THE SUSTAINABLE ENTERPRISE FIELDBOOK
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  INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW​

  • Discussion Questions for the Chapter

  • ​​HR’s  Role  in  Building  a  Sustainable  Enterprise:  Insights  From  Some  of  the  World’s  Best  Companies
  • Reimagining the 21st century employment relationship (TMH 3rd Ed Chapter 40):

  •  HR’s  Role  in  Building  a  Sustainable  Enterprise:  Insights  From  Some  of  the  World’s  Best  Companies

Supplemental Resources

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Recommended Articles​
  • Climate Change & Business:What Every MBA Needs to Know: “Climate change will affect almost every industry in coming decades—whether that’s through direct risks to physical assets or through supply chain disruptions or reputational pressure from customers or employees,” says Katie Kross, managing director of Fuqua’s Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment, which produced the briefing.  “There’s money to be made and lost.  Every MBA student today should be thinking about where the opportunities will be, and how they will adapt their investment portfolios and operations in the future.”
    The 6-page briefing document, called “Climate Change & Business: What Every MBA Needs to Know,” summarizes the business risks and opportunities related to climate change in a concise, accessible format for MBA students.  Drawing on examples from Toyota, Starbucks, and Amazon as well as research reports from Blackrock, Munich Re, and others, the briefing asserts, “The impacts of climate change will affect where offices and manufacturing facilities are located, how leaders plan for and respond to crises, how investors think about the cost of capital, how customers perceive the brands they buy, where and how raw materials are sourced, and even, potentially, what materials are available for new products in the future.”​
  • On the Introduction Chapter Page 1 of the book the authors address the importance of understanding nature's resources, and proceed to answer the question 'what can be done to gain more connectivity to the world we live in?' in subsequent chapters.   "While we are making awesome advances in creating and applying highly complex technologies to improve our quality of life, we are also severely damaging the essential resources that make life on Earth possible. This is the greatest human irony of all time. We cannot develop much less sustain our lives and economies without the resources provided by Earth's natural environment. Though they may seem abundant, those resources are finite. Consuming them at the rate we are doing is unsustainable by all measures. If we are to sustain ourselves, we must make different choices, changing consumption habits and innovating so that we work well within the boundaries of our single, shared planet. We can invent businesses and lifestyles that align with planetary realities so that we will thrive. People, planet, profits are inexorably intertwined. It's up to each of us to pay attention, lead when we can, and be thoughtful, aware contributors when others are leading. We do our best when we work together.  It will take more than inventing new technologies, though. First, we must reconnect our values to what really matters, that deep, visceral understanding of our integral connection with the essence of Earth's bounty: water, air food-nurturing soil, energy among those resources. Writing and rereading this last sentence, it seems too obvious to even state. Yet, our actions, individually and as societies, show we have been taking these absolutely essential resources for granted, giving them no more than minimal care on our part. How have we gotten ourselves so disconnected in a world where we have so much, and what can we do about it?"  A landmark global assessment warns that the window is closing to safeguard biodiversity and a healthy planet. Yet solutions are in sight One million species at risk of extinction : ........Based on a review of about 15,000 scientific and government sources and compiled by 145 expert authors from 50 countries, the global report is the first comprehensive look in 15 years at the state of the planet’s biodiversity. This report includes, for the first time, indigenous and local knowledge as well as scientific studies. The authors say they found overwhelming evidence that human activities are behind nature’s decline. They ranked the major drivers of species decline as land conversion, including deforestation; overfishing; bush meat hunting and poaching; climate change; pollution; and invasive alien species.​

