Resumen del libro

Reseña: Businesses around the world are increasingly turning to an exciting new branch of management known as corporate sustainability management (CSM) to help them better understand and manage their non-financial performance. Indeed, what we are witnessing is nothing less than the birth of a new management function. The main pillar of CSM is the Triple Bottom Line (TBL), which has been successful as an organizing principle but a disappointment in practice. This is largely due to the absence of 'sustainability context' in related measurement, management and reporting efforts, when for example the monitoring of a company's use of freshwater resources fails to take into account the size of related supplies. This book is the first to introduce a systematic means of including context in sustainability management and doing effective CSM. After making the case for why context matters, the book explains how to do context-based CSM by providing a stepwise, cyclical blueprint for how to practice it in any organization. This includes a template for context-based metrics compatible with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), as well as specific examples of metrics for each of the triple bottom lines. Practical examples of best practices are presented throughout, while simultaneously addressing key issues, such as how organizations can measure performance against context-based standards when consensus for such standards does not yet exist. Appendices include tools for developing and applying context-based metrics, as well as case studies taken from the practice of context-based CSM at two companies in the United States. This guide is the essential tool for business and organizational leaders in all sectors committed to improving their sustainability performance, with a particular emphasis on measurement, management and reporting.

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indice: Foreword by Mathis Wackernagel Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Context-Based Sustainability (a) A Brief History of Context (b) The Relevance of Capital Theory (c) Daly's Rules (d) The Triple Bottom Line (e) A Modern-Day Theory of Practice for CSM (f) Sustainability Context (g) Summary: Context-based Sustainability 2. Key Issues and Practice Implications of Context-Based Sustainability (a) How CBS interacts with Core Business Processes and Cycles (b) How CBS relates to Measurement and Reporting (c) GRI and the Prevalence of Context Free Sustainability (d) Summary: Key Issues and Practice Implications of CBS 3. How To Do CSM (a) Introduction (b) A case Study in CBS: Cabot Creamery Cooperative (c) A Methodology for Practitioners: the CSM Cycle (d) Practising the Cycle (e) Stakeholder Engagement (f) Summary: How to do CSM 4. Summary and Conclusions (a) General Summary of Context-based Sustainability (b) Ten Mini-Cases of CBS in Action (c) General Conclusions (d) Looking Ahead (e) Closing Words Appendix A: Approach to Sustainability at Cabot Creamery Cooperative Appendix B: Areas of Impact Checklist Appendix C: Formulating Duties and Obligations at Cabot Appendix D: Corporate Water Gauge(R) Appendix E: 2007 Water Sustainability Report at the Cabot Creamery Glossary References

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