. The Sustainability Edge provides business leaders with a roadmap through this complicated world of stakeholder expectations. The guides on this journey, Apte and Sheth, know what they’re talking about – they’ve worked within, and outside, companies for decades, proving that sustainability is the next frontier of competitive business advantage.”
Andrew Winston, co-author of Green to Gold and author of The Big Pivot
The magnitude and number of challenges that businesses face today is unprecedented. To remain viable for the long run, the authors believe that the answer simple, “The next major competency that businesses will need to pursue and fully integrate to gain a sustainable and consistent competitive advantage will be sustainability itself.”
THE SUSTAINABILITY EDGE provides a step-by-step roadmap, showing how best-in- class companies work with multiple stakeholders to embrace a triple-bottom-line mindset (taking social, environmental, and financial concerns into account) in order to achieve long-term prosperity. Each chapter focuses on one of nine key stakeholder groups, providing guidance on how to engage and energize them to make sustainability an integral part of a company’s culture and its overall corporate strategy. The stakeholder groups are organized into three classifications based on the nature of their impact on businesses. The Sustainability Stakeholder Framework outlined in the book depicts these classifications in an easy-to-grasp graphic.
The advice is supported by in-depth research, examples and illuminating case studies from companies such as Clorox, IKEA, Kimberly-Clark, AT&T, Tata & Sons, Patagonia, Unilever, and Walmart.
The Stakeholder Sustainability Audit tool (provided in the book) allows companies to benchmark their activities. As sustainability is a journey, the key to success lies in improving your own scores over time.
If you are an individual and willing to share your perception of a company as a stakeholder, please click on Sign as an Individual Stakeholder™. You will be directed to fill-out a form and will receive a link to the appropriate survey via email.
If you are an administrator for a company and would like to use the tool to evaluate perceptions of your company with various stakeholders, please click on Sign as a Company Administrator™. You will be directed to fill-out a form to register your company and will receive a link to add your stakeholders and to administer the survey via email.