There are many ways that sustainable business can be financially successful. One of the first things that comes to mind is that consumers might be willing to pay more for products that are produced in a responsible way. Most consumers would prefer their products not to be made by child labor or to pollute the…
Author: neilbendle
Neil is an Associate Professor Marketing at the Terry College of Business, University of Georgia. He investigates the measurement of marketing performance, the accounting/marketing interface, and the impact of non-standard decision making in commercial and political markets.
Neil is the Chair of the Marketing Accountability Standards Board advisors. He is co-author of Marketing Metrics: The Manager’s Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance (3rd edition) Wharton School Press and is co-author of a cartoon book: Behavioural Economics for Kids.
Can Political Advocacy Be Profitable?
You often see people saying things such as ‘can’t they just stick to business?’ You even see claims that business will be more successful if they just cut out the politics. But is this correct? Can political advocacy be profitable? Corporate Political Advocacy And Negativity Bias Corporate Political Advocacy (CPA) is when a firm takes…
Small Differences And Critical Junctures
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson wrote “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty” just over a decade ago. It is a great book. Admittedly they don’t really need my opinion given they were given the Nobel Prize for their work, so I doubt that they were sitting around worrying what I thought about…
Does Doing Good Generate Loyalty?
One of the big questions in sustainable business is whether doing good can actually pay. This is often really tricky to establish. In an ideal world, we can run an experiment where we randomly assign some companies to do bad stuff and other identical companies to do good stuff and see what happens. Obviously, we…
What Type Of Green Are You?
Today I’m writing about a blog post. It seems a bit strange to blog about a blog but the classification it presents is very helpful and I’ve found many who don’t know about it. Alex Steffen’s classifications of people’s attitudes to environmental sustainability seeks to explain divides within the green community. So, what type of…
A Challenge With Managerial Articles
I’m a big fan of accessible research. People, rightly, get put off by a piece of work where the footnotes are longer than the main text. It is horrible to have your ability to concentrate on the ‘story’ that the researcher is trying to convey being constantly interrupted by intrusive footnotes. (The worst is when…
Do You Really Need A Dodgy Historical Example?
I initially trained as a historian (my Master of Arts is in Hellenistic Studies — the period just after Alexander the Great). As such, I’m fascinated by appeals to history to justify ideas in modern life. They can often be fun to read about; after all there are some great stories in history. The challenge…
Limits And Self-Limits
Giorgos Kallis, a proponent of Degrowth has a paper on limits. He links this to the work of Malthus (see here). Indeed, to my mind, one way to see Kallis’ work is an attempt to distance ecologists from Malthus. I don’t blame him for that aim. Kallis also investigates the nature of limits. He rejects…
Effective And Strategic Altrusism
A few years ago William MacAskill was all the rage. His effective altruism movement was riding high. Many of the rich and powerful endorsed his views. Things have gone off the boil a bit since. So, with an eye for being behind the trend today I’ll look his Doing Good Better ideas. I’ll also set…
Win-Wins Are Good For Stakeholders
A theme I see in some writing about sustainable business is that we need to get beyond win-wins. Although I get the point — business cases won’t deliver everything — I worry that this isn’t the right message. Win-wins are good for stakeholders, and we haven’t found all the win-wins yet. As such, I’m not…
