10 steps toward organizational sustainability

Author and consultant, Katrin Muff, shares an inspirational story from a recent day she spent facilitating an organization’s shift toward embracing sustainability and shared values.

Note: this article is part of The Transatlantic Debate Blog series, which forms a conversation between Dr. Katrin Muff and Dr. Kathy Miller Perkins on business sustainability. Read the previous post here.

What does it take to get an engineering company to embrace their care for a better world? Is it possible to provide access to the deeper meaning of sustainability to those who define it as either one-dimensional economic long-term survival, or as a predominantly ecological issue?

These were my questions as I prepared for my consulting day with a medium-sized traditional Swiss engineering company. The sustainability-fluent CEO had invited me to lead a workshop with his senior team, including the board, in a first conversation towards formulating a vision 2030 for a company that, in his view, had embrace sustainability. I am sharing here the step-by-step process of that very positive one-day workshop.

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Consumerism: Somebody Else’s Problem?

What are the consequences of our addiction to convenience? How can we move beyond the belief that ever-increasing consumption is equivalent to progress? Ahead of the publication of Somebody Else’s Problem: Consumerism, Sustainability and Design by Robert Crocker, foreword author – Stuart Walker – considers why it’s time for a shift in priorities.

I was sitting on a beach in a sheltered cove in Greece. I was on one of the lesser visited islands and this place was quite secluded – a lengthy walk from the nearest road. The water was calm, the sky was blue – it was a perfect scene. One could imagine Odysseus dropping anchor in such a cove, and wood nymphs playing among the shadows of the tamarisk trees that came down to the sand.

The Seven Drivers of Responsible Investment

Thomas Croft, Executive Director of the Steel Valley Authority and co-founder of Heartland Capital Strategies, shares his thoughts on the seven drivers of responsible investment.

A new wave of responsible investors is mobilising capital for smart buildings and affordable housing, civic infrastructure projects, wind and solar energy, and high-speed rail, hybrid buses and electric cars. They are sustainably rebuilding cities, renewing the industrial commons, growing the clean economy and fighting to make the ‘boss’ more accountable. 

Responsible Investment in the 21st Century

The fact that the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) now has almost fifteen hundred signatories including over three hundred asset owners and nearly one thousand asset managers provides evidence that responsible investment is increasingly seen as a standard part of mainstream investment practice. Over the past decade, PRI signatories have encouraged improvements in the environmental, social and governance performance of the companies in which they are invested, and they have made significant investments in areas such as renewable energy.

Greenleaf acquires Dō Sustainability books portfolio

Greenleaf Publishing, the leading specialist publisher in sustainability and responsible business, today announced that it has acquired the Dō Sustainability portfolio of books.

Dō Sustainability published 50 titles between late 2012 and 2015. The distinctive book series, branded as Dō Shorts, set out to be concise, professionally focused titles that “address one sustainability challenge at a time, and can be read in 90 minutes”. The Dō Shorts portfolio titles include a guide to the circular economy, the use of digital media in brand-building, integrated reporting, and how-to guides on producing a sustainability report, measuring a building’s energy use, and valuing natural and social capital.

Greenleaf author addresses UK Committee on Climate Change

A Greenleaf author has presented research from his forthcoming book, the first to analyze the psychosocial impacts of climate disruption, to a group of experts at the UK Committee on Climate Change (UK CCC).

Bob Doppelt, who is Executive Director of The Resource Innovation, spoke on the theories behind Transformational Resilience to the UK CCC team which advises on links between climate change mitigation and adaptation at the session organized by Greenleaf earlier this week.

Capitalism with a Human Face – A 2015 Update

To celebrate the publication of Globalization and Corporate Citizenship: The Alternative Gaze  (Edited by Malcolm McIntosh) we wanted to share Klaus M. Leisinger’s reflective update to his seminal article from 2007: Capitalism with a Human Face.

Why all of us should care about corporate culture

by Dr. Kathy Miller Perkins

Note: this article is part of The Transatlantic Debate Blog series, which forms a conversation between Dr. Katrin Muff and Dr. Kathy Miller Perkins on business sustainability. Read the previous post here.

On September 18, 2015 the Volkswagen Group received a notice of violation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States for intentionally programming their diesel engines to activate emissions controls only during laboratory testing.  According to the New York Times, this “diesel deception” could cause hundreds of deaths in the USA alone, due to the tons of pollutants released into the atmosphere.  And an October 28th headline in  the  New York Times proclaimed that “Volkswagen, hit by Emissions Scandal, Posts its First Loss in Years.”

Three prestigious organisations sign book series agreements with Greenleaf Publishing

Three major organisations that are producing significant research in the fields of business and environmental sustainability – The Textile Institute; Portland State University; World Association for Sustainable Development – have signed agreements with Greenleaf Publishing to produce future book series.

What if we considered border and boundaries issues as dilemmas and tensions?

by Dr. Katrin Muff

Note: this article is part of The Transatlantic Debate Blog series, which forms a conversation between Dr. Katrin Muff and Dr. Kathy Miller Perkins on business sustainability. Read the previous post here.

There is something hard and cold about borders and boundaries. Something exclusive, cutting-off and leaving out, separating the “us” and “them”. What if that was a way of operating that was simply outdated? Let us look at an alternative operating mode: one that builds on inclusion and cooperation and expresses itself through dilemmas and tensions, which need to be figured out, one step a time.