PictureClick on Picture for - The Role of Business of COP21 Blog
  • ​HR’s  Role  in  Building  a  Sustainable  Enterprise:  Insights  From  Some  of  the  World’s  Best  Companies : Sustainability—balancing  social,  environ-mental,  and  economic  factors  for  short-  and  long-term  performance—is  a  critical  issue  for  the  world  and  for  business.  We  interviewed  key  executives  at  nine  of  the  world’s  most  “sustainable”  companies  to  examine  important  issues  about  their  sustainability  journeys  and  the  role  Human  Resources  is  playing.  
  • AMA Study-Creating a Sustainable Future : This  report  examines  the  history  of  the  sustainability  paradigm,  the  factors that  are  making  the  paradigm  more  compelling,  the  degree  to  which  organizations value  and  engage  in  sustainability-related  practices,  and  the  future  outlook  for  sustainability.  American  Management  Association  commissioned  the  Human Resource  Institute  to  conduct  the  global  survey  on  which  the  study  is  based.  
  • Sizing  the  prize (PwC 2017): What’s  the  real  value  of  AI  for  your  business  and  how  can  you  capitalize? Artificial  intelligence  (AI)  is  a  source  of  both  huge  excitement  and  apprehension.  What  are  the  real  opportunities  and  threats  for  your  business?  Drawing  on  a  detailed  analysis  of  the  business  impact  of  AI,  we  identify  the  most  valuable  commercial  opening  in  your  market  and  how  to  take  advantage  of  them.
  • Reimagining the 21st century employment relationship (TMH 3rd Ed Chapter 40): Aligning  Human  Resources  and  Corporate  Social  Responsibility  Through  Employment  Policies  and  Practices. In  this  chapter,  we  apply  a  multifunctional,  transdisciplinary  approach,  and  consider  human  resources,  law,  and  management,  and  particularly  corporate  social  responsibil-ity,  to  start  reconceptualizing  the  notion  of  “employee  CSR”  and  how  it  should  be  put  into  practice.  
  • Ethical Corp State of Responsible Business 2016: Drawing  on  the  views  of  those  who  know  it  best,  Ethical  Corporation’s  second  State  of  Responsible  Businessreport  provides  up-to-date  insight  into  how  corporate  sustainability  is  viewed,  organised,  and  prioritised.  
  • Future of Work 2016 HRPS: This webinar documents presents - Revealing  insights  from  recent  research, The  implications  for  the  future  of  work & Scenarios  and  real  world  examples​

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  • ​The Science of Scarcity (2015):  A  behavioral  economist’s  fresh  perspectives  on  poverty.  “The  mistake  we  make  in  managing  scarcity  is  that  we  focus  on  one  side  of  the  calculus,”  .......  The  cost  of  making  changes  to  existing  policies  is  easy  to  measure,  but  the  cost  of  not  doing  so  is  much  harder  to  quantify.  This  is  what  the  science  of  scarcity  attempts  to  gauge,  Mullainathan  and  Shafir  maintain:  how  situations,  programs,  and  policies  can  deplete,  tax,  or  build  up  psychological  resources  that  are  every  bit  as  important  as  the  physical  ones  that  fill—or  empty—our  coffers.  
  • Human Rights Report 2017: Establishes a Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen, Creates an Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Accountability of Private Military and Security Companies, and Extends Mandates on Burundi, Myanmar, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Sudan and Somali. 
  • IPCC Climate Change Report 2014: The  Synthesis  Report  (SYR),  constituting  the  final  product  of  the  Fifth  Assessment  Report  (AR5)  of  the  Intergovernmental  Panel  on  Climate  Change  (IPCC),  is  published  under  the  title  Climate  Change  2014.  This  report  distils,  synthesizes  and  integrates  the  key  findings  of  the  three  Working  Group  contributions  –  The  Physical  Science  Basis,  Impacts,  Adaptation,  and  Vulnerability  and  Mitigation  of  Climate  Change. ​This  document  is  the  result  of  coordinated  and  carefully  connected  cross  Working  Group  efforts  to  ensure  coherent  and  comprehensive  information  on  various  aspects  related  to  climate  change. 
  • Millennium Development Goals 2015: At  the  beginning  of  the  new  millennium,  world  leaders  gathered  at  the  United  Nations  to  shape  a  broad  vision  to  fight  poverty  in  its  many  dimensions.  That  vision,  which  was  translated  into  eight  Millennium  Development  Goals  (MDGs).............The  data  and  analysis  presented  in  this  report  prove  that,  with  targeted  interventions,  sound  strategies,  adequate  resources  and  political  will,  even  the  poorest  countries  can  make  dramatic  and  unprecedented  progress.  
  • Book Excerpts-Overfished Ocean Strategy:  Resources  are  being  depleted  at  an  alarming  rate,  and  the  cost  of  raw  materials  is  rising  dramatically.  The  linear,  throwaway  economy in  which  we  extract  resources  at  one  end  and  throw  them  away  at  the  other is  rapidly  coming  to  an  end.  Nadya  Zhexem-bayeva  argues  that,  as  a  result,  businesses  need  to  make  resource  scarcity  their  primary  strategic  consideration,  not  just  a  concern  for  their  “green”  divisions. In  this  chapter  from  Overfished  Ocean  Strategy,  she    offers  five  essential  principles  for  innovating  in  this new  reality.  Through  examples  from  real  companies,  she  shows  how  businesses  can  find  new  opportunities  by  taking  the  old,  linear  model  and  turning  it  into a circular one​.  In another article,  she states "The  art  of  turning  resource  scarcity  into  competitive  advantage  is  what  I  call  Over-fished  Ocean  Strategy".
  • Papa Francesco encyclica:​ In this 192-page paper "On Care for Our Common Home," first released in 2015, Pope Francis discusses the inextricable link and interdependence of humanity and the environment. In particular, he proposes a new and deeper partnership between science and religion to combat human-driven climate change. Significantly, this position brought him immediately into conflict with skeptics, whom he chided for their “denial” of scientific truths. 

