Entrepreneurs, and the new ventures they lead, have been recognized as major engines for the creation of sustainable products and processes that can be used to solve many difficult social and environmental problems. Since venture capitalists focus on nurturing entrepreneurship and new ventures, they have an important role in the development, growth and maturation of these sustainable businesses. Venture capital is well suited to the inherent riskiness and longer evolution cycles of sustain...

Organizations are created to make a difference. But meaningful impact today does not guarantee that an organization will remain capable of making that difference tomorrow.Enduring Impact: Designing Organizations Built to Last in a Volatile World examines what leaders can do to build organizations capable not merely of achieving impact, but of sustaining, protecting and deepening that impact over time. Endurance is not the natural reward of success; it is a distinct...

In Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities, renowned legal scholar Alan S. Gutterman offers a profound and comprehensive exploration of one of the most urgent and often overlooked dimensions of global human rights. This essential volume traces the evolution of the disability rights movement, critically examines the international legal frameworks that underpin protections for disabled persons, and highlights the ongoing challenges they face across all facets of life—from educatio...

In Businesses and Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Alan Gutterman provides a compelling and timely roadmap for how businesses of all sizes and sectors can actively promote and protect the human rights of persons with disabilities. Drawing on principles from international human rights law, corporate social responsibility, and disability justice, the book moves beyond compliance and charity to make the ethical, legal, and business case for full inclusion. This work offers ...

For a long time, a significant potential impediment for sustainability initiatives that required investment of resources in activities that may appear to be unrelated to the traditional focus of corporations on maximizing profits for the stockholders was the fiduciary duties of the directors of the corporation. However, as time has gone by, support has developed and increased for expanding the beneficiaries of the directors' fiduciary duties beyond shareholders to other constituencies, or ...

Everyone, including people with disabilities, has the right to a basic standard of living adequate for their own health and well-being and for their families including access to employment and decent work, financial services and economic resources, adequate food (freedom from hunger and access to nutritious food), clothing, clean water and sanitation (essential for health and hygiene), secure housing (safe, habitable shelter with access to services like water, sanitation and electricity an...

This book provides readers with a basic understanding of sustainable finance and impact investing including history, definitions of impact, current trends and drivers, future challenges, and an overview of the key players in the global impact ecosystem.The term impact investing first appeared in 2008. Today the most commonly used definition is investing made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial re...

This book provides an extensive introduction to research on growth-oriented entrepreneurship,,/b>A number of different methods have been used to describe growth-oriented entrepreneurship; however, there is a consensus that there is a particularly desirable form of entrepreneurship that seeks to create and scale up businesses that will drive productivity growth, create new employment, increase innovation, promote business internationalization and achieve sus...

This book serves as an introduction to sustainability standards and instruments and includes chapters on initiatives of governmental and intergovernmental bodies, sectoral CSR commitments, CSR-related reporting and management standards, and securities exchanges and regulators.It is becoming increasingly clear that firms can contribute to their own wealth and to overall societal wealth by considering the effect they have on the world at large when making decisions a...

Leadership is a universal phenomenon that has been consistently identified as playing a critical role in the success or failure of organizations. This book begins with an overview of the history and evolution of leadership studies and traces some of the major “schools” of leadership studies that have attracted the interest of researchers since the 19th century. Also discussed are the various theories and models of leadership that have emerged over that period.The author introduces ...

According to a global report on ageism issued in 2021 by the World Health Organization and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, every second person in the world is believed to hold ageist attitudes, which has led to poorer physical and mental health and reduced quality of life for older persons as a result of social isolation and loneliness, greater financial insecurity among the growing older population and cost societies billions of dollars each year in the form of excess an...

This book traces the foundations for sustainable entrepreneurship, beginning with sustainability, ecopreneurship, and social entrepreneurship.Sustainability has become a multidimensional concept that extends beyond environmental protection to economic development and social equity-in other words, entrepreneurship guided and measured by the three pillars of the triple bottom line. Sustainable entrepreneurship is the continuing commitment by businesses to behave ethi...