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  3. Organizations and the Natural Environment

This series, with the support of the Group of Research on Organizations and the Natural Environment (GRONEN), presents cutting-edge research in three general areas, business environmental management, business sustainability and business implications of environmental policy. The purpose of the series is to build bridges between scholarly work and practice by stressing the managerial and policy-making implications of research. The books published in the series will therefore be of interest not only to academics but also to business managers and policy-makers. They would also be a good companion to the growing number of courses on environmental and sustainability management offered in business schools around the world.

  • General Editors: Jorge E. Rivera, The George Washington University, J. Alberto Aragón-Correa, University of Surrey
  • Editorial Boards: Nicole Darnall, Arizona State University, Magali Delmas, University of California, Los Angeles, Thomas Lyon, University of Michigan, Ans Kolk, University of Amsterdam, Alfred Marcus, University of Minnesota, Michael Toffel, Harvard University, Christopher Weible, University of Colorado, Denver

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10 results in Organizations and the Natural Environment

Regenerative Strategies
  • Exploring New Sustainable Business Models to Face the Climate Emergency
  • Gregorio Martín-de Castro, Javier Amores-Salvadó
  • Foreword by Sanjay Sharma
  • Published online:
    28 March 2024
    Print publication:
    04 April 2024
  • In the current climate emergency, it is no longer enough for businesses to simply employ environmental strategy typologies focused on 'greening the business' and maintaining the 'business-as-usual' logic. Gregorio Martín-de Castro and Javier Amores-Salvadó argue that disruptive business models and solutions are now required, and they propose a new regenerative strategy linking climate science to management studies. The main features of this strategy are:cutting-edge climate science solutions (capturing and utilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide to produce net-zero or net-negative emissions and positive environmental externalities) and a redefined firm purpose under an ecological, ethical and moral paradigm (integrating ecoemotional wealth, environmental performance, systemic socioecological resilience, wider stakeholder management and a very long-term perspective). They demonstrate that, by applying this strategy, companies can not only reduce their negative environmental externalities and create positive environmental externalities, but also reverse current environmental degradation through a new sustainable capitalism.

Environmental Strategy for Businesses
  • Matthew Potoski
  • Published online:
    23 February 2023
    Print publication:
    02 March 2023
  • There are as many ways for companies to improve their environmental performance as there are stakeholders who are calling upon them to do so. If companies make the right choices, they can satisfy their stakeholders, enhance their financial position, and help address the climate crisis. The wrong choices invite stakeholder scorn and risk wasting valuable resources. What problems do companies need to solve, and how can they solve them, to achieve the promise of shared value environmental performance? This book presents a framework for companies to design, develop and implement an effective environmental strategy that identifies environmental improvements, enables value exchanges with stakeholders, and improves competitive advantage. The step-by-step guide through this framework, illustrated with many examples, shows the promise of environmental initiatives that align with strategic opportunities and resources and the pitfalls of those that do not.

Ecolabels, Innovation, and Green Market Transformation
  • Learning to LEED
  • Daniel C. Matisoff, Douglas S. Noonan
  • Published online:
    27 October 2022
    Print publication:
    03 November 2022
  • This book develops a path to decarbonization through a process of Green Market Transformation. Matisoff and Noonan assess the scope and impact of the green building movement, which is working towards decarbonizing a sector that accounts for more than a third of global carbon emissions. They describe the role of the movement in addressing sustainability challenges within the building and construction sector, and suggest new ways of marshalling markets through the voluntary efforts of industry to shift society towards a better future. Matisoff and Noonan tell the success story of green industry, seen through the lens of green buildings and ecolabels. By combining case studies with recent interdisciplinary scholarship, the authors provide a compelling narrative of the opportunities and limitations of reliance on voluntary approaches to regulation.

Business Adaptation to Climate Change
  • Jorge E. Rivera, Chang Hoon Oh, Jennifer Oetzel, Viviane Clement
  • Published online:
    28 April 2022
    Print publication:
    12 May 2022
  • This book seeks to advance the understanding of how businesses may adapt to climate change trends. Specifically, it focuses on two general research questions: Firstly, how do businesses adapt to chronic slow-onset nature adversity conditions linked to climate change? Secondly, how do firms adapt to weather-related natural disasters exacerbated by climate change? In the first part of the book, the authors develop a conceptual framework in response to these questions. In the second part, they test this framework using multiple empirical studies involving large data analyses of: (a) the U.S. western ski industry adaptation to warmer temperatures, and (b) the effect of natural disasters on the foreign investment of multinational corporations around the world. This book will interest management and public policy students and scholars researching successful business climate change adaptation strategies, as well as business and non-profit organization leaders and policy makers involved in developing and promoting such effective strategies.

Community Disaster Recovery
  • Moving from Vulnerability to Resilience
  • Deserai A. Crow, Elizabeth A. Albright
  • Published online:
    08 October 2021
    Print publication:
    21 October 2021
  • Disasters can serve as focusing events that increase agenda attention related to issues of disaster response, recovery, and preparedness. Increased agenda attention can lead to policy changes and organisational learning. The degree and type of learning that occurs within a government organization after a disaster may matter to policy outcomes related to individual, household, and community-level risks and resilience. Local governments are the first line of disaster response but also bear the burden of performing long-term disaster recovery and planning for future events. Crow and Albright present the first framework for understanding if, how, and to what effect communities and local governments learn after a disaster strikes. Drawing from analyses conducted over a five-year period following extreme flooding in Colorado, USA, Community Disaster Recovery: Moving from Vulnerability to Resilience presents a framework of community-level learning after disaster and the factors that catalyse policy change towards resilience.

