CALL FOR CHAPTERS
GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY AS A BUSINESS IMPERATIVE
James A.F. Stoner, Fordham University, & Charles Wankel, St. John's
University, New York
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
This book is in a new sustainability series published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Chapter are anticipated to be about 6000-7000 words.
We are interested in chapters on business logic for sustainability.
Chapters might examine this through various different prisms, such as a
legal one, an industry one, a technological one, or a social one. How these
sorts of perspectives overlap in helpful or unhelpful ways would be of
interest too.
We invite chapters on new models of business sustainability. That is, how
business, resources, and people fit together in a sustainability business
model. We hope that some authors will parse the systems nature of the
"global sustainability equation" and of the task ahead of us in achieving
global sustainability and then maintaining it as an ongoing, evolving, and
continually changing situation. We are interested in coverage of how
entrepreneurs are stepping away from traditional business practices by
adopting sustainability. Cases will be critically assessed. As customers
become green focused it will become a more and more competitive requirement
for companies to align with them.
We are also interested in action implications. Assessing corporate
environmental performance is a topic we are keenly interested in receiving
chapter proposals on. We invite chapters on corporate citizenship in the
area of environmental stewardship. Such factors as compliance with national
and local laws, product design and packaging, energy efficiency, and
minimization of toxic releases might be included. Transportation industry's
sustainability opportunities would be a wonderful chapter to include. Such
a chapter might examine those things that make transport non-sustainable
such as local air quality problems. It will then consider how every
transportation mode and the entire system of transportation can be
reoriented to fit with a sustainable future. Another topic we are
interested in is the role of microfinance and microenterprise in the
development, adoption, and diffusion of sustainable technologies. This
chapter might discuss knowledge transfer from the developing to the
developed world in the domain of economics and governance for sustainable
development. Areas explored might include: the structure of commons
governance institutions and the process of community-based participatory
action research.
Motivating business is an important constellation of chapter topics for us.
We are interested in reports on redoing business curricula to emphasize
global sustainability issues. Empowerment for sustainability is an issue we
hope to receive a chapter on. This might discuss how average people in any
organization can move toward sustainability. It might consider the
manufacturing services and government sectors and also functions including
top management, marketing, public relations, purchasing, facilities
management, human resource management, finance and accounting, and health
and safety. Another topic we hope to receive a chapter submission on is the
role of corporate boards in sustainability issues. We have found that this
topic is not covered much at all yet and would be great terra incognita for
you to invade. A proposal might consider corporate responsibility and
sustainability management by corporate boards of directors who are taking a
role in overseeing associated risks and opportunities. The consideration by
boards of the interdependencies between environmental, social and financial
performance, regulation, accountability, transparency and corporate
governance, and potential impacts of climate change on business operations
is increasing. Environmental awards is a topic we find undercovered in the
literature. We hope it is one that you might decide to tackle for a chapter
in our volume. Prestigious awards such as the Gold Medal for International
Corporate Achievement and the Global 500 Role of Honor for Environmental
Achievement can engage companies and their people towards realizing great
sustainability improvement. Such a chapter might consider the changes in
organizations who have put themselves into consideration for such awards and
how such awards might be adapted to spur on even more environmental change.
Another area that we wish several chapters on is that of business
transformations of its environment. Designing green business facilities
would be a great chapter. Transforming business energy use in urban
environments could be a chapter that might consider what businesses in urban
environments can do to maximize global sustainability. A prominent would be
a focus on energy use. The impact of global industrial supply chains on
sustainable development in developing countries is another important topic
we solicit chapters on. The change in developing countries' abilities to
handle cutting-edge technologies suggests that they are more able to handle
cutting-edge environmental approaches and controls to the regulation and
sensible planning of development. Re-educating consumers is an important
topic. A chapter on this might have such themes and content as: "No
brainers" -- absolutely obvious things all of us should do, and some of us
are already doing, to improve our well-being by reducing wasteful,
dissatisfaction-inducing consumption and by switching to more
sustainability-friendly, more satisfying ways and consuming.
Finally, we would like to have chapters on new directions to new sustainable
futures from the nebulous present in business. This chapter might contain
thoughts on what business needs to be doing and how it can be made to see
what it needs to be doing.
Chapter proposals may be of any length but ideally about 200 words. You
should brief biographies of you and your coauthors, including terminal
degrees, current affiliation, current rank, related publications, and
contact information including office, mobile, Skype, email, and your home
page. Send your proposal to both James Stoner
stoner@fordham.edu and
Charles Wankel
wankelc@stjohns.edu . Our deadline for receipt of proposals
is December 7, 2009. We anticipate sending final drafts to the publisher in
April of 2010 with publication in the fall of 2010.