Strategy and Sustainability

Business and environmental sustainability are not natural bedfellows.Business is about making money; sustainability is about protecting the planet.Business is measured in months and quarters; sustainability often requiressignificant short term costs to secure a sometimes uncertain long-term benefit.To some activists, all executives are exploitative, selfish '1 percenters'. Tosome executives, all activists are irresponsible, unyieldingextremists.

And yet engaging with the issue isn't optional - all businesses musthave a strategy to deal with sustainability and, like any strategy, thisinvolves making choices.

Strategy and Sustainability encourages its readers to filter out the noise and make thosechoices in a hard-nosed and clear-eyed way. Rosenberg's nuanced and fact-basedpoint of view recognizes the complexity of the issues at hand andthe strategic choices businesses must make. He blends the work of some of theleading academic thinkers in the field with practical examples from a variety ofbusiness sectors and geographies and offers a framework with which SeniorManagement might engage with the topic, not (just) to save the planet butto fulfil their short, medium, and long-term responsibilities to shareholdersand other stakeholders.<