Design and Diagnosis for Sustainable Organizations

Design and Diagnosis for Sustainable Organizations
Author: José M. Pérez Ríos
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2012-01-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3642223176

How can organizations and their managers face the tremendous complexity of the current environment? How can their compliance with the requirements of sustainability be evaluated? And how can new organizations be structured to ensure their viability? This book addresses these questions in a very practical way, essentially combining systems theory with cybernetics to help managers to evaluate and shape organizations by making accessible the wealth of knowledge contained in these fields. Importantly, it also provides guidelines for its practical application.

The MultiCapital Scorecard

The MultiCapital Scorecard
Author: Martin P. Thomas
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2016
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1603586903

For decades now, organizations have been struggling to find the best way to address their social and environmental responsibilities alongside their economic obligations. In other words, they want to know how best to effectively manage their operations based on a triple bottom line (3BL)--one that reflects social, environmental, and economic performance. Recently, an international standard for integrated reporting has emerged that in principle emphasizes the importance of managing toward a triple bottom line. But it fails to provide specific guidance on how to do so. Organizations have been left to their own devices to respond. How should 3BL management actually be done? In this book, sustainability and performance experts Martin Thomas and Mark McElroy introduce the world's most advanced 3BL performance accounting methodology: The MultiCapital Scorecard. It is the first context-based integrated measurement, management, and reporting system. And, it can help corporations, public institutions, and other organizations answer the question they should be asking themselves for every aspect of their operations: "How much is enough for us to be sustainable?" The answers set internal performance standards against which operations and their impacts can be measured. Nothing less will do! The MultiCapital Scorecard describes this open-source methodology, which consists of a structured, quantitative measurement and reporting system that complies with international standards for 3BL integrated measurement and reporting. Moreover, the MultiCapital Scorecard is designed to help organizations assess their own 3BL performance in their own contexts with context-based metrics of their own choosing. An eminently practical management aid for integrated thinking, it can be tailored to any organization's needs. The authors also describe how and why businesses are gradually shifting from managing impacts on only one type of capital (economic) to managing impacts on multiple types. They also provide detailed examples of worked reports, showing how organizations might develop and quantify the interim and long-term goals to meet their obligations to their employees, community, shareholders, and the environment. The examples also show how an organization can use the Multicapital Scorecard methodology to assess their progress in meeting those goals, and convey that progress to their stakeholders.

Corporate Sustainability Management

Corporate Sustainability Management
Author: Mark W. McElroy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2012-05-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136329617

Businesses around the world are increasingly turning to an exciting new branch of management known as corporate sustainability management (CSM) to help them better understand and manage their non-financial performance. Indeed, what we are witnessing is nothing less than the birth of a new management function. The main pillar of CSM is the Triple Bottom Line (TBL), which has been successful as an organizing principle but a disappointment in practice. This is largely due to the absence of 'sustainability context' in related measurement, management and reporting efforts, when for example the monitoring of a company's use of freshwater resources fails to take into account the size of related supplies. This book is the first to introduce a systematic means of including context in sustainability management and doing effective CSM. After making the case for why context matters, the book explains how to do context-based CSM by providing a stepwise, cyclical blueprint for how to practice it in any organization. This includes a template for context-based metrics compatible with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), as well as specific examples of metrics for each of the triple bottom lines. Practical examples of best practices are presented throughout, while simultaneously addressing key issues, such as how organizations can measure performance against context-based standards when consensus for such standards does not yet exist. Appendices include tools for developing and applying context-based metrics, as well as case studies taken from the practice of context-based CSM at two companies in the United States. This guide is the essential tool for business and organizational leaders in all sectors committed to improving their sustainability performance, with a particular emphasis on measurement, management and reporting.

Leading the Sustainable Organization

Leading the Sustainable Organization
Author: Tim Galpin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1136468870

This book is the first to combine the much talked about topics of leadership and sustainability, and provides readers with a comprehensive overview and pragmatic approach to leading sustainable organizations. Chapters include discussions, case examples, steps, and useful tools centred on the components of the Leading the Sustainable Organization model. This model provides managers with a pragmatic, end-to-end framework for creating (in the case of new entities) or shifting (in the case of existing firms) their organizations’ workforces to a sustainability focus. Leading the Sustainable Organization is the perfect tool for executives and managers in small, medium, and large companies, and in all industries, to assist with the difficult and confusing topic of leading sustainability efforts. This book will be of great interest to students and academics who want to learn more about corporate sustainability.

