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.
Chapter 1
A new framework for implementing corporate sustainability
Chapter 2
Leadership and strategy for corporate sustainability
Chapter 3
Organizing for sustainability
Chapter 4
Costing, capital investments, and the integration of social risk
Chapter 5
Performance evaluation and reward systems
Chapter 6
The foundations for identifying and measuring social, environmental, and economic impacts
Chapter 7
Implementing a social, environmental, and economic impact measurement system
Chapter 8
Improving corporate processes, products, and projects for corporate sustainability
Chapter 9
External sustainability reporting and verification
Chapter 10
The benefits of sustainability for corporations and society
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.