Greenleaf Journal to be included in ABDC Journal Quality List

We are delighted to announce that the journal Business, Peace and Sustainable Development has been ranked by the Australian Business Deans Council in its Journal Quality list as a category C journal.  The ABDC seeks to promote value and excellence in business research across universities, governments and industry throughout Australia and New Zealand.

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Book Review – Thinking the Twenty-First Century: Ideas for the New Political Economy

“Thinking the Twenty-First Century is a magnificent, unruly, exuberant book.” – Richard Little

Tony Judt, in the valedictory conversations with Timothy Snyder whose title is echoed in this book, said that the task of the public intellectual in the face of growing global insecurities would no longer be ‘to imagine better worlds but rather to think how to prevent worse ones’. There is no way out, ‘the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant’ and it is all we can hope for that a handful will survive to start again.

And yet – both books, by their very existence, suggest the contrary – that, in extremis, it is faith in a better world in a distant and unknowable future that validates a life – that there is no reason to suppose that there is a shortage of better worlds to come.

Of course, some of those better worlds may not feature Facebook and buttered crumpets. It remains to be seen whether we will be dragged screaming and kicking to a sustainable economy by an angry earth, or achieve it through reason and collaboration. This book is all for the latter and offers us a comprehensive a guide to the ideas that will help us do it.

The Dark Side 2: Review

Corporate responsibility adviser Adrian Henriques

By Adrian Henriques, Visiting Professor of Accountability and CSR, Middlesex University Business School

Review of the book, The Dark Side 2: Critical Cases on the Downside of Business

The importance of a rounded look at CSR cannot be over-estimated. If CSR is to be more than a PR programme, then it is necessary to examine how things have gone badly as well as how things have gone well. For academic research and teaching, it is vital. There is no shortage of positive case studies out there, but there is a dearth of critical ones. In 2009 Raufflet and Mills produced the first volume of the Dark Side, containing case studies that illustrated how things can go wrong between businesses and society. Now, four years later, here is another volume of critical case studies.

Natural Corporate Management, a truly fresh perspective on individual and corporate behavior

Review of  Natural Corporate Management: From the Big Bang to Wall Street by William C. Frederick

Rare are books that begin with the Big Bang and march sequentially through a litany of seemingly unrelated natural phenomena including energy, life itself, genetics, and the rise of Homo sapiens. Add to this Darwinian survival and market competition, and you have Natural Corporate Management, a truly fresh perspective on individual and corporate behavior.

The novelty of the examples and logic is indisputable. Each natural science phenomenon is presented as more than just an analogy. Frederick (emer., Univ. of Pittsburgh), author of numerous works including Corporation, Be Good! (CH, Jul’06, 43-6635), treats them directly or indirectly as the causes for modern business practices. He offers a natural-world evolutionary perspective of why organizations exist and how they function.

Mother nature doesn’t care about your green ranking

“The book is grounded in a truth too many of us ignore” – Gil Friend

Gil Friend, author of The Truth about Green Business, introduces a passage that debunks sustainability ratings from Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability, by John R. Ehrenfeld and Andrew J. Hoffman.

John Ehrenfeld is a friend and valued mentor, yet because I am one of those consultants that he says “tout sustainability as the new way toward profits and market share,” I sometimes find myself in his crosshairs. That can be a sobering experience, but I’m grateful for his fierce and honest critique, which is reprinted below from a new book that marries Ehrenfeld’s writings and his interviews with his former student Andy Hoffman. The book is grounded in a truth that too many of us ignore: Superficial tweaks to business as usual will do little to transform the structural and infrastructural fallacies of the modern global economy.

In responsible business, we like our heroes and villains

“On first opening the book, I instantly warmed to the subject” – Mike Tuffrey

Review of Corporate Responsibility Coalitions by David Grayson and Jane Nelson.

In the brouhaha surrounding the great debates on responsible business practice, the focus always seems to be on what individual companies are doing and which CEOs are the leaders – or on the ropes. Perhaps that’s inevitable. We like our heroes and villains, to spot the good guys and condemn the baddies.

This book helpfully reminds us that actually the big issues transcend any one company or hero leader. The deep-rooted sustainable solutions we need are usually to be found through cross-industry, indeed cross sector, working. That means most progress is made through collective action in alliances and coalitions.

In fact that’s a message at least one of the current individual ‘heroes’ would heartedly endorse – as Unilever’s Paul Polman keeps saying: “If we achieve our own plans but no one joins us on the journey, we’ll have failed.”

“If you want to have a better understanding of how CSR really works, this is your book” – Review

Tim Mohin, Director of Corporate Responsibility, AMD

Reading Tim Mohin’s book “Changing Business from the Inside Out: A Treehugger’s Guide to Working in Corporations” was a refreshing experience. There are many great books that discuss every possible element of CSR and sustainability, but this is the first one I am familiar with that is written from the perspective of a CSR practitioner.

Therefore, instead of theories, academic models and case studies, in Mohin’s book we get to learn about the real world of CSR, which is very different from the theoretical world of CSR. After all, how many CSR books tell you that the most important skill you’ll need to succeed as a CSR manager is communication because basically “you lead a function where you have broad responsibility for issues that you have almost no authority to control”? Well, this book does.

“A surprising discovery of CSR undertakings in the developing world” – Review

Wayne Visser

This book is a journey of two kinds. First, it is an autobiography of Dr. Wayne Visser, one of the world’s top 100 thought leaders in Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility, and a Top 100 Global Sustainability Leader. Second, the book presents the recent evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or – as Dr. Visser has coined the term – Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility.

The Quest for Sustainable Business takes the reader on a voyage from the African continent to Europe, then to Asia Pacific and the Americas with the final destination the United Kingdom. Incidentally, this route reflects the life journey of the author, who was born in Zimbabwe and spent his childhood in South Africa, and who now lives in London.

“The Map of Meaning is an excellent resource for employees, leaders and faculty” – Review

Author Lani Morris (right) at the launch of The Map of Meaning in Brisbane.

BOOK REVIEW
The Map of Meaning: A Guide to Sustaining Our Humanity in the World of Work
By Marjolein Lips-Wiersma and Lani Morris (Greenleaf Publishing 2011)

The Map of Meaning skilfully marries idealism and practicality. Growing out of 15 years of research and application, the book explicates both a theory and its practical use. Lips-Wiersma and Morris begin by laying out their Holistic Development Model, demonstrating, first, how individuals can use it to create and sustain meaningful work. They then move on to showing how organisations can improve morale, employee engagement, productivity and profit by attending to what makes work meaningful.

Review of The Quest for Sustainable Business: It’s not the destination, it’s the glory of the ride

Wayne Visser: “Travelling to a new country, and soaking up the sights and sounds of a different culture, gives me a real high.”

Wayne Visser has had a peripatetic career. He rambled about as a consultant, visiting professor and lecturer, and wayfaring author. He wrote 15 books, including three volumes of poetry, in less than 10 years – counting the stretches of time he spent acquiring academic degrees in human ecology and corporate social responsibility.