Selling Sustainability Short?
  • The Private Governance of Labor and the Environment in the Coffee Sector
  • Janina Grabs
  • Published online:
    28 April 2020
    Print publication:
    14 May 2020
  • Can private standards bring about more sustainable production practices? This question is of interest to conscientious consumers, academics studying the effectiveness of private regulation, and corporate social responsibility practitioners alike. Grabs provides an answer by combining an impact evaluation of 1,900 farmers with rich qualitative evidence from the coffee sectors of Honduras, Colombia and Costa Rica. Identifying an institutional design dilemma that private sustainability standards encounter as they scale up, this book shows how this dilemma plays out in the coffee industry. It highlights how the erosion of price premiums and the adaptation to buyers' preferences have curtailed standards' effectiveness in promoting sustainable practices that create economic opportunity costs for farmers, such as agroforestry or agroecology. It also provides a voice for coffee producers and value chain members to explain why the current system is failing in its mission to provide environmental, social, and economic co-benefits, and what changes are necessary to do better.

Patient Capital
  • The Role of Family Firms in Sustainable Business
  • Sanjay Sharma, Pramodita Sharma
  • Published online:
    12 July 2019
    Print publication:
    18 July 2019
  • Sustainable businesses create economic and social value while simultaneously protecting the natural environment for future generations. This examination of environmental sustainability through the lens of the family business identifies factors that help family and non-family organizations address the dilemma of balancing short-term productivity, efficiency and profitability objectives, with innovating for long-term sustainable value creation. Exploring the case of the wine industry - an industry characterized by a variety of governance systems - Sanjay and Pramodita Sharma develop fresh insights into influences and drivers for proactive environmental strategies to address major global sustainability challenges. By doing so, the authors are able to demonstrate that family firms with a focus on trans-generational continuity of business, long temporal orientation, shared vision, faster decision-making processes, and the goal of preserving socio-emotional wealth are more likely to make patient long-term investments for innovations in products, services, processes and business models to address environmental sustainability challenges.

Strategies for Managing Uncertainty
  • Booms and Busts in the Energy Industry
  • Alfred A. Marcus
  • Published online:
    18 March 2019
    Print publication:
    28 March 2019
  • All organizations must cope with future uncertainties. These uncertainties affect the strategic choices they make. They must commit scarce organizational resources to future outcomes which they have little assurance will come into being. Marcus explores how decision makers in the energy industry made choices in the face of such uncertainties, specifically examining two major uncertainties they confronted in the 2012–18 period - price volatility and climate change. Marcus tells the story of how different companies in the integrated oil and natural gas sector and in the motor vehicle sector responded to these uncertainties. In the face of these challenges, companies in the energy industry hedged their bets by staking out paradoxical or contrasting positions. On the one hand, they focused on capturing as much gain as they could from the world's current dependence on fossil fuels and on the other hand they made preparations for a future in which fossil fuels might not be the world's dominant energy source.

Innovations in Sustainability
  • Fuel and Food
  • Alfred A. Marcus
  • Published online:
    05 August 2015
    Print publication:
    31 July 2015
  • To what extent can competition between companies encourage innovations in sustainability that have the potential to solve some of the world's major challenges? Using a series of case studies, this book pits closely related competitors against each other to examine the progress in and obstacles to the evolution of sustainable innovations in energy efficiency, solar power, electric vehicles and hybrids, wind energy, healthy eating, and agricultural productivity. It delves into the efforts of Tesla Motors to bring about a revolution in personal transportation, and the challenges Toyota and General Motors (GM) confront in commercializing hybrids. It explores the movement to healthy food by cereal companies General Mills and Kellogg's, and depicts the battles between Whole Foods and Walmart for the world's palate. By examining the experiences that particular businesses have had with sustainable innovation, this insightful book reflects upon lessons learned and encourages readers to think carefully about the challenges that lie ahead.

After Greenwashing
  • Symbolic Corporate Environmentalism and Society
  • Frances Bowen
  • Published online:
    05 July 2014
    Print publication:
    29 May 2014
  • Businesses promote their environmental awareness through green buildings, eco-labels, sustainability reports, industry pledges and clean technologies. When are these symbols wasteful corporate spin, and when do they signal authentic environmental improvements? Based on twenty years of research, three rich case studies, a strong theoretical model and a range of practical applications, this book provides the first systematic analysis of the drivers and consequences of symbolic corporate environmentalism. It addresses the indirect cost of companies' symbolic actions and develops a new concept of the 'social energy penalty' - the cost to society when powerful corporate actors limit the social conversation on environmental problems and their solutions. This thoughtful book develops a set of tools for researchers, regulators and managers to separate useful environmental information from empty corporate spin, and will appeal to researchers and students of corporate responsibility, corporate environmental strategy and sustainable business, as well as environmental practitioners.