"Brings the business planning process alive to help today's agriculture entrepreneurs transform farm-grown inspiration into profitable enterprises. Sample worksheets illustrate how real farm families set goals, research processing alternatives, determine potential markets, and evaluate financing options. Blank worksheets offer readers the opportunity to develop their own detailed, lender-ready business plan and map out strategies" --back cover.
This title goes beyond the internal firm strategies of micromarketing and the 'four Ps' to take a broader perspective focused on the interconnectedness of markets, marketing, and society.
With deep thought and inspiring examples, this updated book engages readers by increasing their understanding and awareness of what sustainability means conceptually, practically, personally, and professionally. It provides readers with the tools and techniques to improve the social, environmental, and economic performance of their organizations in both the short and long term. Since sustainability is not achieved in a siloed environment, everyone has a critical role to play on this journey. The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook, with full companion materials at https://TheSustainableEnterpriseFieldbook.com, engages today’s managers and leaders of organizations, in both the private sector and civil society, who are being challenged as never before to find ways to play a proactive role in understanding and addressing the risks and opportunities of sustainability. It teaches them how to apply systems thinking to turn our most intractable problems into exciting business opportunities, and offers ground breaking frameworks in new chapters on globalization, strategy, metrics, and sustainability models for collaboration, technology, and community. That is why this book is structured to be a fieldbook to provide practitioners the Activities, Cases, and Tools that they can use to help move their enterprise through progressively higher performing stages of sustainability. Readers also have access to the innovative Living Fieldbook, an online community forum filled with supporting materials: https://www.thesustainableenterprisefieldbook.com/webinars.html.
This Open Access book provides a practical guide to the creation of sustainable enterprise value and implementation of the principles of stakeholder capitalism for corporate boards and management teams. The authors argue that business leadership is on the threshold of a new era driven by major shifts in technology, society, political economy and climate change. They set this transition in international and historical context and outline a comprehensive leadership agenda for fully integrating environmental, social, governance (ESG) and data stewardship risks and opportunities into corporate governance, strategy, reporting and partnerships. This systematic approach is illustrated with good practices by leading companies and includes an explanation of how sustainability reporting is making the leap into formal accounting standards set by the same body that oversees international financial accounting standards and what companies should do to prepare. The book's combination of scholarly analysis and practical guidance make it a valuable resource for anyone seeking to navigate the new business context, whether from the perspective of a board director, C-suite executive, manager, policymaker, scholar or student. This is an open access book.
The World Guide to Sustainable Enterprise is the first comprehensive global compendium that clearly describes the national approaches to sustainable enterprise. Through a systematic review of each country, this quick-to-access reference guide showcases the similarities and differences in each region. Every country profile includes key information about the relevant history, country-specific issues, trends, research, and the leading organizations operating in the field as well as best-practice case studies. The guide comprises four volumes, each dedicated to a specific region of the world. In a world where organizations are working increasingly across national and regional boundaries and research takes a joined-up and international approach, this book is an essential guide for practitioners and researchers in the disciplines of business sustainability, social enterprise and corporate responsibility. The first of its kind, this reference book provides the reader with a unique insight into what is the current state-of-play in each country. Each edited volume provides expert contributions from around the world; the contributors have been selected on the basis of their knowledge of the country and their clear experience in sustainable enterprise. Each regional/country profile includes the following subsections: Sustainable Enterprise in context; Priority issues; Trends; Government policies; Case studies; Further resources; and References. This unique resource will be an essential acquisition for all organizations who need to benchmark their sustainable enterprise strategies throughout different regions and cultures and want the best possible intelligence on the key issues and concerns relating to sustainable business and social responsibility in all of the markets in which they operate. It provides a useful companion reference collection to the World Guide to CSR, also edited by Wayne Visser. The full Four Volume Set of The World Guide to Sustainable Enterprise is available for purchase as a single item at a 25% discounted rate.
Checklist for Change diagnoses the problems in American higher education today and describes principal reforms that must occur in combination in order for it to remain a vital enterprise: a fundamental recasting of federal financial aid; new mechanisms for better channeling the competition among colleges and universities; recasting the undergraduate curriculum; and a stronger, more collective faculty voice in governance that defines not why, but how the enterprise must change.
Of value to business people, environmentalists, and educators alike, Mid-Course Correction is a business book about the environment that's written from a personal perspective. With passion and pride, Ray Anderson, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of one of the world's largest interior furnishings companies, recounts his awakening to the importance of environmental issues and outlines the steps his petroleum-dependent company, Atlanta-based Interface, Inc., is taking in its quest to become a sustainable enterprise - one that will never have to take another drop of oil from the earth.
In combining practice and theory, this textbook provides a management perspective on the 'business case' for sustainability. Drawing on examples from 20 frontrunner companies located in the Netherlands, it builds upon a unique research project in which CEOs and middle-managers gave access not only to their decision-making process, but also revealed how their perceptions shaped the transition process. This book identifies four different archetypes of business cases and related business models that business students and managers can use to identify phases and related attitudes towards sustainability. The book provides in-depth analysis and insight into: * theoretical concepts and an overview of the relevant literature * the different business cases for sustainability * behavioural characteristics of each phase and the typical barriers between them * more than 70 tipping points * approaches to shaping stakeholder dialogue * effective engagement of stakeholders in each phase of transition * how companies move through the phases towards higher levels of sustainability * insights of employees of the 20 companies whether the business case was really achieved * summary of the interventions which have proved successful in these companies. This book offers students as well as managers of vocational and academic institutions at undergraduate and postgraduate level insight into real-life transition processes towards sustainability.
In a turbulent business environment, leaders must begin to think more broadly about what a corporation is and how it can create a richer future. With the globalisation of the world's economies, the intensification of competition, and quantum leaps in technological development, the insular and static strategic thinking of many global corporations has become inadequate for understanding the business environment and determining strategic direction. This 2006 book provides comprehensive and practical analysis of what sustainable business development (SBD) is and how companies can use it to make a significant difference. Case studies of companies in the US, Europe, the Pacific Rim and South America demonstrate that achieving innovation and integration depends on a comprehensive understanding of all of the forces which drive change and responding to them with fresh ways of strategic thinking. It is compulsory reading for MBA students and executives as well as professional readers.
