Strategic Sustainable Business provides readers with a broad overview of the core concepts of sustainability and sustainable business practice. It is intended for use in undergraduate business courses and will also be of interest to students in environmental studies, engineering, urban planning, and government. This book is not meant to exhort all business people on the path to sustainability enlightenment but to highlight some of the benefits, opportunities, and challenges associated with sustainable business practices. What distinguishes this book is that it provides a conceptual foundation to promote understanding of sustainability concepts and frameworks and also discusses real-world business examples of sustainability in action. It is believed that this is the best way to teach sustainability as it applies to the business world-a conceptual foundation with practical application. Sustainable business involves businesses operating with interest and concern for their long-term economic, environmental, and social impact. For-profit businesses focus first and foremost on their own economic bottom line, oftentimes, with a short-term perspective. However, with a sustainability perspective, businesses also consider a longer-term and broader triple bottom line that takes into account not only company profits but also environmental and social impacts. The economic, environmental, and social perspectives are increasingly interrelated and relevant for businesses. This text was compiled, edited, and adapted from multiple open source textbooks and created under a Creative Commons License without attribution as requested by the work's original creator or licensee. For a free copy of the e-text, please visit HCIPress.org.
About the Author: Dr. Jonathan H. Westover is an Associate Professor of Management and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Ethics at Utah Valley University, specializing in international human resource management, organizational development, and community-engaged experiential learning. He is also a human resource development and performance management consultant. Already a recipient of numerous research, teaching, and service awards and fellowships early in his academic career, Jonathan also recently was named a Fulbright Scholar and was visiting faculty in the MBA program at Belarusian State University (Minsk, Belarus), and he is also a regular visiting faculty member in other graduate business programs in the U.S., UK, France, Poland, and China. Prior to his doctoral studies in the Sociology of Work and Organizations, Comparative International Sociology, and International Political Economy (University of Utah), he received his B.S. in Sociology (Research and Analysis emphasis, Business Management minor, Korean minor) and MPA (emphasis in Human Resource Management) from the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. He also received graduate certificates in demography and higher education teaching during his time at the University of Utah. His ongoing research examines issues of globalization, labor transformation, work quality characteristics, and the determinants of job satisfaction cross-nationally.