Understanding Sustainability Performance in Business Organizations
Implications for the Sustainability Service Industry
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Book Description
This book sheds new light on the role businesses can play in contributing to sustainability objectives, and how governance actors can better encourage their contributions.
Jean-Pierre Imbrogiano introduces and empirically investigates the concept of sustainability performance in businesses, which reveals how achieving social and environmental objectives is experienced within business organizations. He focuses on supply chain management as a key part in this process and looks at how this has evolved to become a vital sector in the global business landscape. He further considers the current practices of governance actors which aim to enable sustainability performance in businesses. Labelled as a ‘sustainability service industry’, these actors include international, national, and industry sustainability initiatives, sustainability standard setters, business consultancies and rating agencies, as well as sustainable supply chain managers in corporations. Overall, this book calls for a conceptual reorientation in business sustainability scholarship, and points towards a challenging agenda for change in the sustainability service industry.
Understanding Sustainability Performance in Business Organizations will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable business, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, sustainable supply chain management, and sustainability governance.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations. Preface. Abbreviations. 1. Why Understanding Sustainability Performance in Business Organizations is a Prerequisite to Addressing the Grand Challenges of Our Time 2. Contingency in Business Sustainability Research and in the Sustainability Service Industry: A Problematization and Research Agenda 3. Research Background: The Sustainability Service Industry, Sustainable Supply Chain Management, and the Governance of the Value Chain ‘From Mine to Car’ 4. An Interpretative Approach to Research Sustainability Performance in Business Organizations 5. Five Different Ways in which Sustainability Performance Occurs in Business Organizations 6. Toward a Theory of Sustainability Performance in Businesse Organizations 7. Implications for the Sustainability Service Industry 8. Where to From Here? Index
Author(s)
Biography
Jean-Pierre Imbrogiano is a DAAD PRIME fellow at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany, and Laval University, Canada, as well as a visiting scholar to the University of Helsinki, Finland. He gained his PhD from the University of Queensland, Australia, where he conducted his research at the Sustainable Minerals Institute. His research interests lie in businesses’ sustainability performance, the governance of business sustainability, and in socio-cultural foundations of (un-)sustainable development.
Reviews
"As sustainability is moving center stage, we need to better understand how to evaluate the social and environmental performance of companies and the contribution of the fast-growing industry sustainability service providers. This book will be a source of inspiration for scholars working on such questions."
Professor Guido Palazzo, University of Lausanne
"This book represents a novel and highly relevant contribution to conceptualizing sustainability performance in businesses. A reading recommendation for business sustainability consultants, scholars, and practitioners alike!"
Associate Professor Romana Rauter, University of Graz
"Implementing effective sustainability business strategies is a major challenge of our time. This book addresses the challenge spot on and demands academics and non-academics to think in new directions."
Tobias Kind-Rieper, Global Lead Mining & Metals, WWF
"With empirical rigor and trenchant analysis, Dr. Imbrogiano considers the interplay of the sustainability service sector with the automotive industry. The book's publication is particularly timely, as we transition to low emission electric cars and need a primer on dealing with a new set of complex supply chains."
Professor Saleem H. Ali, University of Delaware
"Jean-Pierre has produced a rigorous framework for describing five axes of sustainability performance. Companies already engaging comprehensively in sustainable sourcing and supply chains will recognize them, and they are of assistance to those that are just starting on this journey."
Julian Fox, Director Nature Programmes, Tetra Pak