Design for Sustainable Change

Design for Sustainable Change
Author: Anne Chick
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2017-09-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1350034215

Design for Sustainable Change explores how design thinking and design-led entrepreneurship can address the issue of sustainability. It discusses the ways in which design thinking is evolving and being applied to a much wider spectrum of social and environmental issues, beyond its traditional professional territory. The result is designers themselves evolving, and developing greater design mindfulness in relation to what they do and how they do it. This book looks at design thinking as a methodology which, by its nature, considers issues of sustainability, but which does not necessarily seek to define itself in those terms. It explores the gradual extension of this methodology into the larger marketplace and the commercial and social implications of such an extension.

The Philosophy of Sustainable Design

The Philosophy of Sustainable Design
Author: Jason F. McLennan
Publisher: Ecotone Publishing
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2004
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780974903309

The author outlines the major ideas and issues that have emerged in the growing movement of green architecture and sustainable design over the last thirty years. The book asks individuals to understand how the philosophy of sustainable design can affect their own work.

Designing for Sustainability

Designing for Sustainability
Author: Tim Frick
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2016-08-23
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1491935723

Pixels use electricity, and a lot of it. If the Internet were a country, it would be the sixth largest in terms of electricity use. That’s because today’s average web page has surpassed two megabytes in size, leading to slow load times, frustrated users, and a lot of wasted energy. With this practical guide, your web design team will learn how to apply sustainability principles for creating speedy, user-friendly, and energy-efficient digital products and services. Author Tim Frick introduces a web design framework that focuses on four key areas where these principles can make a difference: content strategy, performance optimization, design and user experience, and green hosting. You’ll discover how to provide users with a streamlined experience, while reducing the environmental impact of your products and services. Learn why 90% of the data that ever existed was created in the last year Use sustainability principles to innovate, reduce waste, and function more efficiently Explore green hosting, sustainable business practices, and lean/agile workflows Put the right things in front of users at precisely the moment they need them—and nothing more Increase site search engine visibility, streamline user experience, and make streaming video more efficient Use Action Items to explore concepts outlined in each chapter

Sustainable Nation

Sustainable Nation
Author: Douglas Farr
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2018-02-23
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1118415353

PROSE Award Finalist 2019 Association of American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence As a follow up to his widely acclaimed Sustainable Urbanism, this new book from author Douglas Farr embraces the idea that the humanitarian, population, and climate crises are three facets of one interrelated human existential challenge, one with impossibly short deadlines. The vision of Sustainable Nation is to accelerate the pace of progress of human civilization to create an equitable and sustainable world. The core strategy of Sustainable Nation is the perfection of the design and governance of all neighborhoods to make them unique exemplars of community and sustainability. The tools to achieve this vision are more than 70 patterns for rebellious change written by industry leaders of thought and practice. Each pattern represents an aspirational, future-oriented ideal for a key aspect of a neighborhood. At once an urgent call to action and a guidebook for change, Sustainable Nation is an essential resource for urban designers, planners, and architects.

Designing the Sustainable School

Designing the Sustainable School
Author: Alan Ford
Publisher: Images Publishing
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2007
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1864702370

Having designed more than 75 K-12 school projects, and with a long-standing commitment to sustainability and a passion for architecture, Alan Ford is perfectly positioned to present this illuminating collection of sustainable school projects from around the world. Designing the Sustainable School is a compendium of ideas illustrating how some very talented architects and committed facility planners are meeting the challenge of creating better schools for the 21st century. They are creating schools that are eco-friendly, embody high-performance design principles, are rich in architectural character, and enhance the health and well-being of students and teachers. The projects represent a wide range of design solutions, aesthetics, location, and scale, ranging in size from the Aga Khan Award-winning three-room schoolhouse in Burkina Faso by Diebedo Francis Kere, to the 2500-student, 260,000-square-foot high school in Santa Ana, California by LPA Architects. Each of the 45 featured projects is presented with an overview of the components of the high-performance "tool kit" employed by architects to achieve sustainable design goals. Collectively, these demonstrate the breadth of tools that today's architects can employ to build a sustainable future for our children.