Businesses promote their environmental awareness through green buildings, eco-labels, sustainability reports, industry pledges and clean technologies. When are these symbols wasteful corporate spin, and when do they signal authentic environmental improvements? Based on twenty years of research, three rich case studies, a strong theoretical model and a range of practical applications, this book provides the first systematic analysis of the drivers and consequences of symbolic corporate envi...

Sustainability assessment is now emerging as a more transparent, comprehensive, integrated and far-sighted approach to decision making. Its basic demand is that all significant undertakings must make a positive contribution to sustainability. To apply this test, decision makers need criteria based on the core requirements of sustainability and the particularities of the context. As well, they need appropriately designed public processes; guidance on the weighing of alternatives, trade-offs...

The essential guide to creating an organization ofhigh integrity and superior performanceWith the high-profile corporate scandals that have taken place in recent years, corporate ethics are more important to a business than ever before. The failure of ethical leadership in an organization is very destructive-it demoralizes the workforce, breeds public distrust, and ultimately results in organizational decay.Based on more than two decades of consulting, teac...

Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity, a definitive manifestation of the well-worn links between progress and devastation. This book explores the complex relationship that the corporate world has with climate change and examines the central role of corporations in shaping political and social responses to the climate crisis. The principal message of the book is that despite the need for dramatic economic and political change, corporate capitalism continues to rely o...

The single best description of the inside workings of contemporary universities.Witty and insightful, How Universities Work is destined to be an essential handbook for anyone wanting to understand universities in the United States. John V. Lombardi gives readers an insider’s view of the academy, describing the structure, logic, dynamics, and operational styles of both public and private institutions of higher education.Lombardi defines and describe...

The definitive introduction to organizational economics, with contributions by leaders in the fieldIn even the most market-oriented economies, most economic transactions occur not in markets but inside managed organizations, particularly business firms. Organizational economics seeks to understand the nature and workings of such organizations and their impact on economic performance. This landmark book assembles the leading figures in organizational economics to pr...

Most managers know very little about the technology they introduce into their firms, often preferring to leave such decisions to a small band of technological 'experts'. As a result large amounts of time and money are often wasted on inappropriate and inefficient systems. The cost of retraining and reorganising can also be prohibitive if the new technology does not deliver the desired results.In a business environment where technology is of increasing importance, the non-technical m...

Introducing the key concepts in corporate social responsibility, the authors bring together the essential issues relevant to the responsible management of businesses, not-for-profit organizations and government.With detailed coverage and cross-referencing for each concept and over 50 concepts introduced, this guide to both the theory and implementation of CSR and sustainability, provides an indispensable reference for any student of the subject.Key concepts include: account...

Philanthropy – the use of private resources for public purposes – is undergoing a transformation, both in practice and as an emerging field of study.Expectations of what philanthropy can achieve have risen significantly in recent years, reflecting a substantial, but uneven, increase in global wealth and the rolling back of state services in anticipation that philanthropy will fill the void. In addition to this, experiments with entrepreneurial and venture philanthropy are producing...

Strategic decisions deal with the long-term direction of the firm and its main activities, usually the responsibility of the top managers in an organization. Because the firm is the critical unit of analysis in strategy, we need to define what firms are, how they create value, and what their organizational boundaries are in order to understand their overall performance. However, this must be done in a manner that is most useful for strategic analysis and decision making. In other words, we...

Building the Responsible Enterprise provides students and practitioners with a practical, yet academically rooted, introduction to the state-of-the-art in sustainability and corporate social responsibility.The book consists of four parts, highlighting different aspects of corporate responsibility. Part I discusses the context in which corporate responsibility occurs. Part II looks at three critical issues: the development of vision at the individual and organizational leve...

Macroeconomic research on human capital - the stock of human capabilities and knowledge - has been extensively published but to date the literature has lacked a comprehensive analysis of human capital within the organization. The Oxford Handbook of Human Capital has been designed to fill that gap, providing an authoritative, inter-disciplinary, and up to date survey of relevant concepts, research areas, and applications. Specially commissioned contributions from over 40 authors re...