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…
Category: Sustainability
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…
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…
Mapping Corporate Sustainability Research
How has marketing strategy research focused on sustainability changed over time? This is an important question for researchers that also matters for those who use academic research but aren’t academics themselves. (Often there are not as many of these non-academic users of research as we’d like but one can always hope). To better understand marketing…
Is It Marketing? Who Cares?
Women traditionally face disadvantages in business. These can be especially pronounced in some societies. There is good reason to want to change this, not least the moral argument. That said, it is often helpful to go beyond the moral argument. What impact does empowering/hiring female micro-entrepreneurs have on society? Is it a zero-sum game, where…
Agreeing And Disagreeing At The Same Time
A second post on Conscious Capitalism. Reading John Mackey and Raj Sisodia’s book I found myself agreeing and disagreeing at the same time. As I said in the last post, I agree with the general idea and found much to like about concepts in the book. That said, I have to say that the tone…
Conscious Capitalism As Stakeholder Management
John Mackey’s book, Conscious Capitalism (written with Raj Sisodia) gives some interesting stories. It has inspired a movement so that is wonderful. The core idea in the book, mainly that stakeholders matter, is a great message. Next post I’ll explain that some things Mackey says don’t work for me. That said, if it does persuade…
Environmental Strategy And Competitive Advantage
Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston’s Green To Gold is a detailed look at the link between environmental strategy and competitive advantage. It is an ambitious book, seeking to reframe green issues as a way for businesses to drive success. This contrasts with green choices being things that are done out of a sense of duty….
Are We Making Any Progress On Sustainability?
I recently discussed Christopher Marquis’s HBR article “In Defense of Degrowth”, see here. As seems to happen in work from a degrowth perspective, Marquis’ article spent some time implying that we aren’t making any progress on sustainability. It was pretty depressing stuff. The idea seems to be that to motivate radical change we need to…
An Ineffective Defense Of Degrowth
One of the most interesting divides in the sustainability field is around degrowth. The idea of degrowth is hard for many business people to embrace. I must confess, as you will see, I find that the logic of the degrowth people often eludes me. As such, I was interested to see what Christopher Marquis had…
