Metaphor, Sustainability, Transformation
Metaphor, Sustainability, Transformation

Author: Ian Hughes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-29

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1000407004

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This book offers an eclectic range of transdisciplinary insights into the role of metaphor, myth and fable in shaping our understanding of the world and how we interact with it and with each other. Drawing on innovative perspectives from widely different fields, this book explores how metaphor might facilitate and underpin transformative change towards environmental, ecological and societal sustainability. It illustrates the ways in which contemporary metaphors lock us into patterns of thinking, modes of behaviour, and styles of living that reproduce and accentuate our current socio-environmental problems. It sets itself the task of finding new metaphors and myths that might help move us towards sustainability as societal flourishing. By examining the use of metaphor in diverse fields such as energy use, the food system, health care, arts and the humanities, it invites the reader to reflect on the deep-seated influence of language in general, and metaphor in particular, in shaping how we understand and act upon the world. Re-imagining the use of language in framing both the problems we face and the solutions we devise, this novel contribution is a vital source of ideas for those aiming to change how we think and act in pursuit of more sustainable futures.

Sustainability Transformations Across Societies
Sustainability Transformations Across Societies

Author: Björn-Ola Linnér

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-10-03

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1108487475

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A comparison of how societal actors in different geographical, political and cultural contexts understand agents and drivers of sustainability transformations.

Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability
Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability

Author: Brendon Larson

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2011-06-07

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0300151543

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Scientists turn to metaphors to formulate and explain scientific concepts, but an ill-considered metaphor can lead to social misunderstandings and counterproductive policies, Brendon Larson observes in this stimulating book. He explores how metaphors can entangle scientific facts with social values and warns that, particularly in the environmental realm, incautious metaphors can reinforce prevailing values that are inconsistent with desirable sustainability outcomes. "Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability" draws on four case studies--two from nineteenth-century evolutionary science, and two from contemporary biodiversity science--to reveal how metaphors may shape the possibility of sustainability. Arguing that scientists must assume greater responsibility for their metaphors, and that the rest of us must become more critically aware of them, the author urges more critical reflection on the social dimensions and implications of metaphors while offering practical suggestions for choosing among alternative scientific metaphors.

Winning Sustainability Strategies
Winning Sustainability Strategies

Author: Benoit Leleux

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-11-11

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 3319974459

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Despite recent optimism and global initiatives, the implementation of corporate sustainability programs has been slow at best, with less than a third of global companies having developed a clear business case for their approach to sustainability. Presenting numerous award-winning cases and examples from companies such as Unilever, Patagonia, Tumi, DSM and Umicore alongside original ideas based upon 20 years of consulting experience, this book reveals how to design and implement a stronger sense of focus and move sustainability programs forward. This proven combination of purpose, direction and speed is dubbed “Vectoring”. Based upon practitioner cases and data analysis from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, Vectoring offers a plain-spoken framework to identify the relative position of companies compared to their peers. The framework and its 4 archetypes deliver insights for practitioners to locate inhibitors and overcome them by providing practical suggestions for process improvements. This includes designing and executing new sustainability programs, embedding the SDGs within company strategy and assessing the impact of sustainability programs on competitiveness and valuation. Offering directions for CFOs to shift companies from integrated reporting to integrated thinking in order to accelerate their sustainability programs, Winning Sustainability Strategies shows how to achieve purpose with profit and how to do well by doing good.

The Big Pivot
The Big Pivot

Author: Andrew S. Winston

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Published: 2014-03-11

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1625270526

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We live in a fundamentally changed world. It’s time for your approach to strategy to change, too. The evidence is all around us. Extreme weather, driven by climate change, is shattering records all over the planet. Our natural resources are in greater demand than ever before as a billion more people enter the global middle class, wanting more of everything. Radical transparency is opening up company operations and supply chains to public scrutiny. This is not some futuristic scenario or model to debate, but today’s reality. We've passed an economic tipping point. A weakening of the foundations of our planetary infrastructure is costing businesses dearly and putting our society at risk. The mega challenges of climate change, scarcity, and radical transparency threaten our ability to run an expanding global economy and are profoundly changing “business as usual.” But they also offer unprecedented opportunities: multi-trillion-dollar markets are in play, and the winners of this new game will profit mightily. According to Andrew Winston, bestselling author (Green to Gold) and globally recognized business strategist, the way companies currently operate will not allow them to keep up with the current—and future—rate of change. They need to make the Big Pivot. In this indispensable new book, Winston provides ten crucial strategies for leaders and companies ready to move boldly forward and win in this new reality. With concrete advice and tactics, and new stories from companies like British Telecom, Diageo, Dow, Ford, Nike, Unilever, Walmart, and many others, The Big Pivot will help you, and all of us, create more resilient businesses and a more prosperous world. This book is the blueprint to get you started.

