Balancing Green: When to Embrace Sustainability in a Business (and When Not To)

by Yossi Sheffi, Edgar Blanco

An expert on business strategy offers a pragmatic take on how businesses of all sizes balance the competing demands of profitability and employment with sustainability. The demands and stresses on companies only grow as executives face a multitude of competing business goals. Their stakeholders are interested in corporate profits, jobs, business growth, and environmental sustainability. In this book, business strategy expert Yossi Sheffi offers a pragmatic take on how businesses of all sizes—from Coca Cola and Siemens to Dr. Bronner's Magical Soaps and Patagonia—navigate these competing goals. Drawing on extensive interviews with more than 250 executives, Sheffi examines the challenges, solutions, and implications of balancing traditional business goals with sustainability. Sheffi, author of the widely read The Resilient Enterprise , argues that business executives' personal opinions on environmental sustainability  are irrelevant. The business merits of environmental sustainability are based on the fact that even the most ardent climate change skeptics in the C-suite face natural resource costs, public relations problems, regulatory burdens, and a green consumer segment. Sheffi presents three basic business rationales for corporate sustainability cutting costs, reducing risk, and achieving growth. For companies, sustainability is not a simple case of “profits versus planet” but is instead a more subtle issue of (some) people versus (other) people—those looking for jobs and inexpensive goods versus others who seek a pristine environment. This book aims to help companies satisfy these conflicting motivations for both economic growth and environmental sustainability.

Genres: Sustainability, Nonfiction

684 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 23, 2018

About the author

Professor Yossi Sheffi is Director of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL), and Director and Founder of the Master of Engineering in Logistics Program. He is a faculty member of the MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, as well as the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. He is an expert in systems optimization, risk analysis and supply chain management and is the author of a text book Urban Transportation Networks: Equilibrium Analysis with Mathematical Programming Methods (1985) and four award-winning management books: : The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage (2005); Logistics Clusters: Delivering Value and Driving Growth (2012); The Power of Resilience: How the Best Companies Manage the Unexpected (2015); Balancing Green: When to Embrace Sustainability in Business (and When Not to) (2018). His latest book is The New (Ab)Normal: Reshaping Business and Supply Chain Strategy Beyond Covid-19 (October 2020).

Reviews

[Rodrigo Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a sustainability passionate, I found it very insightful and gave a general overview of the different views of sustainability at the corporate level. Very related with the Supply Chains of the organizations, which makes sense due to Mr. Sheffi's background. A recomended read.

[Saravana Sastha Kumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the finest books on Sustainability and is actually very good for a novice on the subject and for the experienced. Dr Sheffi has this gift of explaining complex topics in ways that are easy to understand and consume. On to his other books this year.