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  • Six Americas 2012: Yale/George  Mason SixAmericas,  Sept.  20122 Executive  Summary. In  2008,  using  nationally  representative  survey  data  on  global  warming  beliefs,  behaviors  and  policy  preferences in  the  United  States,  we  identified  six  distinct  groups  of  Americans  “Global  Warming’s  Six  Americas.”Since  then,  we  have  tracked  the  size  of  these  six  audiences and  the  ongoing  evolution  of  their  beliefs,  behaviors  and  policy  preferences through  a  series  of  national  surveys.
  • The road from Principles to Practice 2015: The road from principles to practice: Today's challenges for business in respecting human rights is  a  report  by The  Economist Intelligence Unit sponsored  by a  group of organisations including governments, business groups, non-governmental organisations,  multinational  companies,  and  law and  auditing firms. The study explores the views of  businesses worldwide on their  responsibility  to  respect  human  rights  and  the  ways in which these  obligations  are  carried  out.
  • The Shareholder Value Myth:  In  The  Shareholder  Value  Myth:  How  Putting  Shareholders  First  Harms  Investors,  Corporations,  and  the  Public, Lynn  Stout  discusses  how  the  traditional  managerial  focus  on  the  shareholder’s  interest  can  be  harmful  for  the  corporation  and  even  for  shareholders  themselves  and  how  it  is  more  valuable  to  spread  the  focus  over  several  objectives.
  • The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2017:  In adopting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, world leaders resolved to free humanity from poverty, secure a healthy planet for future generations, and build peaceful, inclusive societies as a foundation for ensuring lives of dignity for all. This collective journey has at its heart a promise to leave no one behind. The 2030 Agenda is deliberately ambitious and transformational, with a set of 17 integrated and indivisible Sustainable Development Goals and targets to guide us. Crucially, it is a universal agenda, applying to all countries; even the richest have yet to fully ensure women’s rights, conquer inequality or safeguard the environment.
  • UN Impact Brochure: The 2017 UN Global Compact Progress Report takes stock of how UN Global Compact participants are embedding the Ten Principles in their strategies and operations to ensure that business activities are aligned with the universal values and declarations of the United Nations. And for the first time we also review how businesses are contributing to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
  • Wasted Food: This paper examines the inefficiencies in the U.S. food system from the farm to the fork to the landfill.  By identifying food losses at every level of the food supply chain, this report provides the latest recommendations and examples of emerging  solutions, such as making “baby carrots” out of carrots too bent (or“curvy”) to meet retail standards. By increasing the efficiency of  our food system, we can make better use of our natural resources, provide financial saving opportunities along the entire supply  chain, and enhance our ability to meet food demand. 
  • Energy  Darwinism (ZTGI Report): Why a Low Carbon Future Doesn’t Have to Cost the Earth. In  this  report we examine the likely costs of inaction in terms of the potential liabilities from climate change to see whether we can afford not to act. We also examine whether the world canafford to act, by comparing the incremental costs of following a low carbon path to global GDP.

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  • About the Book
    • Meet Our Team
    • Testimonials
    • Chapter Abstracts
    • Webinars
  • Living Fieldbook
    • Chapter Supplements >
      • Introduction
      • Chapter 1
      • Chapter 2
      • Chapter 3
      • Chapter 4
      • Chapter 5
      • Chapter 6
      • Chapter 7
      • Chapter 8
      • Chapter 9
    • Learning Guide >
      • Learning Guide Chapter 1
      • Learning Guide Chapter 2
      • Learning Guide Chapter 3
      • Learning Guide Chapter 4
      • Learning Guide Chapter 5
      • Learning Guide Chapter 6
      • Learning Guide - Chapter 7
  • Building New bridges to the Future
    • Personal Level
    • Local Level
    • Global Level
    • Blog
    • Events
    • Media Mentions
  • Personal Sustainability Guide