Images of Organization
Images of Organization

Author: Gareth Morgan

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Published: 2006-04-15

Total Pages: 522

ISBN-13: 1506354726

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Since its first publication over twenty years ago, Images of Organization has become a classic in the canon of management literature. The book is based on a very simple premise—that all theories of organization and management are based on implicit images or metaphors that stretch our imagination in a way that can create powerful insights, but at the risk of distortion. Gareth Morgan provides a rich and comprehensive resource for exploring the complexity of modern organizations internationally, translating leading-edge theory into leading-edge practice.

Metaphor and Persuasion in Strategic Communication
Metaphor and Persuasion in Strategic Communication

Author: Federica Ferrari

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-10

Total Pages: 459

ISBN-13: 1351743171

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This groundbreaking work adopts an alternative metaphor-based approach to challenge, unpack, and redefine our understanding of persuasion and strategic communication and the extents to which they shape political discourse. The book’s theoretical and methodological grounding in metaphor allows for an alternative perspective on strategic communication but also a robust discussion of both persuasion and other kinds of related discursive processes at work in political communication, including narrative, identification, and ideology. The volume integrates case studies from prominent political discourses, including those of George W. Bush, Jr., Tony Blair, and Barack Obama, to highlight the crucial role of persuasion management and sustainability in the public sphere and the ways in which it might inform political action and change in a positive way. Broadening our perception of the possibilities of persuasion and strategic communication, this dynamic volume is key reading for students and scholars in communication studies, political science, rhetoric, and cognitive linguistics.

Social Sustainability, Past and Future
Social Sustainability, Past and Future

Author: Sander van der Leeuw

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-02-13

Total Pages: 533

ISBN-13: 1108498698

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A novel, integrated approach to understanding long-term human history, viewing it as the long-term evolution of human information-processing. This title is also available as Open Access.

Leading Sustainable Change
Leading Sustainable Change

Author: Rebecca Henderson

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 0198704070

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The business case for acting sustainably is becoming increasingly compelling - reducing our global footprint to sustainable levels is the defining issue of our times and it is one that can only be addressed with the active participation of the private sector. However, persuading well-established organizations to act in new ways is never easy. This book is designed to support business leaders and organizational scholars who are grappling with this challenge by pulling together leading edge insights from some of the world's best researchers as to how organizational change in general - and sustainable change in particular - can be most effectively managed. The book begins by laying out the economic case for change, while subsequent chapters describe how leaders at firms such as Du Pont, IBM and Cemex have transformed their organizations, exploring issues such as the role of the senior team and the ways in which firms shift their identities, build innovative cultures and processes, and begin to change the world around them. Business leaders will find the book a source of both powerful examples and immediately actionable ideas, while scholars will be deeply intrigued by the insights that emerge from the cross-cutting exploration of one of the toughest challenges our society has ever faced.

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Climate Change for Sustainable Growth
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Climate Change for Sustainable Growth

Author: Sara Valaguzza

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-02-19

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 3030875644

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The book is an edited collection of contributions by a distinguished international panel of academics on the main scientific, juridical, and economic aspects involved in the mitigation and adaptation processes imposed by climate change. Explicitly interdisciplinary, the book transversally cuts through different disciplines offering an outline of a phenomenon that is too often left to specific and sectorial insights. The volume is divided into four parts. The first part introduces the main concepts of the book: climate change and sustainability, wellbeing, and mitigation and adaptation. The second part presents the scientific understanding of climate change and explores some of the more pressing issues driving policy development, such as the melting of the glaciers and the impact on coastal areas. The third part discusses significant experiences in the environmental policies both in the European Union and in the United States of America. The last section explains possible approaches to climate change, by exploring the legal and economic aspects of both adversarial and more lenient approaches towards a more sustainable world. It faces four main issues in the economic and juridical context: consumer behaviors, climate litigations, environmental litigations and the alternative forms of dispute resolution on environmental matters, with particular regard to environmental mediation. Offering a new vision of sustainable policies, this volume will be of interest to researchers and students of environmental policy, resource economics, environmental law, sustainable development, and public administration, as well as practitioners and policy makers working in related areas.